ALGIERS, Dec 26, 2006 (AFP) - Long taboo, condoms have made a startling entrance into the media in this conservative Muslim country once gripped by an Islamic insurgency but now taking on a very different threat: HIV/AIDS.
Spearheading a new government campaign to promote the once-illegal condom, experts are now lining up on Algerian radio and television stations to preach the contraceptive's virtues as a barrier to infection.
Algerian officials have even tapped imams, or Muslim preachers, to spread the word and help counter widespread ignorance about the disease and how it is transmitted.
"We're not yet at the point of putting (condom) distributors on the road," said one youngster, involved in an AIDS-awareness campaign in an Algiers neighborhood.
"But it's already remarkable progress to talk about the condom as the only protection against AIDS for those who don't resort to abstinence and who frequent prostitutes."
Only 19,000 out of this North African country's 33 million people -- 0.05 percent of the population -- live with AIDS, according to the UN agency UNAIDS.
Algerian authorities offer dramatically lower estimates to figures that are already modest compared to other African nations. Only 40 new AIDS cases and 120 HIV-positive ones are registered each year, the country's health ministry says.
By contrast, roughly 1,000 AIDS-related deaths occur every day in South Africa, where roughly 19 percent of adults aged 19 to 49 are HIV-positive, according to UNAIDS.
But Algeria shares challenges faced by a number of other Islamic countries, experts say, especially widespread public misunderstanding about the virus and the lack of screening to detect it.
"The best way to change mentalities is to target schools to install a culture of prevention against AIDS," said Father Kamel Senhadji, a genetic therapy specialist in the eastern Algerian city of Tizi Ouzou. "It's urgent to create (new) generations conscious of the dangers that await them."
After experts began talking about the benefits of condoms as barriers to spreading HIV/AIDS, the government began soliciting imams last month to preach about the virus and the risks of unprotected sex during Friday prayers.
But it's clear they face an uphill path.
In television interviews, for example, many Algerians claimed AIDS can be transmitted simply by being in contact with someone who had it. Others, swayed by hard-line clerics, argue the virus aims to punish sexual deviants, including homosexuals.
In one case, a veiled woman -- her face hidden from view -- confessed on TV how loved ones rejected the meals she prepared and refused to touch her personal objects. The woman had acquired the virus from her husband.
Indeed, a striking 40 percent of Algerian youth know "nothing about AIDS," nor about how to prevent it, according to an official survey published in November.
Algerian officials are soon expected to open some 54 centers offering free and anonymous screening against the virus, according to Father Abdelouahad Dif, head of a national AIDS-fighting committee.
That includes in the southern Hoggar region, located on the migration highway for sub-Saharan Africans bound for Europe and considered an "at-risk zone" for the spread of HIV/AIDS.
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