Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - June 24, 2002

In some places, a quarter of people interviewed for a UN study wrongly thought that Aids was rarely, if ever, fatal, and up to a third of women knew of no way to protect themselves against infection.

The study, covering 39 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, said that while a large majority of men claimed to have changed their behaviour to avoid Aids, "only a small percentage" used condoms, the most effective protection for sexually active people.

"Clearly, dramatic changes in sexual and reproductive awareness and behaviour in many less developed countries are needed in order to defeat the HIV/Aids epidemic," the report said.

The report, HIV/Aids Awareness and Behaviour, was issued on the first anniversary of a special session of the UN General Assembly on Aids which concluded that prevention must be the mainstay of fighting the epidemic.

At the time, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan emphasised the importance of educating young people about the dangers of the disease.

But among the findings in the report, released by the UN's population division, is that "radio is by far the most often cited source of knowledge about Aids," while "schools and teachers appear to play little of a role currently in Aids awareness".

The study included five of the nine countries with more than one million people infected with the HIV virus -- Nigeria, with an estimated 2,6 million infections, Kenya (2 million infections), Zimbabwe (1,4 million infections), Tanzania (1,2 million infections) and Mozambique (1,1 million infections).

South Africa (4,1 million infections), India (3,5 million infections), Ethiopia (2,9 million infections) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (1,1 million infections) were not covered by the survey.

"The level of awareness of Aids is generally high," the report said, noting that, in more than half of the countries surveyed, at least 90% of women had heard of the disease.

But there was an "enormous" difference between urban and rural areas in countries such as Bangladesh and Nepal, where fewer than one married woman in three had heard of Aids.

And "in practically all countries surveyed," including those where the prevalence of HIV/Aids was high, at least two-thirds of female respondents and eight out of 10 male respondents believed they ran little or no risk of infection.

"Much effort has been spent on promoting the prophylactic use of condoms as part of Aids prevention," the report said, but the condom has not become more popular among couples.

The proportion of women using condoms ranged from 1% in Africa to 3% in Asia and 4% in Latin America, it said.

Men were more likely to use condoms in extramarital sex encounters, it said, and this reinforced the negative image of the condom among wives. - Sapa-AFP
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