Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - August 24, 2005
Sex ban ends: As a generation of young Swazi women ended a five-year vow of chastity in a traditional ceremony this week, health officials are debating the impact of the custom on reducing the risk of HIV infection.
"We have anecdotal evidence that girls are using the æsex ban' as a way to avoid unwanted intercourse with demanding men. That is proof that some good has occurred -- no one expected the custom to eliminate premarital sex entirely," said Goodness Simelane, an HIV counsellor in Manzini.
The custom is known as umcwasho, after the tasselled woollen headgear worn by young women for five years.
It was re-introduced in 2001 as the government tried to prevent Aids in a country where an estimated 40% of adults are HIV-positive.
Health officials do not anticipate a sexual free-for-all now that the period of virginity has officially ended, but they would like to see the custom followed by all teenage girls, instead of occurring only once a generation. The last time the umcwasho was observed was in the 1970s.
A Health Ministry report, released in April, showed a decline in the number of HIV-positive pregnant girls from 33,5% in 2002 to 29,3% last year.
Analysts acknowledged that the data showed a stabilising of the infection rate among teenage girls.
Health officials also credit Aids-awareness campaigns and the effect of regular burials of relatives and friends who have died of Aids-related illnesses for influencing sexual behaviour. -- Source: Irin
'ARV kids' doing well worldwide
Children on antiretroviral (ARV) therapy gained an average of 4kg after 18 months of treatment and only 5,5% experienced side effects, according to a study of 1 840 children presented to the International Aids Society conference in Rio de Janiero last month.
By March, 83,9% of these children were alive and on treatment and their probability of survival after 24 months was 91%, according to the study conducted by M decins Sans Fronti res (MSF) at 22 sites worldwide.
But, warns MSF, "only a fraction of children with HIV/Aids in need of treatment is receiving life-prolonging antiretroviral treatment today. As a result, half of all children with Aids die before their second birthday."
Barriers to treatment include the lack of paediatric doses of ARVs.
Almost three-quarters of the children in the MSF study had CD4 counts of more than 15% after 18 months of treatment. Children's CD4 counts are measured as a percentage of the total lymphocytes (white blood cells made up of B and C cells) in the blood. A healthy child will have a CD4 count of more than 25%.
The Department of Health's treatment guidelines recommend that HIV-positive children over the age of 18 months should be given ARV treatment if their CD4 count is less than 15%. For children under 18 months, treatment is recommended if the child's CD4 count is less than 20%.
Adults' CD4 counts are measured by the number of CD4 cells per cubic millimetre of blood, and those with CD4 counts of below 200 are eligible for ARV treatment.
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