Inter Press Service - July 5, 1999
Lansana Fofana

Media reports attribute the upsurge in the HIV/AIDs epidemic to rebel activities which are often marked by "atrocities and gang- rape" of teenage girls. "Most of the victims contracted the disease as a result of last January's rebel invasion of the capital Freetown and the massive raping of girls," claimed Sierra Leone's outspoken tabloid 'For Di People', following the death of the teenagers late last month.

But, the manager of the National AIDs Control Programme, Dr Andrew Kosia, says the spread of the killer disease goes beyond the January invasion.

"I believe the eight-year long civil war is mainly responsible for the upsurge in HIV/AIDs, and just among the military combatants alone, we are talking of 40 percent being infected," Kosia discloses.

For a country with more than 80 percent illiteracy and where poverty and disease have become ingredients of life, AIDs is likely to spread fast among the population.

"Before the outbreak of the war in 1991, the figure was 0.5 percent. It has now increased to 7 percent," explains Kosia. "This means that from less than 500 victims in 1991, we now have more than 50,000."

The epidemic is believed to be even more serious in the interior of the country, where 80 percent of the population lives under rebel control.

"Here the rebels hold sway and with the prevalence of intravenous drugs, homosexuality, gang-rape it could be worse for the populations living there," says a nurse who recently escaped from rebel-held territory and refuses to be named for security reasons.

She told IPS this week that "there are hundreds of HIV carriers in the northern town Of Makeni", about 150 kilomentres from Freetown. "These people have been tested and confirmed HIV positive but there is little we could do about it," she says.

Anti-AIDs campaigners in Freetown regret that all gains made in the fight against the Killer disease has been radically reversed.

"The January invasion of the capital by rebels put on hold our community-based counselling, free distribution of condoms and school and college-based awareness programmes," Kosia says, adding that, "The situation is getting worse".

As a result, the Ministry of Health and Sanitation has declared the epidemic "an emergency." The immediate target, now, according to anti-AIDs campaigners, is the internally displaced persons, who number more than a million and are mainly housed at refugee camps across the country.

Before the rebel invasion of the capital, which resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 persons and displacement of tens of thousands, the counselling unit and admission wards, at the Lakka hospital west of Freetown ceased normal operations.

AIDs patients and victims whose limbs were amputated by rebels were admitted there. But this is no more.

As peace talks continue in the Togolese capital of Lome between the Sierra Leonean Government and rebel forces, to bring to an end eight years of bloody conflict, experts predict the emergence of the killer disease on a large scale, making post-war reconstruction a tough problem.

"I hope the government addresses this burning issue of AIDs seriously, otherwise we may see a wasting away of the younger generation through this killer disease," says Kosia.

The UN World Health Organisation (WHO) says Africa, which has only 10 percent Of the world's population, currently has 70 percent of the 30.8 million global cases Of HIV/AIDs.

"Every country on the continent has to a lesser or larger degree reported cases of HIV/AIDs which everyday infects 7,500 Africans our of the global total of 16,000 daily infections," says the WHO regional director for Africa, Dr Ibrahim Samba.

By the end of 1997, close to nine million adults, divided equally between men and women, and 1.5 million children born with HIV infection developed AIDs in the region. Of this, about seven million children and adults have died, Samba says.

The conflict in Sierra Leone erupted in 1991 when former army corporal Foday Sankoh launched a bush war to overthrow the government of then President Joseph Momoh.

Since then, more than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict, while an estimated quarter of the country's 4.5 million people are scattered as refugees in neighbouring countries. (END/IPS/lf/mn/99)
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