Panafrican News Agency - November 29, 2001
Addressing a press briefing, Mocumbi, who is a medical doctor by profession, said that reliable statistics on AIDS-related deaths were not available because of under-reporting.
"Nobody writes down 'AIDS' as the cause of death", he noted.
But the figures available from tests undertaken at 20 "sentinel sites" across the country showed "frightening" levels of infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Mocumbi quoted recent work undertaken by the Ministry of Health and the National Statistics Institute (INE), based on the data from the sentinel sites, which predicted that life expectancy at birth (currently around 42 years) could fall to 35 years by 2010, unless urgent measures are taken to halt the spread of AIDS.
That study estimated the national HIV prevalence rate, among people aged from 15 to 49, was at 12.2 per cent. The epidemic is unevenly spread across the country, with much higher rates in the central province - reaching 21.1 percent in Manica, on the border with Zimbabwe.
"All our efforts will be insufficient until the data from the sentinel sites tell us that the level of infection is declining", said Mocumbi.
He was convinced that the number of state employees dying of AIDS was "very high".
In the health service, nurses are constantly trained - yet there is still a dire shortage of nurses, and the ascending curve one would expect, depicting an ever growing number of workers in the country's health units, was not there.
Mocumbi suggested that the reason for this paradox was that many trained nurses are also dying of AIDS.
"There is still no great awareness among state employees that AIDS kills, and that you can only avoid it by measures such as using condoms", he said.
He expressed shock at the finding that the clients of prostitutes are prepared to pay more for sex without a condom.
"This is just insane", Mocumbi said.
Mocumbi accepted that calls for sexual abstinence were unlikely to find many listeners. "The flesh is very weak, so we had better think in terms of condoms", he added.
He suggested that young women, engaging on their first sexual adventures, should tell their partners: "If you love me, use a condom. And I urge young men to respect their girlfriends".
"Love is a very good thing - but respect for your partner is also very good", he added.
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