Panafrican News Agency - November 30, 2001
She commended the choice of this year's World AIDS Day theme: "Young men and HIV/AIDS, with the slogan "I care. Do you?" saying this could help to create awareness among young men, who seem to ignore the risk of getting infected by the killer disease.
A majority of these young people tend to abuse alcohol and drugs, growing up thinking that being a young man means having many girl friends, Lamba said.
The deputy health minister warned that this feeling only increases their risk of infection from the disease, against which no cure has been found.
Lamba has therefore called upon young men to change their behaviour with the support of adults.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the National AIDS Control Commission, Prof. Brown B. Chimphamba has warned that Malawians risk being wiped out by the HIV/AIDS pandemic if they did not reverse their sexual immorality.
Chimphamba was speaking earlier this week while announcing Saturday's World AIDS Day commemoration activities.
Professor Chimphamba, a former University of Malawi vice- chancellor, observed that the Malawi nation may become extinct because people pass HIV/AIDS through sex, the means of reproduction.
Chimphamba said if a mother living with HIV passes on the virus to her child at birth or during lactation, three people -- mother, and sometimes father and child -- would die later.
This jeopardises the continuity of Malawi as a nation, as it was being attacked from the very roots of continuity, he said.
Chimphamba cautioned that people from other nations tackling AIDS in a systematic manner would come to occupy Malawi if Malawians are not careful with the incurable disease.
Current statistics indicate that AIDS-related diseases kill 70,000 Malawians per year, leaving behind many orphans.
Meanwhile the National AIDS Control Commission in conjunction with MACRA, an AIDS result and voluntary AIDS-testing centre have revealed that 75 percent of people who sought voluntary HIV tests were men.
Ironically, 75 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS in the country are women. The Commission and MACRA are conducting research to find out why the women are refraining from knowing their status.
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