The Sunday News
Robert Tapfumaneyi
National Aids Council’s Midlands Provincial Manager Mambweu Shumba said the new intervention programme in the reduction of the spread of HIV and Aids dubbed “Condom Champions” has brought positive results. Under this programme, Condom Champions distribute condoms to their peers. This comes after the realisation that some people are not comfortable to take condoms from health institutions and cannot access them from condom dispensers dotted around the country.
The province (Midlands) is dominated by gold panners (makorokoza), cotton farmers and vendors in over a dozen districts.
The gold panners and farmers are well known for spending cash recklessly spoiling women from their hard-earned proceeds and some of them end up indulging in unprotected sex while drunk.
“We have trained Condom Champions. The purpose of the condom champions is to make sure that people access condoms from their peers hence the condom champions are picked from various sectors within the set-up,” Shumba told journalists from various media houses on a media tour in the province.
“If you go to sex workers there are Condom Champions, if you go to makorokoza there are condom champions, if you go to the cross-border traders and rank marshals we have people who actually distribute condoms to their peers. The peer approach is more effective than the general approach where you tend to miss quite a number of people,” he said.
A visit to areas such as Nembudziya, Zenda mining area, Shurugwi to name just a few bear testimony on how the programme is working effectively.
Speaking to journalists at Shurugwi General Hospital, an artisanal miner Tichaona Kwashira said that the issue of Condom Champions is quite effective. Being an artisanal miner himself he can distribute condoms and information on HIV even underground.
“When stakeholders come to talk about HIV and Aids they usually target male gold panners, but as champions we also realise that we have women too who are also human beings and are in need of sex. So we also encourage the women to take condoms” Tichaona Kwashira told reporters.
“From my experience I have seen that after spending two weeks underground artisanal miners do not care who their next sexual partner is and we strongly discourage them from such behaviour.”
According to Nac the province has an estimated 170 000 people living with HIV.
