By Rex Mphisa in Plumtree
BULILIMA and Mangwe districts of Matabeleland South have put the National Aids Council (NAC) of Zimbabwe at the crossroads.
NAC leads and coordinates the national response to HIV and AIDS through various programs and measures envisioning a Zimbabwe free from HIV infections, stigma, and AIDS-related death by 2030.
It leads and coordinates the national multi-sectoral response as provided for by the National AIDS Council Act Chapter 15 : 14.
In Bulilima and Mangwe NAC finds itself in battle to save the future simultaneously preserving the past.
HIV and Aids afflictions run across the age divide of the vast districts threatening the tender at age, youths, middle-aged and the old alike.
Some as young as 10 are both pregnant and HIV positive.
The two districts’proximity to Botswana and South Africa has, over the years, given them several social economic edges over Zimbabwe’s other 62 administrative districts.
Botswana and SA have ready job and cheaper goods opportunities, among other things.
But NAC stares in the face the huge cost and human toll Botswana and SA advantages brought home to Bulilima and Mangwe, weighing heavily against gains.
Children have been left to fend for themselves in a world where sex, drugs and substances abuse reign, sadly due to that work across the border from home.
Girl child and teenage pregnancies rock the districts and NAC must think outside the box to arrest the multi-faceted social scourges to preserve old, middle aged and minors staring at a bleak future due to HIV and Aids effects.
Journalists from different media oulets led by Matabeleland South Provincial Information Officer Austin Nyathi are on a five day tour of NAC activities to mitigate the HIV impact.
NAC Matabeleland South provincial manager Mgcini Sibanda asked the journalists to look at any perculiar issues that may have never been observed and write about them.
“You must look at certain things that may have never been written about and let us give the real picture to see how we can fight,” he said during a briefing ahead of the expansive tour.
Key drivers of the HIV and Aids in the two districts leading the country in the number of new incidents, despite the improvement ushered by NAC Interventions.
Bulilima has 11 376 people living with HIV and the drivers have been spousal separation, multiple concurrent partnerships, age mixing, low risk perception, engaging in casual unprotected sex, transactional sex and poverty driven relationships.
The same scenario is reflected in Mangwe where prolonged spousal separation in search of greener pastures in neighbouring Botswana and SA is one of the determinents.
Poverty also increases vulnerability to HIV infection especially among adolescents, girls and young women.
There is a large number of child-headed families in Mangwe District resulting in high prevalence of teenage pregnancies and child marriages.
The district also experiences influx of job seekers and informal traders en route to Botswana and South Africa through Plumtree Borde Post and numerous informal crossing points.
There is high prevalence of artisanal mining in wards 5, 8, 15 and 17 who indulge engage in risky sexual behaviours, according to the Districts Aids Coordinator (DAC) Elenny Mpofu.
In Bulilima several hotspots created by schools without boarding facilities leave the girl child vulnerable in makeshift houses.
Other hotspots in Bulilima are pushed by the patterns of buses movement where have to be at bus stops as early as midnight to carch transport.
Ronald Hanyane, the DAC for Bulilima said several intervention methods were underway including Community Art Refil Groups (CARG) and sister to sister projects.
Both programmes target vulnerable people who sit to share experiences in envionments where stigma has no place.
Bulilima has 14 Carg groups each with between 10 and 15 members, a significant figure of those under treatment.
“Soon we will launch ‘Not In My Village’ where we rope in traditional leaders to act against child marriages,” he said.
Nat in my village frowns at child marriages and other social ills driving the HIV and Aids scourge.
Journalists will visit the projects for informed reporting on NAC interventions which are slowly but surely turning the tide.