Online Reporter
Health and Gender Editor
THE National Aids Councils (NAC) says new and robust interventions are required to fight high HIV in areas like Tsholotsho District in Matabeleland North Province, where spousal separation due to migration is fuelling HIV infection.
Population of people with HIV in Tsholotsho District is just over 16000.
The national HIV prevalence rate is sitting at 10.4 percent while Tsholotsho stands at 21.9 percent
A large number of men from the district live and work in neighboring South Africa and Botswana and spend prolonged periods of time away from their partners, which has fuelled HIV infection and Gender Based Violence when they return from their bases.
Traditionally these men return to Zimbabwe once a year, usually during the Christmas holidays which are longer than other calendar holidays.
Mr Dingaan Ncube the National Aids Council Provincial Manager, said they have come up with a few new interventions to try and reduce HIV infection in the district and still need more.
“Spousal separation has been the largest contributory factor of HIV infections in Tsholotsho district. We are targeting the young men under our mentorship programmes who are likely to migrate in the near future as they seek opportunities.
“We are targeting these young men who are still living in the district and imparting HIV information to them so that if they migrate, they are alive to the challenges and also know how to protect themselves. We are also targeting to reach out to the girl child as well, we realise that Gender Based Violence is a challenge in this district and we are working with other stakeholders and government departments to tackle the challenge,” said Mr Ncube.
He said through the male engagement programmes they are encouraging the men to protect the women rather than being the perpetrators of violence.
Another intervention for the district is reaching out to the family unit as a whole.
“We want to reach out to families as a whole, in the event that a man is working in South Africa and the wife is back at home, mothers-in-law are in charge of looking out for the daughter-in-law. So, we want to work to ensure that we work with the family unit so much that when the men return from across the borders, they do not come home to issues that will lead to GBV and new HIV infections,” he said.
Furthermore, NAC said they are also working on a programme promoting parent to child communication saying men who are working outside the country must work closely with the parent back home to ensure the family remains intact. He added that they want to ensure cases of mistrust are greatly reduced to save lives.
Bongani Ndlovu