.Ms Normstorm

THE call by Swedish Ambassador to Zambia Lena Nordstrom on all stakeholders to reach out to the prison population as part of the efforts to lower incidences of HIV/AIDS in Zambia should be taken seriously in the country’s efforts to fight the pandemic.
It is clear, and health workers have confirmed, that prisons are among the breeding grounds for HIV, the virus which causes AIDS disease.
Of course figures quoted by health personnel show the country’s major strides in HIV/AIDS fight resulting into the pandemic’s prevalence reducing from a high 16 per cent in the 1990s to around 14 per cent to date. Yet among the prisoners tested, the percentage is alarmingly high, at more than 27.
This means that some of the inmates found to be HIV-positive did not in the first place enter the prison gates with the virus in their system but became infected long after being incarcerated.
Health workers say that this is enough proof of the occurrence of sodomy, which at one point was described as being ‘rampant’ behind the prison walls.
Because of this, some people suggested distributing condoms in prisons as one way of stopping the spread of HIV among the prisoners.
This was, however, a controversial suggestion which was widely opposed, and even strongly condemned by the clergy in particular.
And, obviously aware that going by such a suggestion would mean indirectly sanctioning sodomy, which by the laws of the land is an illegal act, the Zambian Government made it clear it had no intentions of supplying prisoners with condoms.
The rationale was, and still is, that supplying condoms in prisons would be as good as encouraging homosexual practices among inmates.
And this is against the Zambian laws which describe this as another unnatural act that attracts heavy sanctions against the perpetrators.
There are indeed better ways of fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS in prisons and society at large than distributing condoms, an act which may be perceived as encouraging illicit sex even where it is not supposed to take place.
Instead some members of the Zambian society, notably the clergy, have been preaching abstinence.
This so far remains the most lethal weapon in the HIV/AIDS fight which must be extended to the prisons as well.
There are other methods in this fight, however, and Zambia has not been alone in executing these. In this respect kudos should be given to the country’s developing partners that have answered the call for help in this battle.
Only yesterday, Ms Nordstrom handed over a VCT health centre worth K350,000 at Kabwe’s Mukobeko Maximum Prison constructed through the United Nations on Drugs and Crime.
It is surely pleasing to hear the Swedish envoy assuring that the health centre would reach out to the inmates, as well as prison staff and extend its services to the community.
People, inmates included, should now be encouraged to utilise the facility so that one should know his/her status early enough.
Should one find that he or she has tested positive to HIV, they must be put on early treatment which, as Ms Nordstrom says, has better health outcomes. OPINION