AIDS conference puts spotlight on vulnerable groups

Truck drivers, soldiers and teenage girls were in the spotlight as a four-day international AIDS conference wound up here on Thursday with consensus that the fight against the killer epidemic should be directed at society's most vulnerable groups. Several groups attending the International Conference on AIDS and STDs in Africa (ICASA) said experience had shown that the fight against AIDS could be enhanced if especially vulnerable groups were protected from infection. World Vision International said it had embarked on an AIDS campaign directed at long distance truck drivers, who were a high risk group because the long periods they spent away from their partners tempted many to turn to commercial sex workers. Anti-AIDS activists from Uganda, meanwhile, announced the formation of the Integrated Services for the Empowerment of Soldiers Wives in the Uganda People's Defence Forces. Captain Steven Talugende said soldier's wives were exposed to a relatively high risk of AIDS infection because of the nature of their husband's jobs. Soldiers were generally poorly paid, and were often sent out on state duties for long periods. Twenty-three year-old Emma Tauhepa put the spotlight on the dangers teenage girls faced with a moving account of how she was infected with the HIV-virus by a schoolteacher six-years-ago. And Zambian health minister Nkandu Luo said cultural norms, which projected women as sex objects, continued to make them vulnerable to AIDS. Among other things, many African women were taught to tolerate the sexual transgressions of men because men were said to be inherently polygamous. "If women made individual decisions to say 'NO' to married men, extra-marital affairs would lessen and new HIV cases would be reduced," Luo said.