Sex tourism hampers HIV/AIDS prevention

Sex tourism in Cameroon is threatening to undermine the country's HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns, the BBC reported on Wednesday. Delegates attending a current three-day tourism conference in the port city of Limbe heard how Cameroon was fast becoming a magnet for sex tourists. Elise Bomba, director of tourism promotion, said: "Since such tourism can accelerate the spread of HIV/AIDS, our main priority will be to discourage it. We hope the conference will come out with strategies to tackle this problem." The BBC recently uncovered an international child-trafficking ring where "AIDS-free" Cameroonian girls were sold as brides, but found themselves working in brothels in the UK. UNAIDS estimates that some 69,000 of the country's children under the age of 14 are living with HIV/AIDS.