Gaps remain in AIDS knowledge

A survey of listeners to Botswana's popular HIV/AIDS radio drama, "Makgabaneng", has revealed a lack of specific knowledge about the virus in a country with the world's highest level of HIV infection. Only 55 percent of respondents rejected the myths that mosquitoes can spread HIV, sex with a virgin can cure AIDS, and healthy looking people cannot have the virus. Over half the male respondents and about three-quarters of the women aged between 15 and 24 said they would let their children play with HIV-positive friends, but the majority said they would not buy food from people living with the virus. "I guess people think that the food may be contaminated and they may get it [HIV], but HIV cannot be spread in this way," said Todd Koppenhaver, technical consultant for the show. The primary audience for Makgabaneng, which aims to reinforce messages on safer sex and care for those living with the virus, is aged between 15 and 49, the group most likely to be sexually active. Out of 1,400 people who completed the survey last year, 80 percent of urban respondents said they were likely to use condoms, versus 71 percent of people in rural areas. While the dangers of unprotected sex were understood, less than 10 percent of men and 15 percent of women were able to correctly identify pregnancy, delivery and breastfeeding as ways of transmitting HIV from mother to child. Among those who had had sex in the past year, approximately 30 percent of men and 14 percent of women reported having concurrent sexual relations with more than one partner. "Monogamy was least mentioned of the ABCs (abstinence, being faithful and condomising) among young people, and the faithfulness message was not as well ... accepted as abstinence and condom use," said Koppenhaver. The survey showed that Makgabaneng seemed to have encouraged people to discover their HIV status and test for the virus. The majority of men (68 percent) and women (56 percent) reported being tested in the last 12 months. "We saw that there was an association between listening to Makgabaneng and being tested for HIV/AIDS," Koppenhaver said.