War or peace, AIDS threat persists

Africa suffers disproportionately from poverty and conflict, tragedies that are related to the equally disproportionate spread of HIV/AIDS.

According to a UNAIDS briefing to this week’s UN Security Council meeting on the epidemic in Africa, HIV/AIDS is rapidly becoming the key human security issue on the continent. In 1998, 200,000 people in Africa died from conflict, but 2.2 million from HIV/AIDS, the UN agency said.

War is an instrument for the spread of HIV/AIDS, through social dislocation, impoverishment and rape. Even in peace time, infection rates for sexually transmitted diseases - including HIV - among the military are generally 2 to 5 times higher than rates in comparable civilian populations. “In times of foreign deployment and in conflict situations, the risks go very much higher,” UNAIDS noted.

Lengthy periods away from home, the military ethos of risk-taking, and the fact that most soldiers are in the sexually active 15-24-year age group are among the factors that heighten the dangers. Military personnel and camps are known to attract sex workers and, particularly for soldiers on peacekeeping missions, when off-duty they can be “counted on to have cash - but not necessarily condoms - in their pockets,” the UNAIDS report said.

South Africa, along with Ghana, Morocco and Zambia have developed model curricula and briefing materials for their troops. In the South African case, it is a comprehensive programme that “covers prevention to care”, a senior military doctor told IRIN.

According to a University of Eastern Free State study, 80 percent of soldiers interviewed used a condom with their last sexual contact. “But that doesn’t mean they are practicing safe sex all the time,” said the doctor, who asked not to be identified. “Awareness is quite high, but it doesn’t always translate into action.”

However, in some instances the South African military may be better off than most armies in the region. Whereas, according to UNAIDS, the HIV prevalence rate in South Africa’s civilian population for the 15-49 age group is estimated at 16.7 percent, a limited survey last year of South African troops participating in the regional peacekeeping exercise Blue Crane found an HIV rate of 13.6 percent.

“It’s very difficult to say whether that group we had was a representative sample,” the senior officer said. “My gut feeling is to say that it might be higher, but not dramatically higher.”