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The practice is in addition to the usually known factors such as unsafe male and female circumcision; marriage and death rites; shifting norms which allow for high number of sexual partners; and resistance to condom uses.
The virus attacks the young and productive Africa population, who make nearly 70 percent of the continent’s estimated 861 million people.
As a result, the sick labour force, combined with weather extremes have, exacerbated the problem of agricultural productivity, condemning greater part of Africa to food shortage.
’’Fundamentally, what makes the dimensions of the HIV/Aids crisis so devastating for this region is the way it is intersecting with the challenges of poverty, food security and limited institutional capacity to deliver essential public services, rendering the development challenge the continent faces even more arduous,’’ Brown, the UNDP administrator said.
The HIV/AIDS pandemic does not only weaken the health and educational development the continent’s poor need to fight poverty, but also robs the African nations of the skilled manpower necessary for the task.
The disease is fueling poverty as family members, particularly women are forced to make hard choices between allocation of their time for income production, meeting household needs, child-care on one hand, and care for their beloved HIV/Aids sick people, on the other. African leaders are scared.
’’We are threatened with extinction. People are dying in chillingly high numbers. It is a crisis of the first magnitude,’’ says Botswana’s President, Festus Mogae at the 2001 UN General Assembly.
In the absence of a known cure, AU member states have focused attention on behavioral change to reverse the situation.
Effective communication aiming at creating awareness in the fight against the virus has become common now than before.
Intervention at workplace, promotion of voluntary counseling and testing is now opted for to bring the HIV/Aids problem under control.
However, Africa needs to do more. People need more sensitization on the HIV scourge to enable them make safer sexual decisions.
The medication to reduce mother-to-child transmission needs to be expanded to reach as many expectant women as possible, particularly those in the rural areas.
Supply of drugs to control opportunistic infections associated with AIDS and provision of ARVs to the sick people need to be widened.
But challenges still remain. Many African governments remained mute on difficulty ethical and moral issues surround HIV/Aids related taboos including sexuality and death, stigma, shame, guilty and discrimination of HIV infected people.
In order to succeed in fighting HIV and AIDS, African states must come up clearly to fight the pandemic with the determination to overcome the scourge.
Deliberate efforts are needed to educate Africans about the importance of having a balance between moral dogma and life efficacy as far as the use of condoms and other preventive measures are concerned, if the continent’s efforts were to make any difference.
African states collectively and or individually need to further expand the scope of ARVs to as many poor people as possible with view to clear existing beliefs among African communities that HIV/Aids was like death sentences to the poor and just life sentences to the rich Africans who easily accessed ARVs drugs.
For effective and quick turnaround of the HIV impacts on the Africa’s economies and development, a number of actions must be taken.
African countries should integrate their anti-HIV/Aids programmes in their development policies and fund them with considerable transparency.
In deed the enormity of the problem calls for holistic and practical implementation of commitments individual African as well as their nations needs to make in relation to the HIV/Aids scourge.
There ought to be policies committing individual member states to caring for AIDS orphans. Africa should intervene by enhancing sexual behavioral change awareness at local community levels.
The awareness education campaigns should be on both negative behavioral practices and socio-cultural factors that fuel infections.
The education needs to focus on effects of the habit to dry up women genitals before and during sexual intercourse; unsafe female circumcision; inheritance of widows; and resistance to condom use by some African communities in relation to their religious beliefs.
As the 2004 report for World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization suggested, Africa should address HIV/AIDS problem on preventive basis by focusing on the education services to avert the collapse of the already fragile continent’s educational systems.
Once these measures were undertaken and sustained, there is no doubt whatsoever that, Africa’s efforts to fight HIV/Aids and her aspirations to improve people’s living standards could be realized.
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