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Walter Nyamukondiwa Mashonaland West Bureau
At least 45 percent of university students, especially girls will be HIV positive by the time they graduate, the National Aids Council monitoring and evaluation director Mr Amon Mpofu has said.

Speaking during a workshop for Parliamentarians in Kadoma recently, Mr Mpofu said there was need to address welfare issues for girls as they were at risk.

The development could reverse the gains made in the fight against the spread of HIV and Aids in Zimbabwe.

“There is a difference between boys and girls, which shows when they start tertiary education and begin their sexual life,” Mr Mpofu said.

“Positivity increases by that margin (45 percent) when they get into tertiary institutions. It is the girl who is more vulnerable which is why we are saying there is need to do more to protect them when they become sexually active.”

“What it means is that when girls enter into university there is a 45 percent chance that they are HIV positive when they finish college,” he said. Mr Mpofu said there was need to start educating girls from primary school level while families and churches should prioritise capacitation of girls so that they can stand up to abuse and being taken advantage of.

Girls, he said, were more vulnerable when they become sexually active owing to socio-cultural and economic factors including inter-generational encounters.

He said the burden of HIV was heavy for Southern African countries owing to cultural factors such as casual sex with multiple partners and stable relationships with commercial sex workers.

“There is what is called stable relationship and people in Southern Africa have stable relations with people into sex work. You find people who have intercourse with a sex worker and the longer they have these relationships the perception of risk is reduced. Risk perception is a big problem in Southern Africa,” he said. In the HIV and Aids matrix, he said, the number of people living with HIV has remained stable at 14 percent but the major challenge was the number of new infections which is mostly occurring among young girl.

The graph for boys picks at around 30 years when they become more sexually active and want to be in stable relationships where they then connect with the girls who would have been infected in their late teens.

Aids Healthcare Fund (AHF) Zimbabwe country programmes manager Dr Enerst Chikwati said there was need to come up with programmes targeting tertiary institutions in the country.

To that end, he said, AHF had introduced a new condom that was appealing to youths and distribution was mainly at tertiary institutions.

“We have distributed more than 1,2 million condoms since 2017 especially in our universities because of the factors that show increased sexual activity at our institutions,” he said.

A couple living with HIV said there was need to include churches in programming of HIV and Aids issues as they had structures that cover all age groups.