HIV/AIDS: The silent scourge in war-scarred southern Sudan
KHARTOUM, Sudan, Jan 4, 2004 (PANA) — While bombs and bullets took tolls in
Africa’s longest ruining civil war in southern Sudan, lurking was
the deadly HIV/AIDS that silently claimed victims beneath the
loud sounding explosives.
First diagnosed in the early 1980s in the region, HIV/AIDS has 15
years on claimed more lives in the south than other sexual and
venereal diseases in Sudan, where hitherto only two or three well
known sexually transmitted infectious (STIs), namely gonorrhoea
and syphilis, were prevalent.
In a lengthy report, the privately-owned Sudan Vision daily
Tuesday said while local health authorities have taken a number
of steps to eradicate the HIV/AIDS scourge, “unfortunately, no
measures have helped to stop or eliminate spread of the disease”.
“Until now several health campaigns have been launched by medical
professionals in the Sudan to combat HIV/AIDS, but all efforts
have proved futile,” it said.
According to the newspaper many rural people in the war-ravaged
region are asking themselves how this dangerous, deadly disease
entered the South, and what was its real cause and why is it
difficult to be treated and cured.
The report affirmed that many south Sudanese have lost relatives,
friends, parents and children, while families have been entirely
destroyed and a growing number orphans left behind as a result of
HIV/AIDS.
The report comes after the Khartoum government and southern
rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A)
thrashed out the last sticking points at marathon talks in the
Kenyan town of Naivasha on Friday, landing at the threshold to
ending Africa’s longest-running conflict.
The signing of a comprehensive peace agreement is now scheduled
to take place on 9 January in the Kenyan capital, in the presence
of several world leaders, UN officials and diplomats, who have
all pushed for the resolution of the conflict.
Against this backdrop, the paper called on the forthcoming
south government to step up education on ways and methods of
containing and preventing HIV/AIDS spread and minimising the
mortality rate from the ailment in the south Sudan.
It suggests that the local press must be encourages to publish
articles about HIV/AIDS, and radio and television stations given
liberty to broadcast HIV/AIDS programmes countrywide targeting
both literate and illiterate Sudanese.