“I Can’t Use a Condom, I Am a Christian:” Salvation, Death, and… Naivety in Africa

Abstract

The countries of the Southern African Development Community – Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Swaziland, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe – continue to be hardest hit by the HIV and AIDS pandemic. There is a whole range of social, biological, economic, and political factors responsible for such a situation. In most of the countries of the Southern African region, HIV infection prevalence estimates among adults are beyond 10%; and even higher in young women, especially pregnant ones. Besides being a consequence of AIDS, malnutrition contributes to HIV vulnerability, further deteriorating HIV infection. The common mode of HIV spread in Africa is heterosexual intercourse, as opposed to the Americas and Eastern Europe, where injecting drug use and male homosexual intercourse are the common mode. The extent of the contribution of heterosexual intercourse to the spread of HIV in Africa is not accepted by all medical scientists across the world. Gisselquist et al have suggested that the role of unsafe medical injections in the transmission of HIV within the health sector has been underestimated (1). This observation has been corroborated by other researchers (2,3). Lopman et al, however, have not found sufficient evidence to support the suggestion that medical injections could contribute the HIV infection in Zimbabwe (4).