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Poverty at the root

In another part of the city, Jayne Kunda Mwila is also working to check the deadly march of disease among young people. The 25-year-old social worker is a peer educator at the Youth-Friendly Health Service in the Kalingalinga Health Centre in Lusaka, one of 11 youth-oriented clinics in the city. The programme was launched in 1996 as a way to encourage young patients, who range from 10 to 24 years of age, to learn about their health and about AIDS. The Youth-Friendly Health Service is supported by governmental and non-governmental organizations and UNICEF, and jointly coordinated by the Family Life Movement and the Lusaka District Health Management Team.

"We don't judge the young people," Ms. Mwila explains, as adolescents queue patiently outside. Still in its pilot stage, the programme is increasingly known in Zambia and in other African countries for the supportive environment that the peer educators provide as they counsel both girls and boys about general health issues and those related to sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS.

Ms. Mwila insists that the AIDS crisis is not simply a public health issue. "We can't deal with the root problem, which is poverty. If I go into a home and the only food coming in is from a sex worker, do you think that family will stop that person? I don't think so," says the health counsellor, a red AIDS ribbon adorning her black lapel. She says that the hope for turning the tide of AIDS rests with "finding a cure soon, and in reducing poverty."

The link between disease and poverty is particularly stark in Zambia, where 70,000 formal sector jobs were lost between 1991 and 1995. The country's dramatic socio-economic decline has provided fertile ground for AIDS to flourish. Young women are especially vulnerable and many succumb to the temptation of the 'sugar daddies' who linger around schools, offering money for sex.

Zambia now has one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world. Yet, resources to combat the disease are being hamstrung by foreign debt: debt servicing - amounting to $110 million in 1998 - accounts for more than the Zambian Government's health and education budgets combined.

About HIV/AIDS

HIV/AIDS killed 510,000 children under the age of 15 in 1998. An estimated 1.2 million children under the age of 15 are living with HIV/AIDS. Young people (15 to 24 years old) make up the age group most vulnerable to HIV infection. More than 11 million are living with HIV. Five young persons are infected every minute, 7,000 every day, and, in 1998, nearly 3 million were infected with HIV. Nearly half of all people living with HIV/AIDS are women and girls. In many countries the infection rates are much higher among girls than boys; in some countries the rates for 15- to 19-year-old girls are 3 to 6 times higher than for boys. When a mother becomes debilitated by AIDS, her children are more likely to miss immunizations against childhood disease, eat fewer and less-nutritious meals and be taken out of school, especially if they are girls, to assume domestic responsibilities. Nearly 13 million children have been orphaned by AIDS.

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