HIV/Aids invades Africa's last uninfected outpost in Sudan

Sudan's 22-year civil war displaced more than four million people - the highest number of internally displaced people in the world - but it also guarded the region against the spread of Aids. That isolation is over and the impoverished inhabitants face a new and previously unknown killer. Charles Lumori, programme director with HelpAge International, in the regional capital, Juba, said: "The spread of HIV in southern Sudan has been held back by the war. We know that it hasn't yet reached many areas but this innocence will soon be lost."

Conflict has left southern Sudan particularly vulnerable to HIV - a virus that experts say has infected more than 40 million people in more than 90 countries - including about 25 million people in Africa.

The rapid increase in traffic of military personnel, commercial transporters, sex workers, and influx of international workers is putting the whole of southern Sudan at risk.

According to government figures, HIV/Aids has infected only 2.6 per cent of people in the whole of Sudan. But Dr Patrick Abok from the World Health Programme, said the region was under threat from all sides now that peace had reconnected it to its neighbours.

"Southern Sudan is surrounded by countries with very high prevalence rates. - Kenya, Ethiopia, DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo] and Uganda," he said. "There are thousands of Sudanese refugees living in these countries that are starting to return home and research is proving that there is a very high prevalence rate in the border regions."

In Juba's only HIV testing centre, the Voluntary Counselling and Testing centre, many of the first victims of the coming epidemic are not even aware what they have caught. "I have never heard of Aids - what is it?" asked one of the young soldiers. "I have come to the VCT because I was referred here by the hospital. I came here from the north of Sudan with the government soldiers. People in the army do have sex a lot with local girls and other girls too. But the army has never told us about these things condoms."

Local cultural practices such as tattooing and polygamy are compounding the problem. Access to basic social services in southern Sudan is among the lowest in the world, with adult literacy 24 per cent and one doctor for every 100,000 people. Lack of health care and skilled health workers makes treatment of people living with HIV/Aids virtually impossible.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article330459.ece