1 July 2009
HEALTH Minister Kapembwa Simbao has urged husbands to use their influence and take their families for HIV/AIDS Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT).
Mr Simbao said yesterday at the National VCT day that men played a key role in decision-making processes at household and institutional level.
"However, male involvement in HIV programmes is still minimal. This creates a big gap considering that men are the major decision-makers even in behavioral change," he said.
He said that there was need for more people to go for VCT because only 15 per cent of more than 12 million Zambians knew their HIV status while the rest did not.
He said that the national HIV/AIDS prevalence was currently at 143 per cent among the adult population aged between 15 and 49 years.
Knowing one's HIV/AIDS status was one of the available key prevention opportunities against primary and secondary infection.
The minister said that efforts should be concentrated on couple counseling and testing because it was capable of offering protection against HIV infection from 36 per cent to 60 per cent of sexually transmitted infections.
American ambassador Donald Booth said HIV/AIDS had undermined food security, deepened poverty and widened the social inequity thereby threatening Zambia's capacity to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Mr Booth said HIV/AIDS programmes that were strongly anchored on families and communities had a higher success rate than those that were implemented outside the two social structures.
He said Zambia with its enduring family structures enjoyed an advantage in the struggle to stop HIV infection if it drew more strength of families and communities.
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