SOMALINET NEWS ...Archives
RWANDA: GOVERNMENT STARTS CONDOM CAMPAIGN January 26, 2006
Apunyu Bonny
(SomaliNet) AS part of its first national campaign drive to fight the spread of HIV/Aids, The Rwandan government has launched a campaign to promote condoms use among the largely illiterate population. Officials said on Wednesday.
Rwanda’s first national condom policy seeks tobreak down religious and cultural resistance to the prophylactics in the tiny central African nation where fewer than half of those in the most vulnerable age group have used them.
"Each year, condom use increases, but Rwandans still don't use them enough and this is at cross-purposes with our health and development objectives," said Agnes Binagwaho, the head of Rwanda's national commission for the fight against Aids.
Rwandan government would "promote the correct and constant use of condoms and fight cultural and religious barriers to their use" by educating youth, prisoners, prostitutes, refugees and the clergy who were generally opposed to contraception, Binagwaho said.
Health officials devised the scheme after a study in 2005 and found that condom use in Rwanda was sporadic and that just 45% of Rwandans aged between 15 and 48 reported ever using a condom - even just once. That study found 3% of the country's eight million population was infected with HIV/Aids, reaching as high as 7% in some urban areas.
Rwanda will need at least 20 million condoms in 2006 according to the commission.