GWANDA district has emerged as the highest in the number of people with HIV in Matabeleland South province, with the spread of the infection being blamed on artisanal or small-scale miners.
This was revealed by National Aids Council (NAC) representative Abraham Ncube on Wednesday during the Zimbabwe Diamond and Allied Minerals Workers Union’s Gwanda regional meeting held at the mining town while addressing union members and delegates.
The meeting was meant to adopt the union’s second national elective congress strategic plan framework towards inclusive building union power, securing jobs and transformation.
The union held its second national congress in Bulawayo on August 29 to 31, where various resolutions were made, among them to ensure the health safety of mine workers, living wages and salaries, right to proper shelter and pension among others.
NAC was one of the invited special stakeholders together with the ministries of Mines, Women Affairs, Labour, Health, the Environmental Management Agency, the Zimbabwe Gender Commission and a funeral parlour, Kingdom Blue.
Addressing the mine workers and other delegates at the meeting, Ncube said in terms of HIV population or people who are living with HIV, Gwanda tops the list.
“In terms of HIV population or people who are living with HIV in Gwanda or in Matabeleland South, Gwanda district has the highest number of people who are living with HIV at around 20 800. That is an estimate, but it is not the exact figure. Our HIV prevalence is estimated to be around 17,3% for the age group 15 to 49,” he said.
“Looking at this prevalence, it is more on the female side, where we have the prevalence of 20,9% for females in the age group of 15 to 49 and for males, it is 18,6%. So HIV continues to have that feminine face.”
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Ncube said generally, all the districts in Matabeleland South have an HIV prevalence that is higher than the national prevalence, estimated to be around 10,49%.
He said there are also what they call HIV incidents, “which are new infections that I have said seem to be among adolescent girls and young women”.
“So national HIV incidents is 0,14% and for our provinces in Matabeleland South. It’s far, far more than that we are at 0,34% and Gwanda district is at 0,32%, which quite a big number when we are comparing with the national statistics,” Ncube said.
He said NAC was introduced at a time when HIV was at its peak, ravaging the nation and leaving many families child-headed or with single parents.
Ncube said the government had to enact an Act of Parliament to come up with measures to respond to HIV, adding that all those who were there know what HIV was compared to what it is now.
He said the government and stakeholders’ response to HIV had resulted to a point where one cannot easily be identified by merely looking at him or her as infected with HIV, adding that this shows the effectiveness of measures put by government and stakeholders.
“Evidence right now tells us that new HIV infections are affecting certain sections of the population, one of them adolescent and young women. Our adolescent girls are six times higher in terms of HIV incidents, compared to their male counterparts,” Ncube said.
“Why? It’s actually assumed that there is age mixing, intergenerational, sex where we have elderly men interacting with girls. Interestingly, there has been research done to find out who the sexual partners of these adolescent girls and young women are.
“That survey revealed that in addition to the blessers, one section of the population that comes out clearly to be interacting with these adolescent girls and young women are small-scale miners or artisanal miners, which then means that this group must revise its ways.”
Ncube said interestingly, when these girls and young women who are into selling sex were engaged, they claimed their main clients were artisanal miners.
He said because the artisanal miners will be liquid, they would set the conditions on sex, where unprotected sex has rich pickings, leaving the girls and young women vulnerable.
“Our interventions are specifically targeting adolescent girls and young women. We also try to target artisanal miners. In addition, there is also a problem that males are not seen in health facilities. Their health-seeking behaviour is worrying. When you see them going to hospital, they are at an advanced stage of illness," Ncube said.
“So since this room is dominated by men, we are urged to improve our health-seeking behaviours. We have come up with a programme called male engagement, where we target them at their places, and it has been seen that most men are at work, so we have work place programmes trying to encourage them to take up health programmes such as testing. Women are fast to seek medical attention.”
Speaking at the same event, Matabeleland South Women Affairs ministry provincial co-ordinator Marjorie Sikhundla Moyo urged the mining companies’ management and workers to respect the rights of women at work.
She said as the Women’s Affairs ministry, they do not have anything to do with a man failing to control his wife or the woman not respecting their husbands, but they only intervene when the cases are reported.
Moyo said once a man abuses his wife, he will come face to face with the wrath of the ministry.
“As a ministry, we want to train our women so that at any time they are called for any duty, they can stand and perform it to perfection and to their best because they are women of quality,” Moyo said.
She said men should always respect women’s five days of menstrual cycle and also assist their girl children whenever there are such demands to increase their confidence and understand that this is natural and everyone knows it.
Moyo urged women to take up leadership positions and stand for success to make themselves visible in the working circles, adding that human resources managers in companies should not treat women as equal to men when they give workers tissue paper, adding that men and women do not use it equally.
“While men would last a week with one roll, women only spend two to three days with it because they have multi-purposes of it,” she said.
“So the human resources managers here present must look into these issues and allocate women adequately when it comes to these things.”
