Aids-Related Deaths At MRC Daily As Poverty Drives the Poor to Prostitution, HIV


    
The Independent (Banjul)

May 28, 2004 
Posted to the web May 28, 2004 

Sulayman Makalo
Banjul 

Sources at the country's only Medical Research Council are provoking cause for alarm by intimating that an average of two people die of HIV-related cases on a daily basis, sending alarm bells ringing over the purportedly sharp rise in AIDS contraction around the country.

Sources indicated that although the true identities of such AIDS victims are never revealed as an ethical mark of medical practise for fear of stigmatisation, it was important for those directly involved in the crusade against the disease not to live under no illusions about its spread. "This is no alarmist rhetoric against intended to spread feelings of terror about the disease. It is the real situation and the sooner we all accept it the better" one of the anonymous sources remarked.

This scaring revelation comes as three dead bodies were (witnessed by this reporter) being removed from the MRC ward last week as the latest victims of the pandemic, which has already afflicted more people over the last three years than at any given time since 2001 local health experts say. Sources at the MRC have revealed that the research hospital has been frequently admitting patients with HIV/AIDS related cases and that on average of two people die of the disease daily, suggesting the unabated trend of the disease.

Meanwhile Gambian poverty has heightened the rate of prostitution in the country, according to officials at the Department of State for Health, who further blamed it for the increase in the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

According to the officials the relentless rise in prostitution due to poverty and lack of access to employment opportunities for young women is causing HIV/AIDS to make what they called unprecedented inroads in the Gambian society.

Speaking to The Independent on condition of anonymity, the officials described the country's poverty situation, as directly linked to the high prevalence rate of HIV infection, saying "the trend is alarming because poverty is driving women and girls to have more sexual partners".

According to the officials, although the 2001 National Sentinel Surveillance reveals that 8, 400 people are living with the HIV/AIDS virus and 400 AIDS-related deaths, the figure has risen to almost 9, 000 while deaths related to the disease has also risen to over 1650.

"With the country's poverty situation continuing to drive more and more people to become prostitutes, everybody is at risk of the disease," they warned. According to the health experts although poverty does not increase imbalances in any settings it aggravates the already existing imbalances and therefore increases the vulnerability of those at the receiving end. They stated that with extreme poverty characterised by falling living standards, the average Gambian is always hungry, poor and seriously deprived of the basic essential livelihood. "This lead most young people to resort to prostitution because they see it as their only means of survival," one of them added. The officials further described prostitution as a business that grows rapidly in an environment of misery and poverty. "We have to fight the country's poverty in all fronts in order to control prostitution and thereby succeed in the fight against the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate," another posited. They added that unless this is done, the country's readiness and strategies to combat the pandemic would be meaningless.

She revealed that she is staying with her mother together with three younger brothers who are all in school. "Being the eldest of them and my mother is not financially strong to sponsor all of us, I decided to dropout of school," she lamented. She said she first went to work as a maid and then later to the business.

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