Lagos | Monday
FORMER US president Jimmy Carter met Nigerian prostitutes at the weekend on the sidelines of a one-day forum on HIV/AIDS to urge them to protect themselves against the killer disease, Nigerian newspapers reported on Sunday.
The papers said Carter and William Gates, the father of Microsoft executive Bill Gates, went on Saturday to talk to prostitutes in Mabushi, a sprawling village near the capital Abuja which is home to an estimated 5 000 sex workers.
Pointing to the spread of HIV/Aids in Nigeria and across Africa, Carter and Gates advised the women to insist that their male customers used condoms, ThisDay and Champion newspapers said.
The prostitutes said this would be a daunting task, they reported. Carter and Gates were in Nigeria as part of a visit also covering Kenya and South Africa to highlight the Aids crisis in Africa. On Saturday they attended a one-day forum on HIV/Aids, organised by the Nigerian government.
”There are about 3,6-million Nigerians young, productive and talented who are infected with the HIV virus and this figure is on the rise by the minute,” President Olusegun Obasanjo told the forum.
Carter heads the Carter Centre, which he founded in 1982 to address public policy issues including disease prevention in the developing world. – Sapa-AFP