The United Nations food agency is setting up ”pit stops” providing lifesaving information about Aids to food-aid truck drivers and the communities they pass through in some of the world’s most infected countries.
The first centre opened its doors at Malawi’s Mwanza border crossing in October, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday, two days before World Aids Day is marked.
About 70% of all road freight into Malawi passes through Mwanza — including trucks contracted by the WFP to bring supplies to more than four million hungry people in the drought-stricken Southern African country. Dozens of heavy vehicles line up every night to clear customs.
”Long nights, young men far from home and an abundance of poor young women makes this a perfect location for HIV to spread — and an ideal place to intervene to stop it,” WFP country director Dom Scalpelli said a statement.
Truckers are considered among those most at risk of contracting and transmitting HIV, the virus that causes Aids, due to their mobility and exposure to casual sex.
The WFP has more than 5 000 trucks carrying food to the hungry in more than 80 countries — including 21 of the 25 worst affected by Aids. About 600 WFP trucks crossed this year into Malawi, where an estimated one in seven adults is infected with HIV.
The pit-stop initiative follows a similar venture in South Africa, where the freight industry and aid workers set up mobile health clinics along major transport routes to help educate truckers about HIV.
The WFP set up the Mwanza health centre with funding and logistic support from the TNT global mail company, the Swedish International Development Agency and the Malawian ministry of health. Operating out of two containers, it offers advice on how to avoid contracting and spreading HIV, treatment for minor infections, and referrals for HIV counselling, testing and care.
The WFP aims to set up similar centres targeting workers at its warehouse in Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre, and the port in Beira, Mozambique, where some of its food arrives.
Aids has cut a swathe through sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than 25-million of the nearly 40-million people infected with HIV worldwide. The disease hits hardest at those in their productive years, destroying the ability of families to feed themselves. — Sapa-AP