HIV/AIDS: A major threat in Mozambique's overcrowded prisons (Feature)

By Manuel Mucari Apr 29, 2009, 2:08 GMT

Maputo - Zizito knows how he got infected with the virus that causes AIDS. Eight years ago, when still a minor, the 24-year- old spent two years awaiting trial for petty crime in Mozambique's main prison.

Sitting on his bed in an attic in a Maputo neighbourhood, he recalled being repeatedly raped and abused by older inmates at Cadeia Central da Machava and later hearing that he had the incurable sexually transmitted disease.

'On a random TB control test, I was diagnosed with the virus and ever since I am living with it,' he told the German Press Agency dpa.

'I was locked up for two years without being sentenced, for minor criminal charges,' he added, with tears rolling down his face.

'I was a protege of one gang leader whom I had to service in exchange for food, cigarettes, drugs and protection. But, sometimes he sold me like a brunette to other gangs who raped me in large groups of men.'

Mozambique has a prison population of around 14,000 detainees, more than 32 per cent of them infected with HIV, according to the last study in 2003.

There are no HIV/AIDS intervention programmes in place within the prison system and no medicine for those infected inmates with full- blown AIDS in generally overcrowded detention facilities, a senior government officials told dpa.

The government of the impoverished southern African country, acknowledges that HIV/AIDS as one of the biggest threats to prisoners. Officials also admit that a rapid strategy to avoid an escalation of the prison pandemic is urgently needed.

Alcino Cuamba of the Ministry of Justice told dpa that the authorities are currently trying to map out ways of improving the health and sanitation conditions in the prisons. The degrading conditions and overcrowding at the majority of the country's detention facilities could worsen the situation, he said.

Cuamba quotes the 2003 study, that found 'at least 32.1 per cent of people in jail' and '12 per cent of the total population' were infected with HIV/AIDS.

'HIV/AIDS represents a real threat to people restrained from freedom across the country. We estimate that currently people imprisoned are highly infected. It's more than 30 per cent for sure, though we are using the 2003 reference and the disease has not shown signs of letting up,' he told dpa.

According to Brian Tkachuk, the regional advisor on HIV/AIDS in prisons in Africa for the United Nations Office Drugs and Crime (UNODC), who was in Mozambique recently, the prevalence of the disease in prisons was a matter of public health as well as a human rights issue.

Prisons in sub-Saharan Africa received little attention with regard to the financing of programmes aimed at tackling the epidemic, he said.

National data indicates that around 16.5 per cent of Mozambique's overall 20.3 million people is living with the virus, most of them without even knowing.

Around 150,000 are currently receiving potentially life-prolonging AIDS drugs. Zizito is among them. His life would have been different had he not been imprisoned, he laments. 'Its a pity things happen to young and innocent people,' he says.