South African province offers lottery tickets for HIV tests

Nov 26, 2011, 14:33 GMT

Johannesburg - South Africa's Western Cape province is to offer people who agree to get tested for HIV a lottery ticket which could earn them 6,000 dollars, in the latest move by politicians to raise awareness about AIDS.

The announcement came ahead of World AIDS Day, marked on December 1. South Africa is the country with the highest number of residents living with HIV in the world, and has an unemployment rate of over 25 per cent.

The offer would be open for 12 days, starting Monday, said the south-western province's Premier Helen Zille, who is also the chief of the opposition Democratic Alliance party.

Zille was recently criticized by AIDS rights campaigners for saying that men who have multiple partners and do not use condoms should be prosecuted for attempted homicide.

The campaigners said criminalizing the transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, would stop people from getting themselves tested.

'Often women and young girls become infected as a result of being coerced into having unprotected sex with men who are ignorant of their HIV-positive status,' Zille said as she announced the lottery, according to the SAPA news agency.

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