TANZANIA: New roads expose remote areas to HIV - report
Photo: IRIN
Construction workers spend long periods away from their families
DAR ES SALAAM, 20 September 2006 (PlusNews) - Rural road construction in Tanzania is opening new markets and providing greater economic opportunities, but can also increase the risk of HIV transmission.
"When roads and bridges are built they link low- and high-prevalence areas, such as villages where risk is lower and cities where the prevalence is higher," said a new report by the Tanzania Civil Engineering Contractors Association (TACECA) and the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF).
Tanzania plans to build more than 2,000km of tarmac roads in the 2006/07 financial year, of which the relatively isolated western and southern regions will get the lion's share. According to the World Bank, the construction and transport sectors top the list of employers.
"As one of the most labour-intensive sectors that employs the younger and fittest members of any community in the country, it [road construction] harbours the very people that the epidemic targets," the study commented.
"Civil engineers and technical staff lead a highly nomadic lifestyle, moving from site to site, sometimes even from one country to another. The more numerous unskilled workers tend to be recruited on site, but sometimes they too migrate from site to site and even across borders."
There is often a "freestyle life", fuelled by boredom and alcohol in construction camps, where workers are sometimes separated from their families for long periods. Sex between traders visiting the camps and road crews with more money in their pockets than the rural communities they passed through was an inevitability.
"Poverty drives women to engage in 'survival sex' or 'sex bartering' in exchange for amenities available at construction sites," said the study, adding that the ratio of men to women "is often skewed in favour of males ... and sharing of women is common."
Despite the risks, condoms were hard to find in rural shops and construction companies did not provide them to their workers. When available, they had often expired or were unsafely stored.
TACECA and AMREF called for the government to recognise road construction workers as a group at high risk of HIV, and to prioritise HIV prevention, treatment, care and support programmes for them.
Theme (s): Prevention - PlusNews,
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]