NAC tells young females to stop selling their live...

NAC tells young females to stop selling their lives for fast food

Zim Now Writer

The National AIDS Council says adolescent girls and young women should make better life decisions as new HIV infections continue to increase among young females while they are going down in other groups.

“You can’t sell your life over that red box of chips yet you can be a Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) girl who is educated and empowered and buy as many of those red boxes as you want,” said NAC Bulawayo Provincial AIDS Manager Sinatra Nyathi while addressing female learners at the commemorations of the International Day of the Girl Child this past week.

Cases of young females in schools and tertiary institutions having transactional sex with older men in exchange for fast food, clothing, accessories, hairdos, fancy mobile handsets and other such items are well documented.

Nyathi said the organisation is on the path to achieving control of the HIV pandemic, but new infections continue to be recorded.

She said but the worrying trend of increasing new infection rates was only in the adolescent girls and young women demographic group while the rest of the population is seeing steady progress downwards.

Nyathi said young females exposed themselves through social choices such as attending parties where unplanned pregnancies, HIV, STIs, and other diseases emerge.

Nyathi said abstinence is the best form of protection against infection

She urged young females to avoid pornographic online sites as this could influence them into sexual temptation.

Zimbabwe has just won the bid to host next year's International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa- ICASA.

The country’s management of the HIV pandemic has received international approbation as statistics of new infection and deaths have been consistently going down while access to quality treatment increases.