Locals in Chimoio, Mozambique. Photo: G Chamberlain
Introduction
The Burnet Institute’s Centre for International Health has offices in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo and Chimoio and has recently expanded its work throughout the country. With initial funding from AusAID in September 2000 and with ongoing support more recently, the Burnet Institute’s Centre for International Health is implementing a community HIV awareness project in the Manica Province in Mozambique. The primary goal of the project is to reduce the incidence of new infections of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections among sex workers and their clients.
Background
Mozambique has a complex history and certain events made the HIV explosion inevitable. Initially, the AIDS epidemic in Mozambique lagged behind its neighbours. By the end of 2003, approximately 1.5million adults and children were living with HIV in Mozambique.
Chimoio City, Manica Province’s capital, has the highest HIV prevalence in adults in Mozambique. A national study in 1987 showed overall HIV-1 prevalence rate at 1.2 per cent whilst in Manica Province it was 2.7 per cent. In 2000, nearly one quarter (24.7 per cent) of pregnant women attending ante-natal clinics were found to be infected with HIV. Two major forces influenced the spread of the HIV epidemic to Mozambique: war and commercial corridors.
The crippling civil war that continued up until 1992 cut transport routes. The Tete and Beira Corridors were the only routes kept open, due to the presence of Zimbabwean troops protecting their country’s major route to the Indian Ocean and other trading neighbours. When the war ended the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reported 1.7 million returnees. These refugees returned from high HIV prevalence countries at the same time as other transport routes re-opened. Truck drivers from Mozambique and neighbouring countries such as Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa, all with high HIV prevalence, pass and stop in large numbers along these corridors.
Because of these transport routes, Manica Province has the worst AIDS epidemic in the country, and as such, training of local sex workers in awareness and prevention strategies is vital.
Find out more about our work in Mozambique