Peace Corps volunteers broke a cultural taboo when they approached one of Botswana's influential paramount chiefs and asked him to publicly take an HIV test
African chief takes HIV test
From correspondents in Molepolole, Botswana
May 26, 2004
A GROUP of US Peace Corps volunteers broke a cultural taboo when they approached one of Botswana's influential paramount chiefs and asked him to publicly take an HIV test.
To the surprise of some of the volunteers, Bakwena Paramount Chief Kgosi Kgari Sechele III and about 30 headmen immediately agreed.
"It was not necessary for me to think deeply about the decision to test for HIV because it will encourage men to know their status," the chief said today.
Botswana was the first African country to guarantee access to life-prolonging AIDS drugs to all its citizens.
But the government has struggled to persuade people to submit to free testing for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, because of the stigma associated with the disease.
The volunteers said they believed it did not make sense for leaders to stand on platforms telling people to take a test when they were not seen taking one themselves.
So they approached Sechele and the headmen at Molepolole, a village 50 kilometres south of the capital Gaborone. To the volunteers' delight, they all agreed to take the test Saturday.
"I think there is an assumption that leaders will not take a test, but the leaders themselves are enthusiastic," said Michael Gillete, a 24-year-old volunteer from Houston, Texas. "We did not pressure them, and we did not cajole them."
The volunteers said getting the leaders to take the test publicly was a major step toward getting the communities as a whole to agree to testing.
African countries are home to more than two-thirds of the world's 40 million HIV-infected people. An estimated 38 per cent of adults in Botswana are infected with HIV, one of the highest rates in the world.
The Associated Press
