Over 175 000 condoms were distributed in the South Western district covering Southerton, Highfield, Glen Norah and Ushewekunze suburbs in the last quarter of 2022, a significant stride in condom programming which the National AIDS Council (NAC) South western district office says was a peak reach.
By Kuda Pembere
This NAC South Western District deputy district coordinator Mr Michael Musaka told HealthTimes on the sidelines of the International Condom Day celebrations yesterday that they were pleased with the condom distribution for the quarter.
“So we have been making strides. It has been good. Our numbers have been good in the last year in our district.
“We always have quarterly targets. For the year we are supposed to have 400 000 condoms that we are supposed to distribute then per quarter, it means they will be 100 000.
“So from last year 2022, we have been surpassing our targets. We had 175 000 condoms distributed in the last quarter. That was our peak,” he said.
Uptake of the female condom is still minimal due to misconceptions about it and unavailability.
“We are still having challenges with female condoms probably because of availability and perception in the condoms. All these promotions are for us to market the female condoms because we believe that if the male condom is making such strides, we can also do that in female condoms,” Mr Musaka said.
The International Condom Day celebrations were held with hoards of residents in the suburbs coming for HIV tests and condom collection.
AHF Prevention manager Mr Clever Taderera said it was important for the Treasury to remove import tax and Value Added Tax on condoms for the private sector which may help reduce their prices thereof.
He said they chose the areas for the reason that they were hotspots having many public market sizes, sex workers, and adolescents.
“We engaged with NAC to decide which areas to hold these celebrations and we were advised that the south western district was a hotspot with many new infections,” Mr Taderera said.
