SANYATI district has been experiencing recurrent shortages of the famous Blue Panther or Dembare condoms at the back of massive looting of the product by sex workers who later sale the condoms at exorbitant rates to their colleagues.
HealthTimes Reporter
In an interview in Sanyati recently, National Aids Council (NAC) District Aids Coordinator (DAC) for Sanyati, Virginia Tausa said sex work was most prevalent in the district due rampart artisanal mining activities and some senior sex workers have been collecting condoms in bulk, creating an artificial shortage of the condoms.
In Sanyati the challenge that we are having in HIV here is largely due to artisanal mining which attracts a lot of sex work. We have a lot of the small scale miners here and we have a lot of sex workers, even child sex workers. We have sex workers as young as 12 and 14 here.
“Sometimes we have shortages of condoms especially during the lockdown. However, at times, the sex workers collect all the condoms, leaving nothing for other sex workers. These sex workers sale these condoms which are supposed to be free to their colleagues at a an exorbitant price,” said Tausa.
Sanyati has a population density of about 220 000 and has more than 20 000 people living with HIV, which is about 13.5% of the entire Sanyati population.
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