Fear of infection and mass social change have driven a huge decline in HIV rates in Zimbabwe. These findings have offered important lessons on how to fight the AIDS epidemic in the rest of Africa, scientists say.

In a study in the journal PLoS Medicine, British researchers said Zimbabwe's epidemic was one of the biggest in the world until the rate of HIV infected people almost halved, from 29 percent of the population in 1997 to 16 percent in 2007.

Their findings show that Zimbabweans have primarily been motivated to change their sexual behaviour because of increased awareness about AIDS deaths which heightened their fears of catching the virus.
"The HIV epidemic is still very large, with more than one in 10 adults infected today," said Timothy Hallett of Imperial College, London, who worked on the study.

Dramatic downturn
"We hope that Zimbabwe and other countries in southern Africa can learn from these lessons and strengthen programs to drive infections down even further."

Latest data from the United Nations show that an estimated 33.3 million people worldwide are infected with HIV and the majority of those live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Simon Gregson, also from Imperial College, and a senior investigator on the study, said that given continuing high HIV/AIDS infection rates in many sub-Saharan African countries, it was important to understand why the disease had taken a such a dramatic downturn in Zimbabwe.

Young revolution
"Very few other countries around the world have seen reductions in HIV infection, and of all African nations, Zimbabwe was thought least likely to see such a turnaround," he said.

AIDS experts say that while there have been dramatic gains in the availability AIDS drugs in poor countries in recent years, the fight against the disease - which is most often transmitted via sex - will never be won unless prevention efforts can be made more effective.

The United Nations AIDS programme said last year that young people in Africa were starting to lead a "revolution" in HIV prevention and driving down rates of the disease by having safer sex and fewer sexual partners.

Economic situation
The Imperial College researchers found that in Zimbabwe, a change in attitudes towards numbers of sexual partners was helped by HIV/AIDS prevention programmes, which were reinforced through mass media, church leaders and employers.

The poor economic situation in Zimbabwe from the early 2000s would also have driven down the number of concurrent partners a man could have, due to constraints on his wallet, they said.

source: Reuters