18-10-12 HIV positive teens: Condoms use is punishment.

Halima Athumani As Uganda grapples with how to deal with management of HIV positive teenagers, results from a study show that most of them have a negative attitude towards the use of condoms.

Dr. Nicolette Barungi attached to the Department of Paediatrics, Makerere Medical School says most of the teens look at condom use as a punishment. One teen was quoted saying he was already infected, so he had the right to have pleasure.

The report findings also show that teens believe condom use reduced sexual pleasure and are ineffective claiming that condoms have small openings through which the HIV virus passes.

Important to note is that those who feel they want to have children say condom use is a waste of sperm while others avoid using it in an act of revenge and infect others. Dr Sabrina Bakeera-Kitaka the head of adolescent programs at the Paediatric Infectious Diseases Clinic calls for positive prevention living and urges a halt to discrimination of the HIV positive adolescents. She notes that if these children are not treated well, they can become bitter, fail to adhere to their treatment and try to transmit HIV to other people.

The study carried out in Kenya and Uganda looked at children at Baylor Uganda- Mulago hospital, Reach out Mbuya, Nsambya Home Care and TASO Kampala with 300 adolescents.

The research findings show that with the enormous negative attitude towards condoms, the teens lack the skills of putting on the condoms.

The research was carried out in young adolescents aged between 10-19 years. 84 percent of these children are on Anti retrovirals with 54 percent being females and 46 percent male.

The young positive adolescents also cited some barriers to condom use such as community stigma and unwanted disclosure to their partners since suggesting condom use to a partner is seen as disclosing their status. The young boys also complained that the condoms do not fit them, the cost and lack of access since many do not have income to purchase them. At the end of 2008, approximately 2.1 million children below the age of 15 years and 4.9 million young people between the ages of 15 and 24 years were infected with HIV.

More than 80 percent of them live in Sub Saharan Africa. In Uganda, young women ages 15 to 24 years are more vulnerable to HIV infection with a prevalence of 4.3 percent compared to 1.1 percent among young men.

According to the Uganda United National General Assembly Special Session progress Report 2010, 120,000 children younger than 15 years are infected with HIV. ###