Condom dispensers for kombis

THE National Aids Council (Nac) is consulting with public transport operators to put condom dispensers in commuter omnibuses, buses and other public transport vehicles, in a bid to increase condom uptake to curb new HIV infections in the country, towards ending Aids by 2030.

In an interview, Nac monitoring and evaluation director Mr Amon Mpofu said feasibility studies and discussions with public transport operators on the proposal were underway.

Speaking on the side-lines of a media workshop organised by Nac in Chinhoyi last week, Mr Mpofu quickly clarified that his organisation would work with public transport operators who would be willing to have the dispensers placed in their vehicles.

Mr Mpofu said placing condom dispensers in public transport vehicles was expected to help increase accessibility of condoms as a majority of Zimbabweans use public transport daily.

Zimbabwe has the highest condom uptake among Eastern and Southern African (ESA) region countries with data showing that 140 million condoms were distributed countrywide in 2017.

"We are looking at alternatives of where we can place our condom dispensers, as of now we have realised that it's best to place them where there are hotspots.

"We have also realised that kombis or public transport might be another place where we can place our condom dispensers.

"We haven't really started this, we are still studying it but we really think that if we put these dispensers in some public transport people will therefore access these condoms," said Mr Mpofu.

Added Mr Mpofu, "We have also realised that travelling and mobility is associated with HIV infection. So people as they travel they can also access condoms."

He said Nac would work with transport operators that would have volunteered to have condom dispensers placed in their vehicles.

"We have to engage the transport organisations so that there is willingness and acceptability, because we know that a bus or a kombi is private property so somebody has to consent to that.

"We are already engaging the people in the informal sector, it's not going to be transporters only but also at terminuses and where people are doing vending. We are going to be identifying these areas and placing condoms," he said.

Mr Mpofu said current efforts to put condoms in public toilets were not yielding the desired results of taking the country's condom uptake to 100 percent.

"As you know not everyone uses public toilets. So we have to cater for those people who don't use public toilets.

"The idea is to increase availability and accessibility of condoms to those that need them. We are trying to come up with different strategies to achieve this," he said.

Meanwhile, Nac has shelved plans to install 6 000 automated condom dispensing machines in public places such as bars, hospitals and hotels located in HIV hotspots.

Mr Mpofu said the installation which was supposed to have been done by end of this year has been shelved due to budgetary concerns.

He said manual condom dispensers would be installed, instead.

"We tried to work around that but we discovered that most of those machines are a bit expensive. They are affordable at this point in time.

"So we are going to use the manual ones in the meantime because of costs that were prohibitive," he said.

The country's HIV response programme, which emphasises on HIV prevention has received regional and international endorsement.

According to the latest Global Aids Update report the country is on course to meet the  United Nations' 90-90-90 targets to help end the Aids epidemic as a public health threat by 2030.