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From:	Adeyemo Gabriel [ profile ]
Subject:	KENYA: Walking 26km for a condom----We need more hands on deck for Advocacy
Sent:	Jan 8th, 2011 - 14:03:10

	Date: 2 December 2010 Source: IRIN NewsPlus http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=91265 Fellow Advocate, this is an interesting story/article and i will want you to read it with much enthusiasm and spirit of advocacy. Meanwhile, we need more HIV/AIDS/STI's advocates in Kenya to help with condoms distribution or being used as contacts for condom sites. WE can only curb this disease together as we cannot do it ourselves.....Let US act with ONE VOICE. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Correct and consistent condom use is one of the bedrocks of Kenya’s HIV/AIDS prevention programme but many people in rural areas have limited access to condoms. “Condoms are good and I use them with girls - they have taught us how to use them… but here in the rural area there is a problem because we walk very far to get the condoms,” said Lemeo Ntalel, a 21-year-old Maasai moran – warrior – in rural Narok, in Kenya’s Rift Valley. “At times you want to use one and you don’t have it near so you just do it with a girl without it; it is hard to tell a girl ‘wait for me I am going to get a condom’, because she will lose interest and go.” Ntalel has to walk to Narok sub-district hospital, 26km away, to fetch condoms. Jactone Lelei – a peer educator who trains his fellow morans on the need to use condoms – says the demand is so high that he and his colleagues have started stocking condoms along with their education materials as they go around the community spreading the word about HIV. “We have to walk with them so that as we sensitize people to use them, we also give the condoms out. I also keep some in my house so if they want, they just call me and I give them,” he told IRIN/PlusNews. “At least it helps a little… the lack of easy access gives people an opportunity to give excuses for not using them.” He noted that many rural residents could not afford to or chose not to buy condoms – not considered a necessity – so stocking them in local shops did not really improve access. Click on the above link to finish reading this article. Many thanks for your concerns. Yours' in Prevention Science, Adeyemo Gabriel Moderator: Students' for Microbicides (S4M), Nigeria

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