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Drivers Give A City Life,
Death? Not!
UNFPA Helps Educate Lorry Drivers
About Aids Prevention
by Abubakar Dungus
GHANA, Malaba-- "Drivers give a city life, death" ran a front-page headline in a recent
edition of the major United States newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, which printed a
story on how, it reported, traffic fuels the economy of the Ugandan border town of Malaba
and spreads HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The truckers carry supplies into landlocked
Uganda from the Indian Ocean port at Mombasa, Kenya. According to the Inquirer, the spread
of AIDS in Africa by lorry drivers is well-documented and infection rates along
transportation routes are much higher than in other rural areas. It cites a study by the
International Transport Workers Federation in Uganda, which found that bar workers,
traders and lorry drivers are twice as likely to die of AIDS than rural farmers.
As a result, the Inquirer reported, a lot of stigma has been attached to lorry drivers,
who are blamed for spreading diseases when they get in contact with women driven into the
sex industry by poverty.
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The Nkawkaw motor park - Ghana |
Recognizing this, UNFPA has developed a number of programmes to educate
such vulnerable groups as lorry drivers, market women and porters on how to protect
themselves against and help prevent the spread of AIDS. In Ghana, for example, the
Fund’s field office works with the Nkawkaw drivers’ association to warn truckers
of the dangers of unsafe sex and to promote family planning. The drivers are often based
at Nkawkaw motor park from where they carry supplies between the eastern Ghanaian town of
Nkawkaw, Kumasi and other cities.
"Our union stresses the need for safety in sex," Osei
Yeboah, a union
official. "Our members also call attention to the need for fewer children in order to
maintain healthier and well-housed families."
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"If you want to live long,
slow down," elderly drivers’ association member tells younger colleagues. |
‘NO TO CASUAL SEX,’ scream T-shirts that the official and other drivers
wear in the sprawling market and motor park. Mr. Yeboah said that his union receives
information, education and communication materials, such as those T-shirts, with the
support of the UNFPA and its partner non-governmental organizations. The materials, he
added, help them encourage responsible sexual behaviour, protect the drivers and their
clients as well as promote smaller and healthier families in the country.
"If you want to live long, slow down," an elderly member of the union said he
tells younger colleagues. "By saying ‘slow down’, I am not referring to
driving speed only."
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