ZAMBIA: University offers free Aids treatment

The University of Zambia is offering anti-retroviral treatment to students and staff free of charge to reduce the impact of the HIV-Aids pandemic on the African country's oldest institution of higher learning and the skilled graduates it produces.

The university's HIV-Aids response office manager, Millica Mwela, could not give the number of people already on treatment but told University World News: "It is offered free of charge." People who leave the university continue with anti-retroviral treatment at the place where they have relocated, Mwela added.

The university's health clinic is guided by an HIV-Aids policy formulated in 2005. In his foreword to the policy, vice-chancellor Professor Robert Serpel said HIV and Aids had robbed the institution of a number of lecturers and students.

"Communities such as the University of Zambia have lost many of their members to debilitating illness and death, depriving them of staff on whom they expected to rely for continuity and leadership and of students in whose development the institution's hopes were vested," Serpel said, adding that the HIV and Aids policy reflected the university's "determination and commitment to address the pandemic."

The policy's objectives are, among other things, to encourage sensitivity towards people infected or affected by the virus, provide information on living positively, and offer education and counselling services. Its components seek to address issues such as the obligations of the university senate, council and central administration, as well as to articulate the rights and responsibilities of students and staff.

The senate is mandated to integrate HIV and Aids in curricula at various levels of learning. The council, the policy document says, is obliged to facilitate collaboration with the public and private sectors in promoting HIV and Aids-related activities in the university and the community, and ensuring that HIV and Aids is mainstreamed in all university activities.

The policy makes it clear that no member of staff must be forced to go for testing and results for those who are tested must be confidential unless there is a written consent for disclosure. It also seeks to assure people that there is a confidential channel through which to complain if they are subjected to harassment or discrimination due to their status.

Last April the university held a workshop aimed at finding ways to improve the anti-retroviral programme at its clinic. The workshop identified challenges as being attitudes of staff, lack of integrated management of clinical illnesses such as HIV and tuberculosis, and lack of statistics. It also offered staff from different departments the opportunity to develop a coordinated action plan, and an HIV response working group was formed to tackle the problems identified.

A scholarly article written in 2001 by former University of Zambia lecturer professor Michael Kelly, titled "Challenging the Challenger: Understanding and expanding the response of universities in Africa to HIV-Aids", pointed out that HIV-Aids was having a serious impact on the fiscal situation of universities, as it does on other institutions.

Kelly - who resigned in 2002 and has since received the Symons Award from the Association of Commonwealth Universities (2003) as well as honorary doctorates from the University of the West Indies (2004) and University College Dublin (2006) in recognition of his work in the field of HIV and education - conducted studies of seven universities in Benin, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia.

Evidence suggested the university in Africa was a high-risk institution for the transmission of HIV. Kelly wrote: "Sexual experimentation, prostitution on campus, unprotected casual sex, gender violence, multiple partners and similar high-risk activities are all manifested to a greater or lesser degree." The article also talks about "consensual rape" in which women, through lack of empowerment, consent under duress to intercourse "in order to preserve a relationship, avoid a beating, ensure financial support, or repay favours."

The entire university community - but in particular university managements - needed to face "face this threat squarely", Kelly wrote.