South Africa is the country’s with the highest rate of HIV positive people in Africa with records of over 300,000 deaths yearly and in a bid to help curb the spread of the disease, President Jacob Zuma has signed a new bill asking HIV positive citizens who volunteer to put a tattoo depicting their status around their genital area and get a cash reward of 50,000 Rands, which is an equivalent of N840,000, each including free counselling and medication.
The bill has been regarded as the greatest steps taken in the history of combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country, according to report by Radio City in South Africa.
The bill will cover the first 10 million people, who have already tested positive, who volunteer to have their statuses tatted on their genitals. they would be given the money in form of a funeral expense voucher.
President Zuma has reportedly agreed to be the first volunteer for this program.
President Zuma was quoted as saying: “The mark is to protect those who can’t say no to sex. I mean if you can’t read between the lines you should read between the legs because that’s where the status would be tatted.
“The choice to be HIV positive is now in your hands or your genitals for that matter…. We also encourage those who had been living with the virus to go to the nearest public hospitals to get their status tatted in,” he noted. The government is involved in distributing life-prolonging Anti-Retroviral drugs (ARV), to people infected with the virus. Infants and children under one year of age get free ARV drugs from the government, while HIV positive pregnant women and tuberculosis patients and HIV/AIDS with CD4 cell count below 350 are treated for free.
“Let there be no more shame, no more blame, no more discrimination and no more stigma. Let the politicisation and endless debates about HIV and AIDS stop,” Zuma noted.
