Swaziland: "E/200 a month for girls to avoid sex" -- with boys "targeted" for circumcision

Link here. Excerpt:

'MBABANE – Government plans to give adolescent girls monthly cash incentives to keep them safe from the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and sugar daddies.

Girls in the age group of 18 to 24 will be paid at least E200 per month, for the next five years. The World Bank pilot project under the DPM’s office has 9 000 girls already from four constituencies who have been identified as first beneficiaries of the project.

The girls would use the money to pay for their immediate needs, such as toiletries, sanitary pads, cologne and general things they desire.

Khanya Mabuza, the Director of National Emergency Response Council on HIV and AIDS (NERCHA) said his organisation came up with the initiative after having worked with other partners to develop an HIV/Aids Investment case, aimed at ending AIDS in Swaziland.

He said the case came up with a plan to give adolescent girls monthly cash incentives to keep them safe from HIV.

Mabuza said the cash for the girls strategy was one highly innovative HIV prevention approach aimed at protecting the girls from contracting the virus.
...
“Therefore, the cash incentive approach is aimed at building their self esteem and mitigates structural risk factors that exacerbate their vulnerability to sugar daddies,” he said.

“The programmes were all aimed at enabling the country to make savings in both lives and money in the long run.”

He identified these programmes as the scaling up of voluntary medical male circumcision, elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV, intensification of TB/HIV co-infection diagnosis and treatment, as well as the accelerated scale up of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for people living with HIV.
...
Some of these strategies have already been rolled out and include the hyped male circumcision programme, targeting males aged between 10 and 30.

Through the programme, 2 500 boys from various primary schools were circumcised by organisations such as the Population Service International (PSI) and the Family Life Association of Swaziland (FLAS) during the recent school holidays.
...
Under the ongoing mass medical male circumcision (MC) project, for example, he said 80 per cent of Swazi males, between the ages of 10 and 30 were being targeted for the procedure in the next five years.'