KAWI Director Dr Sobbie Mulindi, recently spoke at a rural forum on startling findings about the links between alcohol and HIV/AIDS. The following is adapted from an article in the nationally circulated Nation Newspaper. The article is available at http://allafrica.com

Fifty per cent of Aids infections in Western Province are caused by alcohol and drug abuse.

Men and boys spend long hours drinking chang'aa (an illicit spirit) and busaa (a traditional beer), and in their drunkenness, engage in vices, which contribute to the spread of Aids.

Kenya Aids Watch Institute director Sobbie Mulindi said a study has established that the men later infect other women and girls with Aids.

Dr Mulindi, who also teaches at the University of Nairobi's College of Health Sciences, was speaking at a pastoral centre in Kakamega at an Aids meeting for groups that create Aids awareness at the grassroots. He added that jobless drug addicts also have sex with widows, whose husbands died of Aids and women, whose spouses work in urban areas. Some rape young girls and infect them with the virus.

He said: "The situation is very serious as we talk... The community is losing productive people..." he said and called for a ban on illicit liquor in the region.

Elsewhere in the forum it was discussed that women whose husbands ride bicycles for a living have complained that the men deny them conjugal rights.

Those operating the bicycle taxis - known as boda-boda and Ngware in Western and Nyanza provinces, respectively - are nearly impotent, "as their sexual performance is low", they said.

The situation forces them into extra-marital affairs with active men, hence exposing them to Aids, they claimed.

The more than 100 women who met in Kakamega, last week, with Women Forum for Networking (Wafnet) as hosts, openly confessed that the case was true, adding that "something urgent must be done to save them from falling pray to extra-marital sex".

The organisation's technical adviser Dolphine Oketch said the reproductive muscles and testicles are torn or fatigued by the long hours spent riding bicycles, a situation that left the men exhausted.

And, coupled with the excessive drinking of illicit brew, the men become sexually inactive.

Said Mrs Oketch: "We are concerned about the problem, and we want the Government and non-governmental organisations to support these men to set up more appropriate income-generating projects."

Earlier, Mrs Joyce Were, a participant from Vihiga District, said many families whose husbands are involved in boda-boda trade, were likely to break up if an urgent remedy to the problem is not found.

The proposal that traditional herbs be used as stimulants was rejected by the women, who said it would render the men "even more useless".