Since it is perched on the brow of Africa's northwest coast -- the closest Africa comes to the North American mainland -- Senegal has been the site of one of humanity's darkest moments. Visit the island of Goree, which lies three kilometers from Senegal's capital, the harbour city of Dakar, and you will be taken to the Maison des Esclaves, or the Slave House. It is a monstrous vestige of the slave trade that saw some 15 to 20 million Africans captured and sold over three centuries -- from 1536 to 1848. An estimated six million died in the process.

Today the slave trade is thankfully just an ugly memory but modernity has brought with it fresh threats. One of the biggest social and medical challenges facing Senegal today is dealing with the HIV/AIDSpandemic which has cut a swathe across the African continent. Approximately two-thirds of the people living with AIDS worldwide live in sub-Saharan Africa.

The disease has wrought immense havoc in countries like Uganda, where whole villages have been wiped off the map, where a quarter of the children have at least one parent stricken by AIDS. Here fields lie untended because of the lack of able adult labour and old women are left to nurture the numerous children orphaned by the disease.

And it is not just sub-Saharan Africa. Eunice Mafuabikwa, a senior activist/writer from Harare, Zimbabwe, revealed that it is very rare in her country to come across a family that has not experienced a death caused by AIDS.

What disturbs her the most about the situation is that despite Zimbabwe being poised to become the country with the largest number of AIDS cases in the African continent, there has been little or no change in social behaviour. ``The general attitude seems to be that `everyone has to die some dayanyway'. Men continue to pride themselves on their promiscuity. There is even a local saying that just as a bull is known by its scars, so is a man by the sexually transmitted diseases he has experienced!''

It is heartening therefore to learn of Senegal's conspicuous success in grappling with the spectre of the dread disease, as a workshop hosted by UNIFEM in Dakar earlier this month revealed. The workshop was part of UNIFEM's two-year pilot project on gender focused interventions in HIV/AIDS involving six countries -- Zimbabwe, Senegal, Mexico, Bahamas, India and Vietnam.

Senegal's attempts to address the problem become crucially important -- not just for the African continent but for the rest of the world which is still largely clueless about the social impact of the disease.

According to Dr Ibrahima Ndoye, coordinator of Senegal's national programme on HIV/AIDS, who had addressed the workshop, the country which had a prevalence rate of 1 per cent in '91-'92 now has to contend with a prevalence rateof 10 to 20 per cent among high risk groups. ``But this is a low figure considering the fact that in many countries of the region the figure is more than 50 per cent,'' says Ndoye.

Data collection was perceived as a crucial input in managing HIV/AIDS. ``We have stepped up the monitoring of the disease through scientific, medical and epidemiological surveys -- today Senegal, along with Thailand and Uganda, has an extremely good data bank, which helps to provide some focus to the programme,'' says Ndoye.

Along with the data bank, care has also been taken to clean up blood banks. While many sub-Saharan nations just don't have the health infrastructure to guarantee safe blood, in Senegal strict screening for HIV has been made mandatory.

Interestingly, spiritual leaders have been encouraged to get involved in the nation's AIDS control programme. As Ndoye puts it, ``We are 95 per cent Muslim and 5 per cent Catholic, and we have involved our religious leaders in our campaign. They have helped especially infighting the stigma traditionally associated with the disease.'' But while the men of God promote the values of abstinence and fidelity, Ndoye himself takes no chances. ``They preach abstinence. We preach condom use,'' he remarks drily.

The national HIV/AIDS programme consciously tries to reach the youth. According to Ndoye, it is crucial that over the next 10 years, young people from the ages of 10 to 25 in all developing nations must be sensitised to the problem.

Senegal has also discovered that no HIV/AIDS control programme can be successful without involving and empowering women. Being a polygamous society, women often find themselves sexually powerless.

Aster Zaude, regional programme advisor, UNIFEM, Senegal, pointed out that the husband plays an inordinately powerful role in social relations here. ``We find that the biggest problem seems to be that while most women know about the dangers of the epidemic, they don't know how to negotiate safe sex,'' says Zaude.

This is where recent experimentswith the female condom has added a new dimension in the struggle against AIDS in Senegal. Dr Penda Ndiaye of the Social Hygiene Institute, Dakar, conducted a study on female condom use by local women including sex workers. They were found to be well-accepted, indeed even in great demand. According to the study, the female condom seemed to help women gain some control over their sexuality in a society that had always considered them as passive partners in the sexual act.

Experts are now increasingly coming around to the view that the most significant risk factor for HIV/AIDS is not sexual activity or drug use as much as socio-economic helplessness. Since the infection is preventable, people who are literate and have access to information usually take the necessary precautions. Women, given their lack of both economic and sexual independence, are thus more vulnerable to the disease.

Madhu Bala Nath, HIV and gender adviser to UNIFEM, and the woman who anchored the Dakar workshop, believes that given the factthat an increasing number of women are affected by HIV/AIDS -- approximately 43 per cent of adults living with HIV/AIDS are women -- the gender dimension of the battle against the disease cannot be emphasised enough.

Says Nath, ``On the one hand, the campaign against AIDS has not sufficiently focused on women, on the other, the women's movement has just not adequately address issues of sexuality or perceived HIV/AIDS as a women's issue.''

THE AIDS BLACKBOARD