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More than a bad hair day
19 November 2002. Republished courtesy of IRIN PlusNews.
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Hairdressers in the Zambian capital Lusaka have begun to think seriously about the risks they may run of contracting and transmitting HIV/AIDS through their work.
Recently, Judith Namoya began noticing that many women attending her backyard salon had little open sores or infected pustules on their scalps. The clients would say that these wounds were caused by the over-processing of their hair. Others said they were the result of tight and frequent plaiting, or the continuous wearing of wigs.
"The suspicion was there at the back of our minds that some of our clients were hiding their heads under braids and wigs rather than beautifying themselves," Namoya told PlusNews.
But it was only when a caller to a radio phone-in programme asked if it was possible to contract HIV/AIDS while having a hair-cut that Namoya and her colleagues put two-and-two together.
"We phoned in and asked about hairdressers," Namoya explained. "We learnt a lot about HIV/AIDS transmission that day, and it occurred to us that we were exposing ourselves to risks by braiding or treating client's heads with little or no protection."
Namoya believes that many HIV-positive women want to look healthy and attractive for as long as they can. "We recently had a women recovering from something we later learnt was Kaposi's sarcoma (a skin cancer common among people with HIV/AIDS), who wanted to braid the little hair that she had left. We could not refuse to do her hair, so we were as gentle as possible."
Asking around, Namoya discovered that informal backyard hair and beauty salons like her own were becoming increasingly popular, and not just because they were cheaper and more convenient. Also because they were less concerned about the condition of their customers' heads.
The full version of this article can be downloaded on the righthand side of this page
This item is delivered to the English Service of the UN's Humanitarian Information Unit but, may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. |
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