South Africa’s Dangerous ‘Blessers’

In poverty-stricken communities, multiple relationships between older men and younger women bring high risk of HIV infection

Medical staff counsel a young woman, who asked to be called Amehlo, at a hospital in Durban, South Africa, on Oct. 9, 2018. Darren Taylor/Special to The Epoch Times

VULINDLELA, South Africa—A jovial nurse weighs a slim 20-year-old woman in a cramped room inside a hospital in Durban, South Africa.

The patient is wearing a scarlet top, her blue jeans fashionably tattered, her hair a tangle of braids. Her faux diamond earrings swing and sparkle under fluorescent tubes of white light.