Tanzanian Muslim leaders, breaking from a traditional reluctance to discuss sex in public, said on Saturday they had taken tests to detect the virus that causes AIDS to persuade their followers to do the same.
The leaders said they have become more open about the previously taboo topic of AIDS in the past year to combat its spread in the Muslim community, making up a third of Tanzania's 34 million people.
"You cannot go into a mosque and tell people 'go get tested' if you yourself have not been tested," Sheikh Abdu-Rehim Shadhili, the chairman of the Mosques Council of Tanzania, told Reuters at a ceremony to announce the leaders had been tested.
Shadhili said it would be up to the 30 sheikhs, imams and Muslim religious teachers who took the test to decide whether to reveal their results.
Close to two million Tanzanians are living with the HIV virus which causes AIDS, according to U.N. figures.
Shadhili said once religious leaders in the eastern African country were aware of their status, they would be better placed to give spiritual guidance to their people on how to avoid or live with the infection.
"Before, we were hiding. I could not sit with my daughter and talk about AIDS or sex, but now we talk openly," said Hamisa Rashidi, 42, a teacher at a Muslim school who attended the ceremony.
More than 42 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, and 70 percent of them live in sub-Saharan Africa.