"HIV/AIDS has affected more and more people despite the campaigns and this means that something could be wrong with the way in which messages are put out," Diogo Milagre, deputy executive secretary of the National Campaign for the Struggle against Aids (CNCS), told AFP.

Milagre said that most messages were imported from the West and did not have an impact in Mozambique, given its different cultural and social customs.

He called for a change of strategy and also expanding the outreach of the campaigns.

"Awareness campaigns are currently concentrated in the urban centres," he said.

HIV/AIDS is the public health enemy number two for Mozambique's 17 million people after malaria which has a prevalence rate of 17 percent.

Fourteen percent of the population is HIV positive.

According to recent official statistics, there are about 700 new infections in the southern African country every day.

As part of a new strategy to reduce the spread of the epidemic, the government this year introduced education on HIV/AIDS in the general school curriculum.

TERRA.WIRE