Tanzanian President BenjaminMkapa has called for greater efforts to provide sex education to youngsters in the country's fight against HIV/AIDS, local press reported Wednesday.

The Guardian newspaper quoted the president as saying that it is high time Tanzanians cease deceiving themselves with the moral gimmick and become serious and objective in providing sex education to youngsters.

The president decried the country's failure in educating the youth on reproductive health and protective measures against the spread of the disease.

The HIV/AIDS prevalence rate now stands at 10 percent in Tanzania, with 140,000 sufferers die from the disease annually, out of about 2.2 million people living with the virus. The Tanzanian government is to start a program of providing HIV/AIDS sufferers with free anti-retroviral drugs to prolong their lives.

Source: Xinhua