In order to meet up with the target deadline of having an AIDS free country, 90% of residents of AMAC and Bwari, which is approximately 1.2 million people, will be tested on the virus in order to ascertain their status.
The programme which commenced in October 2015, is expected to end in October 2016 after staff of the institute have carried out tests on daily basis.
This was revealed by Laurentia Dashe, the HIV-Counselling and Testing Officer of the Institute of Human Virology, Nigeria, when a team from the institute visited Nyanya, a satellite town/suburb in the FCT in order to conduct free tests for the residents.
“We have priority local governments that we are working with. We have AMAC and Bwari and we have teams that will do this testing every day for the whole year.”
“As of October, our funders were asking us to test about 90%. The programme started from October this year and will last to October next year. We are expected to test 90% of AMAC population and 90% of Bwari which is about 1.2 million in population which are supposed to be tested. We have teams already that are on ground that have been conducting HIV testing and counselling and it started right from October and it is still on-going.” Concerning the belief in some quarters that the disease is a spiritual attack sent to individuals by enemies, Dashe stated that it is far from being true and should be discarded.
”It is a misconception. Nigerians generally believe in spiritual attacks and we hinge everything on spirituality. It is an act of denial. You know when an individual turns out to test positive, every one looks at the person as lose or promiscuous. Other ways of contracting the virus are not looked at. So the only excuse the individual can use is to tell that it is an attack. So that person is still in a stage of denial.”
“Most of them will tell you that they prefare to go to their pastors or imams or where they can be prayed for so that they can be healed because they believe it is a spiritual attack. So, it is a stage of denial. These are some of the behaviours we see. Once you see someone who is positive, in most cases, the person will use a defense and start saying how decent they have lived their lives.”
“ So they use that and we are also engaging the religious leaders on this. Once an individual tests positive, we advise that he/she can go for prayers but should still see the need to take their drugs.some believe that if you take drugs, it means you are faithless and this has led to the loss of many lives.”
By: Kuni Tyessi
Leadership News
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