AS the National AIDS Control Agency, NACA, steps up its HIV/AIDS behavioural change campaign with the development of a comprehensive communication plan, a media team has been inaugurated to ensure that Nigerians are regularly presented with adequate and balanced information about HIV/AIDS prevention and control with the aim of promoting effective behavioural and attitudinal change communication.
Inaugurating the media team made up of journalists from mainstream print, electronic and broadcast media organizations, last week in Abuja, Director General, NACA, Professor John Idoko, said the team is expected to collaborate with the Agency, to help attain the goal of informing, educating and communicating with the public about HIV/AIDS and other issues of relevance.
Idoko observed that even though HIV has been on the table for long, there was the need to keep it on the front burner and the media was best equipped to do that.
“Everything about HIV is about behaviour, and about how to change people’s behaviour at every point so they don’t get infected and if they do get infected, how to change their behaviour so they would seek treatment and care.”
Speaking on the plan, the DG said everything NACA is doing about HIV is to modify the people’s behaviour such that the epidemic can be driven down.
“Our prevention plan is hinged on Behavioural Change Communication, BCC, but we have packaged things now into communication and prevention which is a set of strategies that can be grouped under biomedical and structural and each of these require communication to present it to people.
“We need corporate communication to put HIV as a discussion on the table and to show that things are being done to encourage behavioural change. For me, the major thing is putting HIV as a discussion that is continuously sitting on the table, otherwise, people will forget about responding to it,” he argued.
Highlighting the importance of communication as part of the Agency’s programming, he said: “All the programmes we do – prevention, treatment, care and support require communication. Specifically, you will need to communicate to people about where services are available and how they can access the services, and to engage people and show them how to take the drugs, to support the services available in the community, and those on drugs. We also need communication to drive community engagement and mobilisation to drive the demand of services and supply of services. It is about advocacy.
All along we have been doing things in bits and pieces, now we have a plan particularly that is going to look at a comprehensive package of things from now till 2015. There are 13 priority areas in the comprehensive plan, and each requires communication. “At every point, communication is critical. As we speak, the number of people who have correct information about HIV/AIDS in the country is still extremely low and there is no way we can drive out the epidemic if people do not have new and better knowledge about HIV.”
Idoko was optimistic that the media will do particularly well in the rural areas where although most persons have heard about HIV, and awareness is like 100 percent, only few persons have changed their behavior so they do not get infected or that when infected, they seek knowledge so they do not pass the virus to others.
“We are only lifting ourselves to the next level to see how we can engage in conversation such that we can bring correct new information to the people. Only recently, we developed the new plan towards 2015, called the President’s Comprehensive Response Plan, PCRP, so now the volume of our media activities will expand as we undertake the journey together.”
NACA is trying to be more proactive and expand what it is doing to meet the goals and targets set in its new plan.
ABUJA: Training Schedule for Basic Life Support BLS, Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS), Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support ACLS, First Aid, CPR, AED
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