If you’re like me, 1st of December is always an exciting date because it just means we are finally in the month of Christmas and the year is finally drawing to a close.
But that’s not the only significance of December 1st now. There’s also the fact that all around the World it’s World AIDS day. A day to raise awareness on the global epidemic that is HIV/AIDS and also stand in solidarity with the millions of people around the world affected by this illness.
Thanks to advances in science, being diagnosed with HIV/AIDS means something different than it did 20-30 years ago. Very recently there has been news of a Clinical trial for a HIV vaccine which has just started in South Africa. Since the HIV virus was identified in 1983, efforts to develop an effective vaccine have proved unsuccessful. There are treatments available, but still a cure is yet to be found.
Many times we hear about certain countries with high HIV?AIDS prevalence rates but hardly do we hear about the figures from Nigeria.
Yesterday i was listening to a program on the radio where a professor was talking about the numbers for Nigeria and according to the data, 3 out of 100 Nigerians are infected with HIV. He went further to say that this figure is actually more from the age range considered highly susceptible to HIV i.e persons between the ages of 15-49.
Now i’m not very good at mathematics but i’m sure that you can imagine this must be a very high number given our population.
The bottomline is that HIV/AIDS is really not that abstract or foreign here in Nigeria and the more information that’s out there, the better our chances of reducing spread of HIV/AIDS.
One of the biggest challenges in my opinion is the issue of STIGMA against people who already have the disease. Stigmatization has a spiral effect which only helps spread of the disease.
Now imagine a scenario where a woman, we shall call her Lady Cee finds out that she has HIV.
Lady Cee happens to be honest enough to report this to her employer and gets fired from her job. Now she is unemployed and broke for a while and of course this is not a happy time for her.
She goes to the health centre one day for her medication and runs into an old friend who has brought her child to be immunized. Now she doesn’t want anyone to know why she’s at the health centre and she doesn’t want to be spotted by anyone who knows her so she stops to come for her medication regularly.
After a few months of searching she finds a new job say as a factory worker. This time she is very careful not to mention this piece of information to her new employers. Also this new job is not one that can afford routine pre employment medicals for their new recruits so Lady Cee is able to fly under the radar.
One day at work, there’s an accident on the production floor and Lady cee gets a huge cut and she is bleeding. Of course well meaning colleagues come to her aid, everyone is willing to help. Now one of these colleagues may have a cut on their hand that hasn’t healed over completely, and now is tending to Lady Cee who is seriously bleeding. This is direct exposure to an infected person who nobody knows is infected. In Lady Cee’s defence, she’s injured and isn’t thinking to warn people not to touch her without sufficient protection. Also remember how she lost her job the last time for revealing her status? Lady Cee is just going to keep quiet and maybe after the incident pray to God that no one has gotten infected because they tried to help her.
Now in a different scenario, one where Lady Cee discovers she is HIV positive on routine testing. And soon after commences Antiretroviral medication. She also notifies her employers who happen to have a medical personnel on staff. She gets regular check ups and there is at least one person in the organization who knows her status and so when she has an accident or any issue at all, there is already a laid out plan for how she should be handled. Also given the fact that she is already on medication her infectivity is low and so more people around her are safe.
One mistake many of us make is to associate HIV/AIDS spread strictly with sexual activity. It is important to always remember that any activity involving sharp objects can lead to bleeding and any contact with blood from an infected person is an opportunity for spread of the disease.
So it can be as simple as using that aboki who walks down your street everyday giving pedicures. Or sharing a toothbrush.
HIV/AIDS is never transmitted by hugging or handshakes, so except a HIV positive person is trying to get you to do a blood oath, there is really no need to avoid them or treat them differently.
Always remember that your stigma may be responsible for more people getting infected.
