SFH Identifies One Major Way The Fight Against HIV/AIDS Can Be Won Among Adolescents & Young Women

The Society for Family Health, SFH, has revealed one major way the fight against HIV/AIDS can be won in Nigeria.

According to the Director, Global Fund HIV Programme, Omoregie Godspower, HIV/AIDS fight can only be won by targeting the lifestyle of key populations.

Mr Godspower revealed this in Abuja during the dissemination of findings for a cost-effective analysis for health programming for adolescents and young women in Nigeria.

While fielding questions from journalists on the sidelines of the event, Mr Godspower said taking a general approach in the fight against HIV without taking into cognisance the lifestyle of key populations could undermine its success.

He said, for instance, the way HIV would be tackled in Kaduna may be different from how it would be addressed in another state due to socio-cultural differences, religion and other factors. Mr Godspower went further:

“One of the things that needs to happen is the issue of understanding what implementation works best for young people depending on their location, because it is good to look at young persons from that demographic profile, their lifestyle that should define the type of intervention that you should use.

In Kaduna, for example, we have this intervention where we found out that within there are three different kinds of young people. So, if you do one basic intervention which most people do and say this is for young people in Kaduna it won’t work. You must take the peculiarity into consideration when designing the kind of intervention that should work.

So differentiation is quite important so that your intervention is evidence-driven not just doing a generic intervention or trans-locating an intervention because it works in maybe southern Africa, it works in Europe does not necessarily mean those interventions will work in Nigeria.”
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He noted that 80 per cent of new infections were contracted through sex even as he noted that young persons were the most affected.

Also speaking, Deputy Director Community Prevention and Care Services, National Agency for the Control of AIDS, Dr. Funke Oki who said her agency was involved in all the processes from planning to implementation and final dissemination.

Dr. Oki said NACA would use young Nigerians to own the fight against HIV because young persons were the most affected.