By Angela Onwuzoo
To address the poor knowledge in the prevention and treatment of Human Immunodeficiency Virus in Nigeria especially among adolescents and young people, the media, medical experts, partners, donors, people living with HIV and others in the national HIV and AIDS response, have said there is an urgent need to bring back messages on common HIV prevention approaches used in the past to drive awareness.
These prevention approaches include being faithful, abstinence and using barrier protection (condom) during sex to stop transmission of the infection which can now be successfully treated with available drugs.
The stakeholders who spoke during a five-day workshop tagged co-creation meeting in Abuja, said it had become imperative to reinforce HIV prevention messages to stop transmission which is still ongoing and increase uptake of services.
The co-creation meeting was organised by Livinghealth International and Journalists Against AIDS Nigeria with support from the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and Henry Jackson Foundation Medical Research International, to take stock of Nigeria’s HIV response in the past 20 years and to address the gaps in HIV communication, especially among adolescents and young people.
With available treatment modalities and various innovative testing and prevention tools in Nigeria, the partners noted that people living with HIV who know their status, take their medicine as prescribed, and get and keep an undetectable viral load can live long and healthy lives.
They, however, expressed worry over the general apathy and drop in awareness creation about HIV prevention and treatment, stressing that HIV is still very much with us despite progress made so far in controlling the infection.
The stakeholders said it was regrettable that many Nigerians think that HIV no longer exists and therefore engage in risky behaviours that significantly predispose them to contracting the disease and undermine the country’s progress in combating the infection in the last 20 years and its effort to meet the 2030 target of ending AIDS.
The partners disclosed that the poor knowledge of HIV status, treatment and viral suppression among people living with HIV was also militating efforts in achieving the 95 95 95 targets for all.
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS in 2022 set new targets by calling for 95 per cent of all people living with HIV to know their HIV status, 95 per cent of all people with diagnosed HIV infection to receive sustained antiretroviral therapy, and 95percent of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy to have viral suppression by 2025.
No fewer than 1.9 million Nigerians are currently living with the virus, according to the 2019 Nigeria National HIV/AIDS Indicator and Impact Survey.
The stakeholders stressed the need to intensify awareness about HIV prevention and treatment to get the control on track by engaging the new generation of people in the HIV discourse.
According to them, it is important to get all segments of society and stakeholders including the media, traditional rulers, religious leaders, adolescents and young people involved in communication strategies and approaches to address barriers hindering demand for HIV testing, prevention, treatment and care service.
Speaking at the meeting, Technical Consultant for PEPFAR /HJFMRI Project, Dr Gbenga Adebayo, said the meeting was also organised to look at human-centred communication strategies and approaches that could effectively communicate messages about HIV to the new generation in a language that the would understand and to get communities and more stakeholders involved in combating the condition.
Adebayo, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Livinghealth International, said information about HIV which he described as a medical and social condition should be properly communicated to various segments of society to achieve the desired behavioural change.
Adebayo said stakeholders need to work together to drive HIV communication to reduce the social stigma associated with the infection.
He explained, “Stigma is still a big issue that we are still grappling with. The HIV of today is not the HIV of 20 years ago that people have at the back of their minds.
“Nobody today needs to die of HIV and AIDS is not something that must not happen. Anybody that has AIDS today is a choice because we have enough treatment modalities to take care of you if you have HIV.
“Very importantly, we have a lot of innovations now to prevent it in the first instance. We have the pre-exposure prophylaxis and the post-exposure prophylaxis and our time and tested tools of ABC are still there ( Abstinence, Be faithful and use of Condom).
” So we have a lot of tools, a lot of weapons in our toolkits that we can use to combat HIV and just get over that last mile of making sure that we can say that HIV is no longer a pressing concern.”
The consultant said Nigeria should intensify HIV communication among adolescents and young people using various media platforms to address barriers to prevention and uptake of services.
Giving insight into the meeting, the medic said “We know that HIV has become a medicalised condition and in the process of medicalising this condition, we have missed out on opportunities that we should have had to get community engagement and to get more stakeholders involved in it.
“We know that HIV is a social disease, it has a social component. So, it is important as we sit to address it, information is important, and media is important.
“This program allows us to bring together key stakeholders as we seek to have a new paradigm in HIV communication and this transcends media.
” But the media is an important component in it; the media is the gatekeeper of knowledge.
“So, we are bringing our key stakeholders as we seek to reiterate and come up with a concept on where we are; how we got here and what we need to do with the medical component of HIV, community component of HIV and behavioural component of HIV. Those are the things we need to do.”
Adebayo said stakeholders need to work together to drive HIV communication to reduce the social stigma associated with the infection
On Nigeria’s effort to meet the United Nations target of ending AIDS by 2030, he expressed optimism that the country would achieve the set target if all stakeholders work together.
“We believe we can meet the 2030 target. We believe that if we work together, yes it is going to take a lot of hard work, but we can meet it. We have enough tools, enough resources available and if we work together and manage what is available, we can meet it”, he said.
The Executive Director of JAAIDS Nigeria, Olayide Akanni, said people should stop trivializing HIV, noting that HIV is very much with us in Nigeria.
She expressed worry over a rising case of infection in key populations and adolescents and young people which she attributed to risky behaviours due to a lack of awareness about HIV.
Akanni said the co-creation meeting was critical because it provided an opportunity to review progress in terms of media performance and for them to rethink their communication strategies, particularly within the HIV response.
She said, “We know that a lot has happened in the past with communication in HIV response. But over time, we have also seen that there has been a lot of activity and HIV is no longer on the front burner of the public discourse.
“There is also a sense of apathy regarding HIV. There is a feeling that HIV is no longer important; it is not an issue to be focused on anymore.
” This an opportunity for us to rethink what our communication strategies and approaches would be as we reposition the discourse on HIV particularly given that we are seeing a rising case of infection in key populations and adolescents and young people.
“This is a very priority population that we need to focus our energy on and we know that the way we communicated in the past may not work for this audience.”
The just concluded co-creation meeting had a diverse array of participants: the academia, programme implementers, the media, communication experts, people living with HIV, young people and people representing the key population in attendance.
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