Co-Ordinator Blames High HIV/AIDS Prevalance On Ignorance

The Rivers State Coordinator, AIDS and STI Control Programme (SASCP), Ministry of Health, Port Harcourt, Dr Golden Onwondah, has identified ignorance as the main cause of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria.

Onwondah, said recently in an exclusive interview with The Tide, that ignorance both on the part of society and infected persons creates the environment for an increase in prevalence of the pandemic, while focusing on mother-to-child transmission MTCT.

A consultant physician in public and community health medicine, Onwondah, explained that ignorance in the intricacies of HIV results in stigmatisation.

“The idea of stigma”, he said, “which actually describes blemish and marginalisation, in extreme cases describes criminalisation. These are all functions of ignorance.

“It is a situation where somebody feels like he/she is being blemished. We have always said that HIV/AIDS has come to assume a position like any other chronic disease in the community like hypertension.

“For people and communities who continue to stigmatise, we have seen and explored and realized that it is a factor of ignorance, where people believe that it is a curse of the gods”.

“So, stigmatisation is a function of ignorance and the way forward is tackling illiteracy”, he said.

He noted that in more advanced societies of the world, stigmatisation has been reduced to the barest minimum “and the only thing that checks it is awareness, information.

“A child born with HIV does not deserve to be blemished. He has the right to live like any other person. It is even not your duty to judge him.

“So ignorance and socio-cultural factors have made it very difficult. But I believe that if all of us believe that fighting HIV and MTCT is not for government alone, or the press, the easier it will be to arrive at eliminate MTCT by 2015”, he said.