Nigeria: IDP residents use play to highlight dangers of multiple sexual partners

Internally displaced persons living in Kuchigoro camp in Abuja, Nigeria marked World AIDS Day on Saturday, with a play highlighting the dangers of multiple sexual partners, sex for money, and the need for getting regular testing.

“It’s an awareness campaign. We are here to celebrate the World AIDS Day and the theme for the World AIDS Day is ‘know your status’. Knowing your status is the starting point because if you know that you are positive then you need help and NACA is ready to help, government is ready to help if you subject yourself and you are tested,” said Chairperson of the National Agency for Control Aids (NACA), Pauline Tallen.

Over one hundred people also got tested for HIV in the camp.

“I’m so grateful of drama of today. It is an example for us in this camp to know that, yes, life is not easy but you (will) not play with the life. So, I’m not happy the way we live life, we youth in this camp, also parents, married people, we are not living a good life”, Kuchigoro IDP resident, Victoria Elias lamented.

“I’m learning that you should go and do the test and if you don’t have it, glory be to God, and if you have it then you have to go and collect the medicine to protect yourself because it is even yourself, so it is good at least to help yourself. But definitely, if you just hide yourself and even sit down without doing the test, but how will you know and you cannot protect yourself. Anything can happen”, said another resident, Ishaku Titus.

Data from the U.N. AIDS programme (UNAIDS) shows that Nigeria has the highest HIV rate in West and Central Africa, with around 3.5 million people infected with the virus.

Reuters