Mrs. Funmi Doherty has been in the forefront of combating HIV/AIDS in Nigeria for decades. National President, Society for Women and AIDS in Africa, Nigeria- SWAAN, Funmi is also the Head of the Medical Social Service Department at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital- LUTH.

SWAAN is a country branch of SWAA International which has 40 branches in Africa, and SWAA Nigeria has about 29 state branches. During a recent chat with Vista Woman, she shared her experience in working as the National President of SWAAN to combat HIV/AIDS and help infected persons live positively.  Excerpts:

For me, working with people living with HIV/AIDS has been quite fulfilling. They are very corporative, and this has made the job a lot easier for members of our staff and me. However, working with them efficiently requires one to consistently have new counseling, care and support skills to be able to attend to their needs as they arise and also coordinate the group.

Basically, SWAAN provides different services such as HIV/AIDS educational programmes, intervention programmes with commercial sex workers, care and support services with support groups, counseling and testing, to mention but a few.

However, our major challenge has been inadequate funding for our support group system. This is quite sad because we understand the therapeutic importance of a support group to people living with the virus. I mean, it is therapeutic for people having similar problems to share their experiences. So, to keep them going, we need to ensure that the support group meetings continue to hold.

*Mrs.Funmi Doherty ....the Anti-stigma and Discrimination Bill is still at the National Assembly...

That involves a lot because we have to provide them with transportation, refreshments, etc. We also make sure we provide them with skills that will empower them financially so as to enable them live positively.

Benefits of support groups

Joining a support group is vital for HIV/AIDS victims because of its benefits. We know what ARV is supposed to do for them, but the truth is that without a support system, a person living on ARV may fall out; that is, may lack the courage to continue with the ARV. And the repercussion is that the person’s health may deteriorate drastically, and the previous ARV will no longer be able to improve the situation.

Consequently, the doctor will then be faced with the burden of finding another ARV for the situation. And of course, there will be other side effects too! However, when there is a support group system, members of the group may be able to help such a person scale through the side-effects!

But if there is no support system, I’m afraid the person may be in more danger.  The fact that the support is coming from the same people who share the same problem, makes it more therapeutic and also helps improve their health status.

The Anti-stigma and Discrimination Bill is still at the National House of Assembly, and we’re working seriously on that, hoping that it will be passed into law soon. This will give more people the courage to identify with support groups and get help because we’ve observed that many do not want to join support groups because they are afraid that other people may find out that they are living with HIV and then stigmatise them.

Funding

Like I mentioned earlier, our major challenge in the support group system is funding. Recently however, we were given some financial support by the Soroptimist International of Eko and that has been an added advantage for us. With the support from S.I Eko, we will be able to put in place, skill-building activities for our support group members. After that, we would also empower them with funds to start-off.

Now, what we’re trying to work on is the reduction of new infections to curb HIV. The care and support system is already there for those that are already infected, but for those that are not, we want to keep them from getting infected.

‘Getting to Zero’

Therefore, we advise that people ensure a change in their behaviour because we’ve observed that the increase in HIV has a lot to do with people’s behaviour. Thus, beginning from last year till the year 2015, the focus of the World AIDS Day will remain ‘Getting to Zero’ because we want to get to zero with stigma and discrimination, spread of HIV and HIV/AIDS related death.

This could be a lot of work, as it is not easy to change people’s behaviour, but it is possible. We just need to keep encouraging people to prevent themselves from getting infected.

We all should be mindful of the various modes of transmission such as having unprotected sex, having multiple sexual partners, transfusion of infected blood, sharing of skin-piercing instruments (including during injection of hard drugs), mother to child transmission, etc.

We are aware that a lot of women patronize traditional birth attendants; therefore, awareness creation is going on as well for TBAs. Many of them are responding now by encouraging pregnant women to know their HIV status to prevent infecting their child’