By DAYO ADESULU

No fewer than nine thousand junior secondary school students last week received lectures at their various schools on Human Immuno Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) from Aminat Alli-Agboola, a person living with HIV/AID(PLWHA).

Ordinarily, people living with HIV are generally ashamed of telling people, not even the best of friends due to stigma attache to it. However, what arrested the attentions of students was when Aminat asked, “Have you ever seen any person living with HIV before?” The students answered: NO!!!.

Then, the beautiful dark complexioned Aminat replied,”I have been living with the virus for the past eight years.” She told the students that the effect of the virus is not pronounce on her due to the support from her parents and regular use of prescribed medications without which, she added, it would have metamorphosed into AIDS in the past eight years.

Urging students to beware of the deadly virus, Aminat noted that her case is a typical example of someone who is living with HIV and yet appeared beautiful outwardly, saying that students should abstain from  sex which is the most common means of contacting the virus.

However, before Aminat mounted the podium, Nelly Onwordi, of Action Health Incorporated, a non governmental organization,  stated that the theme:  AIDS Prevention Education Awareness Outreach Among In-School Young People is aimed at promoting the health and well being of young people by reducing the spread of HIV infection among young people. In order to achieve this, she said.

“The project is being implemented in eleven junior public secondary schools within Somolu, Mainland and Kosofe Local Government Areas of Lagos State, targeting at least five thousand in-school youths aged 10-15 years.”

Lamenting the rate at which HIV has ravaged our youths, Onwordi reiterated that young people in Nigeria account for one third of Nigerian’s 140 million people adding, “About one of five of the sexually active females and one in twelve of the sexually active males had already engaged in sexual intercourse by the age of 15.”

In her analysis, Onwordi pointed out that a common feature of young people in Nigeria is their potential vulnerability to HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STI) stressing that Nigeria’s HIV prevalence is estimated at 3.6 per cent based on a general population survey. She added that youths between the age of 15 to 24 years contribute 60 per cent of new HIV infections (UNAIDS, 2008).

She identified the causative agents of  HIV among young people as early sexual exposure, unprotected sexual intercourse, low condom use. Others are: low risk perception, multiple concurrent sexual partners, informal transaction and inter generation sex, lack of STI services, gender inequalities, stigma and discrimination, and limited access to health services.

The visited public schools by Action Health Incorporated (AHI), were: Baptist Junior High School, Obanikoro, Jibowu Junior High School, Jibowu, Igbobi Junior High School, Somolu, Wesley Junior Secondary School, Sabo (JSS1), Morocco Junior High School, Somolu, Bariga Junior Grammar School, Bariga. Others include, Onike Girls Junior Secondary School, Iwaya, Mende Junior High School, Maryland, St. Luke’s Grammar School, Bariga, West Junior Secondary School, Sabo and Immaculate Heart Comprehensive Junior High School, Maryland.