Leadership, 5 May 2014

Nigeria's new National HIV/AIDS Prevention Plan has stipulated HIV test before marriage in both Christian and Muslim religions.

Stakeholders who disclosed this on Monday in Abuja at the National Prevention Plan Validation meeting, said its to prevent new infections and curb further spread of the scourge.

Speaking to journalists at the event, the Director, Bauchi State Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS, TB, Leprosy and Malaria (BACATMA), Yakubu Usman Abubakar, said there's an improvement in the new HIV Prevention Plan, as it had the inputs of local communities and stakeholders in the states and at national level, while taking into recognition, the peculiarities of the states.

He said, "From the experiences of the past plan, we realized that there were variations from state to state in terms of prevalence rate, in terms of mode of transmission at state levels, in terms of culture, and in terms of approach to HIV prevention."

According to Abubakar, the major prevention is the participation of the major religious personalities from the Christendom ensuring that no marriage takes place except HIV test has taken place and its confirmed by the pastors, adding that the Islamic preachers have taken that challenge to make sure that people are well enlightened and they make sure that people test before marriage.

He said, "In Bauchi State, we realised that in most of the marriages, there is no confirmation of HIV status. Some people marry more than one and when they are taking second wife, even if they are negative, but meet a positive family, or the second or third or fourth wife is coming with HIV to meet people that were already negative and are going to become infected."

He said in the present plan, the incoming wife is expected to take the test along with the husband and other wives in the house.

On what happens when either of the parties test positive, the BACATMA Director, noted, "At the programme level, we don't decide what to do but the family concerned will sit down and resolve the issue themselves. Most of the time, a marriage is not conducted but there are few instances where the people insist that they will marry."

He added that because of this, "we made sure that the Muslim community will propose to making sure that HIV transmission is truncated at this level so this is making a lot of difference in Bauchi state and indeed, other neighbouring states."

Also in her remarks, the Chief Programme Officer, Prevention,Social and Behaviour Chnage Communication, National Agency for the Control of AIDS(NACA), Uduak Daniel, added that the difference between the last prevention plan and the recent one is that the new one has the engagement of the people in the local communities.

She said, "The last one we developed from top bottom but this one has to go to the states to have the states input and get to the regional level, have the regional level input before it got to the national level.

"We got stakeholders from different constituents of the states to look at four thematic areas whenever we are talking about HIV prevention, to look at HIV counseling and testing, prevention of mother to child transmission, biomedical transmission and sexual prevention."

By Winifred Ogbebo

Source: Leadership