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SAC’S ENUGU OUTING AT GOVERNMENT TECHNICAL SCHOOL, BASIC COMPREHENSIVE SECONDARY SCHOOL, AND NIKE VILLAGE, ENUGU, ON THE 5TH OF OCTOBER, 2004.

SAC went to Enugu State on the 5th of October to educate the students of two major secondary schools on HIV/AIDS. SAC with the help of the Enugu team notified the schools and the village chief of Nike about our intended visit, and so as we arrived, we were welcomed, and enough time was given to us to carry out our educational campaign on HIV/AIDS.

 

AIM OF OUR VISITS.

The trend in our society shows that younger people as from the ages of 14 and above are becoming sexually active, and such age groups aught to be empowered with enough information on the choices available to them towards the use of their bodies.
Our major aim of these visits especially to the secondary schools, was to enlighten the students of these schools on prevention, care and support of people living with HIV/AIDS.

STRATEGY

We used the medium of entertainment to keep the students entertained, as well as educate them on HIV/AIDS. We had a dance group, two comedians, and two mascots on this trip to entertain. SAC spoke to the student body of more than seven hundred students in each school. The GTC students were educated at the assembly ground around 8.30 am, while the Basic comprehensive school students were addressed around 11am in their school hall. We waited till evening when the market people as well as farmers who went to the farm came back to be able to address a large crowd of about four hundred people consisting of men, women and children at Nike village.

 We had volunteer team of doctors and nurses from University teaching hospital Enugu talk to the students about their experiences especially with HIV/AIDS patience. There was an interactive session where the students were given cash prices for getting the right answers to HIV/AIDS related questions asked by the SAC team. The students were also allowed to ask questions on matters regarding HIV/AIDS.

 

ACHIEVED RESULTS

At Government technical secondary school, Basic secondary school and Nike village, a lot of myth surrounding HIV/AIDS [like people contracting HIV/AIDS throw hugging, swimming , sharing cutleries, etc] were corrected. We also distributed literatures as well as shared condoms to the teachers. We also conducted Voluntary confidential counseling and testing for the teachers, and asked the students who wanted to know their status to come to the private clinic of Dr Okafor, with their parents or guidance for a free test.
The village people also responded to the counseling and testing, especially the women.

Six teachers were counseled and tested at GTC secondary school, and none was positive. But at Basic comprehensive secondary school, out of the ten teachers tested, six were HIV positive. At the village five people got tested but none was HIV positive.

OUR FINDINGS AND DEDUCTIONS.

We realized that Sac has to carry it’s awareness campaign more in the suburbs, especially were there are large clusters of people living below the average existence level. We also noticed that the teachers who aught to know much on HIV/AIDS are very uninformed, and so we resolved to carryout more educational campaigns in secondary schools and other institutions of  higher learning. We also realized that the fear of knowing that they might be HIV positive prevents a lot of people from knowing their status. Our major resolve is to find out more ways of convincing people that it is very important for them to know their status, for even when they do find out that they are HIV positive, they can with adequate information, support and care, live with it positively.   

 

 

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