The article "HIV/AIDs pandemic: What future for the youth and MDGs?", which can be found here: http://tribune.com.ng/index.php/features/19580-hivaids-pandemic-what-future-for-the-youth-and-mdgs, by Issac Shobayo on March 29th, 2011, talks about the struggle against AIDs in Nigeria and other African countries.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight goals that the countries in the United Nations wish to accomplish by 2015. These goals include things as eradicating extreme poverty, reducing death rates in children, and fighting against infectious disease such as AIDS. These goals help to improve the social and economic conditions in poorer countries. Fighting AIDs in African countries has been a main objective for a while. However, this can be a hard task to accomplish when in 2008, 1.72 million out of 4.67 million Nigerians alone were infected with HIV.
AIDs is rapidly spreading throughout African countries, and action needs to be taken against it. One of the most startling statistics was that teenagers and young adults between the ages of 15-25 years old, were the highest percentage effected by the disease.
Due to the fact that so many young people were being effect by the disease, UNICEF decided to come up with the idea of educating the younger generations through entertainment. Radio drama programs and sports were used as a way of sending out information about HIV to the adolescents, in hopes that it would help them understand it a little bit better. This method has been proven to be effective.
The goal for UNICEF Nigeria now is to reach out and educate at least 40 percent of the adolescent population in Nigeria about AIDs and HIV prevention by 2012.
I found this article to start off on a rather dark note, by saying how much of the population was infected with HIV, especially considering how many of these people were between the ages of 15 and 25. However, I saw it to be more hopeful towards the end of the article when it started to mention reaching out to the youth through things that they could connect with such as sports and the media. I think that this is sure to be a very effective strategy in educating about HIV/AIDs , and it can hopefully manage to bring down the rates of how many people have it.
This article was very interesting. Its astonishing to see the number of Nigerians infected with HIV. 1.72 million out of 4.67 million people is a huge percentage of the population. I agree with what Caroline said about the article starting out dark then changing to a more hopeful feeling because it started with all of the statistics and percentages of people infected but then changed to ways to prevent the spread.
ReplyDeleteI think that choosing to make information about the disease itself in a way that teenagers can relate to was an awesome idea. I know how hard it can be in school when going over a topic, if the material is unrelatable or delivered in a dry way. I find it much easier to understand when the teacher relates the topic to something in my everyday life. It clicks better. This must work the same way in Nigeria. Im sure there are many warnings and such on AIDS but when a teenager sees a tv program on it, they may find it more interesting and actually process the information about AIDS. I believe that many more teenagers and young adults will see these tv dramas and sports shows than other ways of trying to inform them such as flyers or commercials with statistics. By getting on the level of a teenager and making material more relatable to their lives and train of thought, it should process more in their minds and hopefully help them realize what they can do to prevent themselves from getting AIDS.
ReplyDeleteI thought that this was a very sad, and yet as you said, hopeful article. The number of people in Nigeria alone that are infected with IV is very startling. It always surprises me how different things can be in other countries. Here in America we never see AIDs in such high numbers, though all of us are aware it is a problem.I think that the best thing to do isto educate young people about how to protect themselves against AIDs. In this way, perhaps the number of people infected with HIV will drop.
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