Health
A Kaduna based NGO, Lead Development Initiative, said it distributed HIV self-testing kits to more than 4,000 students of Kaduna Polytechnic.
Mr Peter Ezekiel, the Executive Director of the NGO, disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Kaduna.
Ezekiel said students, especially in the tertiary education, are part of the key vulnerable population because of their sexual activeness as being majorly the youth community.
He added that a better fight against HIV was only possible when people knew their status and adhered to their therapies or avoid risky sexual behaviours.
He also stated that the school environment had complete combination of youth with different orientation which formed the Key Population (KP)
“People find it difficult to approach health facilities to take the test. But leverage on the Self-testing technology which aid nondisclosure of status, will make people feel very safe and try to take the test in a more convenient environment.
“Our team ensures that the students were first sensitised to the U-equals-U (U=U) before distributing the new technology to make them feel safe about the outcome of their test before they were thought how to use the kits and how to interpret the results by themselves,” he said.
“We are committed to the fight against HIV in Kaduna State in every capacities possible because we know that many are infected and we all are affected because of our susceptibility being members of this society.
He added that more intervention is planned to help all those infected to achieve suppressed viral load so that new infection will be mitigated to it’s barest minimum.
We are together as humans and we keep on leading the change that will leave no one behind and on the line of health, HIV is a strong priority.(NAN)
A.I
Tags: Lead Development Initiative Mr Peter Ezekiel
