Overview of HIVAIDS Epidemic in Nigeria

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Overview of HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Nigeria

• Fred Tamen PhD
• BSU

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More than 38 Million living with HIV/AIDS

• 38.6 million living with HIV
• 4.9 million infected in 2005
• 3.1 million AIDS deaths in 2005
• 25 million AIDS deaths since the start of the
  epidemic

Eastern Europe Central Asia 1.5 million
W C Europe 2.0 million
North America 2.0 million
East Asia 870,000
N Africa Middle East 440,000
Caribbean 330,000
S SE Asia 8.3 million
Latin America 1.6 million
Sub-Saharan Africa 24.5 million
Oceania 78,000
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Nigerias HIV/AIDS Country Profile
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(No Transcript)
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Median National HIV Prevalence 1992- 2005
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HIV/AIDS An Unprecedented
Crisis

• Strikes at the heart of development
• Reverses human development gains
• Kills people in their most productive years
• Spreads and deepens poverty
• Threatens government capacity to provide services
• Deepens gender inequalities
• Erodes social cohesion

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An Interesting Overview of Impact of HIV/AIDS..
The impact of HIV/AIDS is unique because it
kills adults in the prime of their lives, thus
depriving families, communities, and entire
nations of their young and most productive
people. Adding to an already heavy disease burden
in poor countries, the HIV/AIDS is deepening
poverty, reversing human development
achievements, aggravating gender inequalities,
eroding the capacity of governments to provide
essential services, reducing labour productivity
and supply, and putting a brake on economic
growth. These worsening conditions in turn make
people even more vulnerable to infection and
undermine the ability of governments to respond
to the epidemic UNDP,2003 The Challenge We Face
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The Drivers of the Epidemic

• Cultural Factors e.g. leviriate, hyena practice,
  wife sharing, funeral wakes etc.
• Commercial Sex work
• Migration
• Stigma and Discrimination
• Gender issues
• Poverty

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Median HIV Prevalence by Zone, 2005
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HIV Prevalence in South East Zone, 2005
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HIV Prevalence in South West Zone, 2005
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HIV Prevalence in North West Zone, 2005
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HIV Prevalence in North East Zone, 2005
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HIV Prevalence in North Central Zone, 2005
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HIV Prevalence in South South Zone, 2005
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Prevalence by Zone by Urban-Rural Areas, 2005
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Prevalence in Urban-Rural Areas by State South
East Zone, 2005
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Prevalence in Urban-Rural Areas by State South
West Zone, 2005
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Prevalence in Urban-Rural Areas by State North
West Zone, 2005
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Prevalence in Urban-Rural Areas by State North
East Zone, 2005
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Prevalence in Urban-Rural Areas by State North
Central Zone, 2005
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Prevalence in Urban-Rural Area by State South
South Zone, 2005
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HIV Prevalence by Age Group, 2005
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HIV Prevalence by Educational Status, 2005
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Are people willing to know status?

• People are still not willing to know their
  status.
• Why?
• Fear of stigma
• Fear of death
• Access to VCT services.
• There are many advantages of knowing status

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Youth Issues that Affect MMSexual Exploitation

• Three forms Identified
• Commercial Sexual exploitation,
• Pornography and
• Trafficking for sexual purposes.
• It is difficult to know how many children are
  being exploited. This is because shame, stigma,
  fear of reprisal and lack of belief in the
  authorities means that many do not report sexual
  exploitation

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Sexual Exploitation (Cont)

• Globally, it has been found that up to 2 million
  children suffer sexual exploitation every year,
  the majority of them girls.
• In Benue State, we recently did a study of
  orphans and vulnerable children. Many youths
  especially girls complained of sexual
  exploitation.
• Factors responsible for Sexual exploitation
• Erroneous belief that HIV cured by sleeping with
  a virgin

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Sexual Exploitation (cont)

• Sex tourism which targets children
• Growing use of internet for child pornography
• Increase in the international and organized
  criminal networks e.g. Niger Delta
• Those exploited are Children who are the poor and
  the uneducated and those already marginalized
• The effects of sexual exploitation on youths
  include unwanted pregnancies, severe physical and
  psychological trauma, including death, HIV/AIDS,
  other sexually transmitted diseases, maternal
  mortality

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Substance Abuse

• Alcohol.
• Cannabis- marijuana
• Stimulants e.g cocaine, amphetamines, pemoline,
  tea, coffee, kolanut, cigarette, tobacco etc.
• Sedatives/Depressants eg valium, librum,
  ativan,lexotan, sonerly, madrax, anxiolytics and
  hypnosadatives.
• Narcotic drugs e.g. heroin, morphine, pelludrine,
  codeine, opium
• Hallucinogens eg LSD, mescaline
• Inhalants (Volatile Solvents) e.g glue,
  petrol,gasoline, rubber solution, kerosine,
  aerosol, nail polish remover
• Designer drugs
• Anabolic steroids

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Factors influencing substance use

• Peer pressure.
• Desire to experiment.
• Personality defect.
• Notion of machismo risk taking to prove oneself
  to friends.
• Sibling exposure.
• Employment outside the home for adolescents.
• Social pathologies-eg Unemployment,
  under-employment.
• Parental deprivations separation, divorce, death
  of spouse etc.
• Advertising.
• Rapid urbanisation

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Use of Youths as Militia

• Militia are like an occupation army. This is
  because they maim, rape, exploit, bully,
  constitute themselves into court judges etc.
• This condition is not only peculiar to Benue or
  Nigeria alone. Why do they accept this role?
• Some are recruited by force
• Their support networks destroyed by war
• Some join voluntarily to escape poverty, abuse or
  violence or are enticed by politicians.

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Militia

• The consequences are many.
• They miss out on their education
• More likely to drift into crime
• Some come back without limbs
• Girls are forced into being girlfriends and
  forced to use contraceptives or commit abortion
  when pregnant.

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Street Children

• In Benue State especially among the Tiv this is a
  new phenomenon.
• There may be between 100 150 million street
  children in the world. In a recent UNDP survey in
  Benue and Kaduna states we found that street
  children are found almost every where.
• They lose out on education, at risk of violence,
  poor health, targeted by police and vigilantes
• They left home because of abuse, family break up

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Other youth issues

• Crime and punishment
• Bullying and punishment
• Conflict
• Social expectations
• Marriage and motherhood
• Work
• Disability
• Education and having a voice.

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How can we empower the Youths

• Empowerment is a way of enabling people to gain
  control over their lives. It is an approach which
  helps people to identify their own concerns and
  gain the skills and confidence to act upon them.
  It is unique in being based on bottom up
  strategy and calls for different strategy from
  those charged with the responsibility of
  empowerment.

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Empowerment (Cont).

• For people to be empowered they need to
• Recognize and understand their powerlessness
• Feel strongly enough about their situation to
  want to change it
• Feel capable of changing the situation by having
  information support and life skills.
• Empowerment is also used to describe a way of
  working which increases peoples power to change
  their social reality. It includes a discussion
  of community development as a way of working
  which seeks to create active participating
  communities who are empowered and able to
  challenge and change the world about them. This
  may or may not include political consciousness
  raising.

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Recommendations

• A lot of recommendations have already been
  suggested in this workshop that if implemented
  will help our Benue Youths and help prevent
  maternal mortality in Benue.
• The central issue is that of poverty alleviation.
  
• Tied to above is youth employment
• Education of our youths
• Making our hospitals and clinics work well
• Education of our leadership e.g on militia
• Creating investment culture in our people eg
  people in Zaki Biam sell yams but squander the
  money on drinks.

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THANK YOU