Imagine a girl walks into a classroom, greets her teacher and the class, and begins to walk to her seat, only to be called back by her teacher and asked before the whole class if her mother who is HIV- positive has begun treatment. She replies that her mother has begun. The teacher asks her to move her things from her present seat to another, where from henceforth she would be sitting alone. As the students go out for lunch-break, other students begin to rain questions on her and some even go the extent of avoiding her all because she has a mother who is HIV- positive.
She tries to cope for a few days with the taunting and coldness being meted out to her, and when she could no longer cope, she stops coming to school. Since she is unable to let her parents in on what is bothering her due to their lack of consideration, she devises alternatives to school. She wanders to strange and lonely places to while away the time. After school hours she would come home with other teenagers as if she was coming from school. With time, her parents get to know and mete out some harsh treatment to her without reaching down into her emotional being to unravel what is ailing her. She feels her family doesn’t understand and do not care about her feelings and leaves home. While she wanders along she meets some man who listens to her tales and offers her some succour and shelter. He takes the time to listen again and again to her stories and with time she begins to feel comfortable in his company and relaxes her vigilance. Soon one thing leads to another and they have sex. Soon the rate of intercourse increases between them. With time she begins to experience some symptoms she can’t explain. They go for a test. The medical authorities as a matter of policy test her for HIV, pregnancy, etc. It is discovered that she is pregnant. Not only that, she is HIV-positive.
Unsettled by such development, the guy makes off leaving her to wallow in her misery. Suddenly, she finds herself in a dilemma which she was not prepared to handle. Several options play out in her mental spectrum and the most promising of all is to end it all. With no one to provide her with needed counseling and support, she commits suicide and there ends the tragic chapter of one of Nigeria’s youth by just an ounce of thoughtlessness manifested in a stint of stigmatization.
It is common knowledge that AIDS kills. Not only AIDS, tuberculosis, measles, malaria, diabetes, cardiac arrest, sickle cell anaemia, cholera, diarrhea, and a host of other medical abnormalities. Apart from these medical monsters, there are many other things that kill or reduce life to something a little above death. But when viewed from another perspective it cannot be said that this medical absurdities kills faster than stigma associated by society to certain medical conditions.
Stigmatization – the act or policy of labeling and/or branding a person or group of persons as socially unacceptable due to a medical condition, religious or other belief, racial identity, or other reasons – is a major cause of death for many Nigerian youths who are infected by AIDS. It is important to state as clearly as possible that for one to be infected AIDS or has AIDS does not make him or her less than a human. He retains his/her dignity as human person. He is still flesh and blood like the rest of us. Most times, it is bias, bigotry and prejudice which are a spill over of the absurdities of our socio-cultural and socio-religious belief systems, values, attitudes.
Some hold though erroneously that AIDS can only be contacted through sex and this the perverted aspects of it, viz – premarital, extramarital gay, etc. Since these are held as anathema both in our cultural ethos and religious circles, it becomes evident why AIDS victims should in the same vein be accorded anathema status.
Another aspect of this anomaly is the belief that AIDS is divine retribution meted out to the wayward. Nothing can be further from the truth. Some subscribe to this fallacious purview and manifest it in the stigmatization of anyone who is infected by the virus. Sometimes this stretches into the public domain, where people in authority use dictions and language that not just suggestive of stigmatization but very offensive at face value.
The young people of this nation are the most affected by this stigmatization issue. For the infected, they are stigmatized and treated as outcasts. They are looked upon as morally debased individuals who could not control their sexual urge and have consequently contacted HIV/AIDS as a just recompense of their dissolute lifestyle. This smacks of crass ignorance, as there various routes of transmission of the virus. Besides sexual intercourse, AIDS can be contacted through the use of any piercing instrument, through transfusion of unscreened blood, and from mother to child during childbirth, delivery, and/or breastfeeding in the first three months.
For the affected such as people affected by AIDS (PABAs) and orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) it is an all-inclusive branding where the children, relatives and other family members of the infected are labeled as social outcasts for no other crime but that one of their own is infected with HIV. in schools, workplaces, organization, and other places, they are subjected to harsh and unpleasant treatments and attitudes. this needs not be so.
It is important for everyone to appreciate the fact that just a single act of thoughtlessness and lack of consideration can go a long way to precipitate disastrous catastrophes which could engulf the rest of us. there is need for all to understand that it is a member of the human family that the stigma is being directed at. no one deserves to be associated with any form of stigma, not even AIDS victims. they deserve the best of our cordiality, care and consideration. where we do not treat them as such we are only fast-tracking their early death.
The statistics are there for all to scrutinize and ascertain for themselves what havoc stigmatization is wreaking on youths who are infected by AIDS. Even when a person is infected with HIV, it would take some months for the virus to completely undermine the individuals immune system and result in full blown AIDS. at the stage where it has metamorphosed into AIDS it would still take about 10 years for the person to die. and this is depending on a lot of factors – how strong the individual’s immune system is, the person’s hygiene regime, the antiretrovirals at his/her disposal, the emotional reservoir he/she can draw from at such critical period, and many other factors.
Given the above and looking at available medical data, it is a fact that there are even other deadlier diseases that kills faster than AIDS. Cholera, diphtheria, diarrhea, and malaria kills faster than AIDS. So it is unnecessary and inhuman stigmatizing AIDS victims, especially the youths.
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