FEATURED NEWS
AAU Trains Students On HIV/AIDS Control Skills
- Details
- Published: 04 August 2011
As part of efforts aimed at tackling the spread of HIV/AIDS pandemic, the Association of African Universities (AAU) in collaboration with the University of Port Harcourt Youth-Friendly Centre held a three-day Peer Educators’ Training programme last week.
The AAU West African Network Coordinator on HIV/AIDS and the Director, HIV/AIDS UNIPORT, Dr Nwadiuto Akani, said that the programme was aimed at reducing the spread and mitigating the effects of the disease in tertiary institutions across the continent.
Dr Akani explained that due to the high rate of new infections among young people, the AAU in collaboration with the Health Services Department, selected 50 students to be trained as Peer Educators and Role-models to educate others on the virus, listing gender orientation, risk perception and poor background information on the virus, as some of the factors that put young people at risk of the disease, despite a surfeit of enlightenment campaigns.
She expressed hope that at the end of the training, the Peer Educators would be equipped with appropriate knowledge and skills to contribute to the control of the HIV/AIDS virus, stressing that all available instruments were being mobilized to check the spread of the pandemic which targets mostly young people.
Also speaking, the Coordinator of the Youth-Friendly Centre, Dr Chinwe Ezirim, who commended the students for voluntarily training as Peer Educators, said the training would enable them fight the spread of the disease in the University and its host communities, while also protecting themselves from contracting the virus that has so far killed millions across the world.
