HIV/AIDS education on social media

The National AIDS and STIs Control Programme (NACP) has announced plans to reactivate its educational campaigns on HIV/AIDS and STIs in schools throughout the country this year.

The Programme Manager of the NACP, Dr Stephen Ayisi Addo, who disclosed this  said the focus for the campaign  was to intensify  education  to prevent people, particularly  children from testing positive for the disease.

He said the NACP would also use social media platforms  which include WhatsApp and Twitter to send HIV/AIDS messages tailored for children of different age groups to educate them, adding that  the services of a media group would be engaged to provide that service.

"Despite the fact that  HIV/AIDS can be managed with drugs, we cannot continue to let people test positive for the disease and then put them on drugs. We  can only do that through behaviour change communication. There will be constant messages on prevention in the media, adolescent health centres, school clubs among others for young people," he added.

Dr Ayisi Addo said in the past, the NACP went to schools to educate schoolchildren  on HIV/AIDs but it reduced due to lack of funding and now they want to revamp it.

On why NACP chose to intensify  education on prevention this year, he explained that the programme had noticed from the sexual network in the country that older people were having sex with very young people so there was the need to engage the young people now in order for them to take precautionary measures.

Dr Ayisi Addo explained that the prevention campaign for children would  be based on  interactions where  health workers would educate the children  on all that they needed to know about the disease and then allow the children to ask questions.