By Henrietta Lucy Attah
Wife of the President, Dr. Mrs. Aisha Muhammadu Buhari has called for the scale up of adolescent health information, stating that it is necessary for successful AIDS control and prevention.
A statement issued recently by Suleiman Haruna, her Director of Information said she made the call at the China/Africa AIDS Prevention and Control Conference, which was organized by the First Lady of the Peoples’ Republic of China, Professor Peng Liyuan on the Sidelines of the Forum of China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing, China recently
Mrs. Buhari gave the example of Nigeria, which has studied the adolescent and young people’s challenges and developed a National HIV strategy that targets this population with context specific interventions. She lamented the high number of HIV patients in Nigeria and other African countries.
“It is undisputable fact that HIV continues to be a major global Public health issue” she said, “and it is painful to note that adolescent and young people are among the high risk and vulnerable groups” describing them as representing the future productive group of any society. She charged stakeholders to take extraordinary measures to mitigate the contextual drivers of this epidemic among this special group if the dream of ending AIDS by 2030 is to be achieved.
