“People have stopped castigating us; friends and
relations no longer reject us,” said Mrs Nuhu, a
person living with HIV/AIDS in Taraba State.
She said stigma and discrimination of people
living with HIV/ AIDS in the home, work place,
public places and among relatives has reduced in
the state since the federal government took full
ownership of HIV/AIDS response in Taraba State.
A couple, Hamida and Hamza Abdullahi, who also
lives with the disease, said they went for a HIV
test before they got married four years ago and
both tested negative.
However, a few months later when Hamida got
pregnant and went for ante- natal clinic in one of
the hospitals in Jalingo, Taraba State capital, she
tested HIV positive.
She returned home in tears and informed her
husband. Hamza said at first when his wife told
him about her status, he felt like divorcing her but
decided to go to the hospital and confirm what
she told him.
The following day at the hospital, she still tested
positive to another test while her husband was
negative. The medical doctor, who had earlier
revealed Hamida’s status, advised her to go for
further tests to enable her start taking
antiretroviral drugs.
“I told the doctor that I would not divorce my wife
and since then we have been together as husband
and wife. We love each other and have no
problems,” Hamza said.
He said he went for HIV/AIDS screening several
times after that but tested negative, adding that
his wife is on antiretroviral drugs and they have
two children who were not infected.
The medical officer in-charge of HIV/AIDS
programme at the hospital, Dr. Dashe Dasogol,
said once a patient is on antiretroviral drugs, his
or her partner who is not infected, would not be
infected with the virus.
Dasogol said the same case applies to infected
pregnant women, saying that a pregnant woman
who is on antiretroviral drugs would not infect her
child.
“That is why we advise them to attend ante-natal
clinic to ensure early detection of the virus, and
once that is done, the infected mother will be
placed on drugs to prevent mother-to-child
transmission. We have achieved between 85 to 90
per cent prevention of virus transmission from
mother-to-new born babies in our hospital,” Dr
Dasogol said.
The Director-General Taraba State Agency for the
Control of AIDS (TACA), Ibrahim Sale Abba, said
the state with the support of NACA has been
carrying out aggressive public enlightenment
against stigma of people living with HIV as well
as information on the spread of the disease.
He said the agency had toured the entire 16 local
government areas of the state and addressed
individuals, students, groups, and religions leaders
against all tendencies and actions that isolate or
reject people living with HIV.
Sale Abba said prior to the mass enlightenment
campaign, people living with the disease were
discriminated in schools, in public places and at
homes.
He said the approach has started yielding results
as a local survey conducted by the agency
through HIV tests on individuals across the 16
local government areas of the state has shown
significant reduction of infection of the disease in
the state.
The DG TACA explained that before the local
survey, Taraba ranked highest with prevalence
rate of 10.5 , and second to Rivers State on the
national rating of infection.
“People in the state are now willingly coming to
heath facilities to check their status because they
know they would not be discriminated if they
tested positive,” Abba said.
He explained that during the survey, blood
samples of 55,000 persons was collected and
screened for HIV out of which 5 per cent of the
total samples tested positive.
He said there was need for the National Agency
for the Control of AIDS to conduct another
national survey on HIV/AIDS in the state in order
to confirm the survey conducted by Taraba
Agency for the Control of AIDS.
He added that success was achieved in the HIV/
AIDS programme in the state since the National
Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) t