Posted by Daily Champion (Lagos) on
NIGERIA has more than 2,000 registered men who have sex with men (MSM), National Action Committee on AIDS (NACA) chairman, Babatunde Osotimehin has said.
NIGERIA has more than 2,000 registered men who have sex with men (MSM), National Action Committee on AIDS (NACA) chairman, Babatunde Osotimehin has said.
Osotimehin disclosed this weekend in Abuja at a Stakeholders Forum on countdown to the 14th International Conference on AIDS and STI's in Africa. ICASA 2005 scheduled for December 4 and 9.
"Some Nigerians behave like ostrich. At present there is a group of registered MSM with headquarters in the South West who meet annually," he said.
Osotimehin who is also the vice president of ICASA 2005, explained that the group which had been losing its members to AIDS has been collaborating with NACA.
He added that in some of the prisons across the country, there were lots of MSM with a high rate of HIV/AIDS.
Also corroborating this, Director of Primary Health Care in the Federal Ministry of Health, Dr. Edugie Abebe, advised the public not to be judgemental about the MSM situation in the country.
"It would be dangerous for us to discriminate against these people; after all they have rights and are human," Abebe said.
She explained that if they are discriminated against, they might go underground and this could be dangerous for the family and society.
Abebe who said that ICASA would present 'many faces' of HIV/AIDS, expressed the hope that this would help break the stigmatisation problems amongst PLWAs.
Earlier, the president of ICASA 2005, Prof. Femi Soyinka, said that AIDS had remained the major factor that has continued to afflict the society.