By Decide Nhendo
My Age Zimbabwe in collaboration with Development Agenda for Girls and Women in Africa Network (DAWA) through support of ViiV Healthcare are scaling up talks on HIV and AIDs with focus on measures to emancipate adolescent girls and young women living with HIV from a project known as ‘Connecting Adolescent Girls and Women for HIV Prevention’.
The likeminded organisations held a stakeholders meeting at Charles Austin Theater in Masvingo recently with institutions like the Ministry of Health and Child Care, Zimbabwe National Family Planning (ZNFPC), Aids Health Foundation Zimbabwe, Students and Youth Working on Reproductive Health Action Team (SAYWHAT) and local media among others.
Speaking at the meeting, My Age capacity building policy advocate officer Obedience Mazenge said the organizations were supposed to come up with best ways to help around 1500 young women and adolescent girls with HIV in Masvingo Urban and Mwenezi where HIV infections are concentrated.
He said they chose to focus on these two districts since they are HIV hotspots with the infections resulting from power imbalance in relationships, forced sex, economic inequalities and fear of reaction of family, friends and partners when they are aware one is using HIV controls.
“We implemented this project in two districts; Masvingo urban and Mwenezi targeting girls aged between 15 and 19 years who have no knowledge on HIV.
“Nearly half of adolescent girls living with HIV are not getting treatment which means they are exposed to premature deaths, so it is up to all of you here to come up with solutions on how best we can help these girls,” said Mazenge.
He said their main objectives were to increase the knowledge of 1500 young women and girls living with HIV, to organize community education sessions for 500 people, focusing on young women and adolescent girls, reaching out to parents and to facilitate access to HIV prevention commodities for young women.
He also said there was need for an increase in health seeking behavior for 300 young women and girls on HIV and increase participation of 15 adolescent women and young women in Masvingo to lead, engage at district, provincial and national level.
ZNFPC’s Fungai Mushoshe said the best way to get information on how best adolescent girls and young women can be helped in HIV prevention was to get information from youth since behavior change starts by one as it is by choice.
“When we have interactions, it is genuine to get information from the young women themselves as they are the ones who are being affected to foster change of behavior and reaction to HIV prevention,” said Mushoshe.
Aids Health Foundation Zimbabwe primary councilor Stainely Chipoka spoke about barriers which he said were barring young women and adolescent girls from accessing information on HIV prevention.
“Every person needs good health when growing up as one will be being surrounded by great responsibilities which require good mental and physical health.
“There are different barriers which can limit one’s prevention to HIV which include social factors like in some instances where a girl must walk up to 20 kilometers to a health facility, cultural beliefs as some church doctrines are against treatment from clinics as well as misconceptions,” said Chipoka.
He said there was need for HIV resources mobilization and advocacy to counter these barriers, also bemoaning cases of sexual harassment saying every month up to 50 victims of sexual harassment are registered at Masvingo Provincial Hospital.
SAYWHAT peer educator Redemption Chiorese said it was one’s choice to be informed on HIV issues, and he said young women have to take the disease seriously calling health service providers to use their authority for the good not abusing it.
“It is an individual’s choice to access HIV information, young people need to prioritize health services on social media not only spending their time on sport, celebrities and other trending things.
“This disease must be taken seriously, relevant ministries have to give young women much information and time on HIV prevention issues and service providers must not abuse their authority as they end up being offside,” said Chiorese.
