Girls and Women Protection and Empowerment; A Gateway to Reduction in the Spread of HIV/AIDS

Going down the memory lane; HIV was first discovered in Nigeria in the year 1986 on a teenage girl. As much as we tried to deny the report, the trace remained glaring and ‘un-doubt-able’ and since the discovery, Nigerian governments has put efforts to tide this scourge; in partnership with them on this journey are notable International Partners and Donor Agencies, but twenty-six years after, HIV remains a public health challenge.

Several policies, frameworks, guidelines, strategic action plans, laws etc, have been developed as well as interventions and programs put on line these past years, yet there remain huge gaps that must be bridged if the global world will cross over to the other side of a HIV free world. Dogged and holistic protection and empowerment of girls and women is that gap.

How the girl on which HIV was first discovered, contracted the virus is an issue that many have not really pondered on. Medical Personnel as well as Experts working on HIV will agree with me that girls and women are more susceptible to HIV and other STIs.

For reasons such as: biological makeup, high poverty rate, sexual abuse of children and girls, inability to negotiate safer sex, harmful cultural practices i.e. wife battery, wife inheritance, use of girls and women as refreshment, female genital mutilation, early and forced marriages, among others. Other factors that are blamed on girls and women include ignorance, lack of basic life building skills needed by adolescent to handle reproductive health issues, peer pressure, low self esteem, and many more.

To achieve a significant result in the tide against HIV/AIDS, there is need for every stakeholder to pay more attention to the protection of the reproductive rights and health of girls and women as well as their economic empowerment. As highlighted above, girls and women are more prone to HIV and other STIs, but one of the prominent vices that render this category of people vulnerable to HIV is sexual abuse; which is a major gender based violence.