The Sunday News
Robin Muchetu, Senior Reporter
THE Ministry of Health and Child Care will forward staff to most high schools to start HIV awareness campaigns before referring those willing for testing as a way of according pupils the chance to learn more about Sexual Health Rights from a young age.
The ministry is embarking on the project in a bid to ensure they deal with incidences of HIV transmission among the school-going age groups as they were among the most vulnerable.
Deputy national co-ordinator, Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) in the Ministry of Health and Child Care Dr Solomon Mukungunugwa said: “Knowledge is vital information for this group, so we have decided to equip them with all they need to know then if they need further information they can then go to health care facilities of their choice and get the actual services.”
He said the ministry was going to assist the school pupils through school health programmes. He said it was unfortunate that they cannot offer HIV testing services at the schools but will be referring those that are interested to health facilities nearest to them.
“We want those pupils who are HIV-negative to remain negative and those that are positive to avoid transmitting the virus to others so we will educate these two groups of people via our programme. So information about the disease will be a good starting point before we actually get in to testing and treatment,” he said.
Dr Mukungunugwa said adolescence was a vulnerable age group stage as it was the time when most people start experimenting in sex.
“A few people understand this stage, there is a lot of peer pressure and many other things. People do not fully comprehend what goes on when one is in this stage worse still an HIV-positive adolescent. A lot will be happening in their lives which needs to be managed well and we are coming in to assist,” he said.
Dr Mukungunugwa said the ministry wants to scale up identification of HIV exposed and infected infants, children and adolescents, using facility and community based approaches.
He said the ministry also want to expand access to infant, paediatric and adolescent Antiretroviral Therapy through decentralised and integrated services in the private and public sectors.
