UNICEF tasks journalists on HIV/AIDS

THE United Nations Children Emergency Funds (UNICEF) has challenged media practitioners and religious leaders in the country to include in their professional duties the dissemination of accurate information on the dangers of Human Immuno-deficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS).While speaking in Yola, the capital of Adamawa State at the weekend, the children and AIDS specialist UNICEF D field office Bauchi, Dr. Asusuchi Okey Osuji, said that the media and religious leaders had a major role to play in the war to reduce the spread of the dreaded HIV/AIDS.He said that the only way to reduce the spread of the disease was to educate the public properly on the negative effects of the HIV/AIDS.Okey who spoke during a seminar on orientation and sensitisation meeting with the media on prevention and elimination of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV/AIDS, noted that the aim of the workshop was to equip media practitioners on disseminating useful information concerning HIV/AIDS.Okey maintained that without the cooperation of the media and religious leaders, the war against the spread of the dreaded disease (HIV/AIDS) would not succeed.He appealed to the media and religious leaders to take the campaign against HIV/AIDS to rural areas and that culture was constituting a roadblock against the fight of HIV/AIDS.In her welcome speech, the wife of Governor Murtala Nyako, Dr. Halima Nyako, stated that the prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) was one of the measures adopted to further reduce the infection rate of HIV/AIDS in the state.
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