Rivers State Action Committee on AIDS (RIVSACA), at the weekend, claimed that about 18,000 persons in the state have been infected with the dreaded HIV/AIDS.
Project Manager of RIVSACA, Dr Chimezie Okeh, said in Port Harcourt that the figure was based on a sentinel survey conducted in 2005.
He however said an estimated 4,000 children were also infected based on “computer modelling,” adding that, “the state had a prevalence rate of 5.4 per cent.”
Okeh said the major cause of the spread of the disease in the state, especially among youths, was through heterosexual sex due to unemployment.
“The only recreation for jobless youths is sex,” Okeh remarked.
The project manager said his committee had designed programmes to reduce new infections as well as for uninfected people to take precautionary measures. These included psycho-social support and economic empowerment of those infected, orphans and vulnerable children, he said, adding that advocacy campaigns had been stepped up.
According to him, the state government was committed to making anti-retroviral drugs accessible and laboratory monitoring costs affordable as well as reducing prevalence rate by 25 per cent in 2009.