Niger Delta HIV and AIDS Prevention Initiative, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), has described Niger Delta region as the worst hit by the dreaded disease in Nigeria.
The group�s Executive Director, Mr. Dan Sagay, disclosed this to Daily Independent in Warri, while unveiling the inaugural Niger Delta HIV/AIDS Day scheduled for November 29, 2007 in Abuja.
Sagay faulted the claims by Prof. Babatunde Osotimehim, the director general, National Agency for Control of HIV/AIDS (NACA), that the country had achieved 90 per cent awareness about HIV/AIDS.
He pointed out that independent research on the spread and prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the Niger Delta undertaken by the group between March 2006 and January 2007 paints a gory picture and total contrast to the success story NACA was peddling.
Sagay, who bemoaned the factors that supported the spread of HIV/AIDS in the region, said the two cheapest commodities present on sale in the Niger Delta region were sex and death.
He stressed that sexual debutant was high with seven in every 10 fourteen-year-old girls in the rural areas unsafely sexually active
According to him, every 10 female undergraduates in tertiary institutions of the Niger Delta are self-sponsored, which is why seven in every 10 prostitutes in the region are students while eight in every 10 married couples have extra marital affairs.
“The highly mobile and highly paid oil industry workers keep scores of sexual partners most of which pretend to be faithful thereby omitting the use of condoms,” he said.
The executive director contended that abortion was highest among girls in the age bracket of 14 and 22 years, regretting that “this speaks volumes about the rate of unsafe sex in the region.”
He blamed the government, church, intervention agencies and those in charge of mitigating the spread of HIV/AIDS for looking the other way.
He pointed out that awareness on the dreaded disease is almost zero in the region.
The executive director also disclosed that mother to child HIV and AIDS infection is booming due to lack of healthcare information in the rural areas.