World AIDS Day
on The Road Less Travelled (Cameroon), 01/Dec/2009 10:53, 34 days ago
Today is World AIDS Day.  A day which would probably pass unnoticed and unpublicized in Canada but here in Cameroon everyone knows about it.  Organisations have put together events to spread awareness of the disease and the media has released a lot of press about HIV/AIDS.  In some cities there will be moto-taxi parades (moto-taxi drivers are a high-rsk group much like truck drivers) and in the large cities of Yaounde and Douala condoms will be handed out, testing will be available and government officials will make speeches.Some interesting facts about HIV/AIDS in Cameroon from an article by Liu Fang (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-11/29/content_12560789.htm) :- Three quarters of women affected by HIV/AIDS in Cameroon are between 19 and 24, three times more than the affected men of the same bracket.- Out of 35,780 young people tested voluntarily in August 2009 during the operation "Holidays without AIDS" organized since 2003 by African Synergies, 22,500 were boys and 13,280 were girls.- Poverty is a signficant factor in addition to cultural factors like early marriage, female genital mutilation, and scarification of the body by stained objects.- The sensitization that has cost billions of dollars against AIDS has had limitations since it has not helped in addressing some of the cultural aspects of some ethnic groups on the African continent.- Camroon has a prevalence rate of 5.1 percent, which includes 6.8 percent of women and 4.1 percent of men, 553,000 people are living with HIV in Cameroon, where the first case was reported in 1985. The rate is 9.9 percent in the country's young population.- The Cameroonian government on May 1, 2007 decided to provide the free antiretroviral treatment for the people living with HIV. There are now 136 health training centers across the country to take care of the patients.