HIV/AIDS testing in Maga
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 12/Feb/2010 11:13, 34 days ago
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Last Thursday was the Fete de Jeunesse (Youth Day) in Cameroon, a huge occasion with dance displays, processions, parties, and (so my Cameroonian friends assure me) more sex than normal. To prepare for the fete we worked with the health club at the lycee to do awareness raising on sexual health, and VSO paid for 300 HIV tests for Maga. After spending six hours writing numbers on syringes and making sure the right blood went onto the right test sheets in our highly unprofessional laboratory (a classroom at the lycee, see left) I was really happy to find out that everyone who'd been tested was HIV negative. This is a big improvement on the national average, which the World Health Organisation estimates as somewhere between 5 and 10 percent (although it's lower in the more remote and conservative Extreme North).
