Empowered for Life: Young People Trained on HIV Prevention

To create awareness and reduce new HIV infections in Lagos State, Action Health Incorporated (AHI) in collaboration with AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN) scaled-up HIV prevention activities among young people by implementing the project: Promoting HIV Prevention Education among in-school Youths using a Peer-led Approach.

During the course of this project, fifty (50) in-school young people and eight (8) teachers from eight (8) secondary schools were trained as peer educators promoting HIV Prevention Education among their peers. The fifty peer educators will in turn reach out to four thousand and five hundred (4500) in-school youth, providing them information to increase their personal risk perception and ability to protect themselves from contracting HIV.

pixWith about 3 million Nigerians presently living with HIV, young people are clearly disproportionately affected by the epidemic even with the decline in overall HIV prevalence from a high of 5.8% in 2001 to about 3.4% in 2012. As the main drivers fueling Nigeria’s HIV epidemic among young people are early sexual exposure, unprotected sex, low condom use, multiple concurrent sexual partners’ informal transactional and intergenerational sex, low risk perception etc.; there is constant need to educate young people on preventive measures against the virus.

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