The Nation Newspaper

Tag: stigmatisation

  • Pharmacists to Nigerians: check health status, stop stigmatisation

    Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) President, Ahmed I. Yakasai, has urged Nigerians to check their health status, stop stigmatisation against HIV/AIDS patients and show love to  them.

    Yakasai stated this at this year’s World AIDS Day.

    Quoting the UNAIDS, Yakassai said last year, Nigeria had 220,000 new HIV infections and 160,000 AIDS-related deaths.

    ‘’There were 3,200,000 people living with HIV in 2016, among which 30 percent were accessing antiretroviral therapy. Among pregnant women living with HIV, 32 percent were accessing treatment or prophylaxis to prevent transmission of HIV to children. An estimated 37,000 Children were newly infected with HIV due to mother-to child transmission. Among people living with HIV, approximately 24 percent had suppressed viral loads.

    “The Key populations most affected by HIV in Nigeria are: Sex workers, with an HIV prevalence of 14.4 percent; Gay men and other men who have sex with men, with an HIV prevalence of 23 percent and people who inject drugs, with an HIV prevalence 3.4 percent,” he added.

    Yakasai said everyone, regardless of who they are or where they live, has a right to health, which is also dependent on adequate sanitation and housing, nutritious food, healthy working conditions and access to justice.

    He said: “The right to health is the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, as enshrined in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This includes the right of everyone, including people living with and affected by HIV, to the prevention and treatment of ill health, to make decisions about one’s own health and to be treated with respect and dignity and without discrimination.”

    He explained that the #myrighttohealth campaign focused on the right to health, which explored the challenges people.

  • Glo-sponsored Professor Johnbull kicks against stigmatisation of ex-prisoners

    This week’s episode of TV drama series, Professor Johnbull, sponsored by national telecommunications company Globacom will be focusing on stigmatisation and discrimination against ex-convicts and people living with HIV and other diseases.

    Titled Stigma, the programme, which comes up on NTA Network, NTA International on DSTV Channel 251 and NTA on StarTimes at 8.30 p.m. on Tuesday enjoys the society to put an end to stigmatisation of ex-convicts. It also calls for timely and proper integration of ex-convicts to the community so that they will not return to the vices that led them to the prison in the first place.

    The erudite Professor, Nollywood’s Kanayo O. Kanayo, KOK, elaborates on the usefulness of having a reformatory prison system for ex-convicts as well as the need for robust public enlightenment campaign on how they can also be useful to the society if fully integrated.

    KOK, who advises people not see people living with HIV as outcasts, also urges every citizen to make conscious efforts to know his HIV status, adding that “there is no ordinary crime as every crime has a devastating effect”.

    A repeat broadcast of the programme comes up on Friday at 8.30 pm on the same TV channels.

  • From Prison to Ivory Tower: Dada battles stigmatisation

    From Prison to Ivory Tower: Dada battles stigmatisation

    His road to the Ivory Tower was strewn with thorns. A young robber condemned to death, Olukayode Dada obtained mercy through amnesty, and decided to live right. But that was when the real battle started. He faces stigmatisation and rejection everywhere, even among family members and friends. He stayed almost a decade before he could get a job, lecturing at one of the nation’s foremost private universities. Government could make the prison more reformatory. Maybe his story can jumpstart that process, writes ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE.

    oday, he stands on the threshold of history. With few months to the defence of his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) thesis in Physiology, Kayode Dada is self-made. He has not only burnt the proverbial midnight candle at both ends to get to this stage.

    He carries a yoke the society is not making any lighter. His frail frame tells a sea of sad stories. Dada, despite his towering academic accomplishments, battle stigmatisation everywhere he turns. In spite of the glitz of his academic prowess, Dada, in the eye of the society, remains an ex-convict.

    That tag remained sewn to his name. Tired of fighting it any further, he had resigned to fate. Even as he shared the testimony of his life’s journey, he couldn’t hold back the tears–mixture of agony, pain and joy.

    At a service organised by Bishop Kayode Williams, also an ex-convict, to celebrate God’s saving grace and miraculous healing from a demonic attack wrought on him during a crusade at New Gbagi Market in Ibadan, at the Oba Tejuoso Assembly of the Christ Vessel of Grace Church International, Old Oko-Oba, Lagos, Dada gave a graphic illustration of a life sprouting from the nadir.

    Dada started out in life as a straight young man. “I have a very decent upbringing, and my parents are deeply religious of the Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) stock, I am also a dedicated chorister,” he said.

    Yet, when he slipped, due to peer pressure, it was fatal. “I joined a bad gang, and I was lured into a robbery operation, around Agbado, a border town in Ogun State. I was the only one caught by the police and I was convicted and sentenced to death. At the prison, I rededicate myself, having known that I am just waiting for the hangman.

    He embraced the evangelism brought by the Prison Rehabilitation and Evangelical Ministry International (PREMI), a prison organisation founded by an ex-convict Pastor, now Bishop Kayode Williams.

    “My changed way of life must have attracted the prison authorities and after four years on the condemned cell, I was granted freedom. That was in 2003.”

    In 2002, Dada sat for JAMB from prison, and passed. Then the first post-prison battle started. Authorities of the University of Lagos would have nothing to do with an ex-convict. But the then Pro-Chancellor, Chief Afe Babalola (SAN), would have none of it. More so as he was on PREMI’s Board. He got his admission, though not in Medicine his first choice, but Physiology.

    Throughout the four years, Dada recalled the school authorities, unknown to him, policed him. Shorn of friends as no one wanted to have anything to do with him, he found solace in his books and the lab was his favourite reading spot.

    Few weeks to his final year, one of those policing him approached him and confessed that he had been tried and tested and he was given a clean bill of health. He graduated with a very strong second-class Upper Division.

    The stigmatisation followed him to the camp of the National Youths Service Corps, which, again, he would have lost but for Bishop Williams’ and Babalola’s intervention. He recalled how he was denied a teaching job at a crèche after his service, due to his status, and even when he volunteered as a laboratory hand he found his movements were usually monitored.

    The frustration resulted in his enrolling for a Master’s of Science (M.Sc) degree in Physiology, which he completed in 2012. A feat that might have been a mirage without the financial support of philanthropists such as Mrs Nosa Igiebor, wife of publisher of TELL Magazine, Oba Tejuoso and Bishop Williams, among others.

    “One day, I was in the laboratory at UNILAG when I received a phone call to come for an interview at Babcock University. I never applied to that university. I was jittery. I told Oba Adedapo Tejuosho and Bishop Williams both of who told me to attend the interview.

    “I was happy when no reference was made in the forms we all filled. However, during the second leg of the interview, when another form was shared and we were asked to state if we had been convicted before, I lost all hope. Moreso, when Bishop Williams asked me not to lie about my state.

    “Interestingly, the form was brushed aside and I eventually got the job. Last year, I became not only a Senior Lecturer, but also the overall best lecturer in the entire Babcock University, an unexpected award of excellence most celebrated by the school authority,” Dada said.

    He said the university has made his burden a little lighter. Students now freely come to him for counselling and the school now rely on him on disciplinary matters.

    “The journey to this path has been tortuous but the reward has been worth all the sowing,” he said.

    On what could be done for things to be better for ex-convicts, Dada said: “The society should stop demonising any convict. The prison is a reformatory home and society should stop seeing it as a condemnatory one. Anyone who goes into prison either becomes broken-hearted or hardened and the society could make it better if we all show some understanding.

    “The society has already concluded and foreclosed the future for ex-convicts. They cannot get love. Everywhere they turn, they see hatred. They are condemned for their sins, even where they might have been innocently convicted.

    “They can never get a decent home or clothes. They cannot walk freely in the community, get a job, marry or raise a family. They are condemned to a life of solitude. They are ostracised by the society that ought to look forward to their full rehabilitation. Without the right support, ex-convicts become hardened and commit another crime in order to return to prison, where he could find love and solace.”

    He said he was becoming a good story because he had benevolent giants willing to offer him their shoulders. I may not have turned out to be this if not for God and these people who have taken it upon themselves to break the stereotypes and rise above stigma.

    He recalled he usually fancied Pastor Williams (as he then was) preach at crusades around Agbado, where he grew up, never knowing that their path would “interwove beyond the ordinary.”

    “Once during service in our church, I had prayed that I wanted to be like this man (Williams). And looking back right now, I nearly did, though I became a robber, killed, arrested and condemned to death before I was rescued and given another life. I became the Elisha while Bishop Williams is the Elijah,” he said.

  • Hijab: Muslim women decry harassment, stigmatisation

    Hijab: Muslim women decry harassment, stigmatisation

    Nigeria Muslim women yesterday expressed concerns over the alleged stigmatisation and harassment of women in hijab, the women’s veil, across the country.

    The National Amirah of Al-Mu’minaat Organisation, Hajia Nimatullah Abdullateef, who addressed reporters in Lagos ahead of the World Hijab Day, noted that Muslim women were worried by the way the Army harassed their colleagues within and outside conflict zones because they wore hijab.

    She said hijab is a symbol of the Muslim woman’s faith and adherence to Allah’s injunction.

    According to her, Muslim women remember the harassment, persecution, emotional and psychological anguish women in hijab suffered recently in Nigeria, especially after President Muhammadu Buhari’s statement that the nation might consider a ban on the Islamic dress code, if terrorists continued to use it as a cover to bomb innocent people.

    Hajia Abdullateef decried the attempt by authorities of the Nigeria Identity Management Commission (NIMC) in its Ibadan, Oyo State office, to legislate and limit the hijab standards in Nigeria.

    The amirah (women’s leader) said the soldiers’ attitude remained a festering sore in “our heart, while we note with suppressed anguish the harassment of Muslim women in hijab by officers and men of the Nigerian Army within and without military installations in different cities all over Nigeria”.

    She added: “Other government agencies are trying to rob the Muslim of the hijab as her right to freedom of religious expression, by demanding that she expose her ears during image capturing. These are: the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) and the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC). We call on the leadership of these agencies to call their men to order.

    “We wish to remind the Nigerian security institutions that Boko Haram is the enemy and not Muslim hijabis (women in hijab). Indeed, Boko Haram has used several ingenious garbs and artefacts to camouflage its members and carry out its dastardly and evil attacks, including fruits, vegetables, motor vehicles and even fake army and police uniforms…”

     

  • Groups partner against HIV/AIDS scourge, stigmatisation

    Ambrose Nnaji reports on the recent activities of the Red Ribbon Coalition against HIV/AIDS  

    On line with the global fight against the scourge, the Nigerian Red Ribbon Coalition against HIV/AIDS has rolled out campaign programme designed to promote positive behavioural change towards people living with the virus.

    The programme was in commemoration of the World HIV/Aids Day commemorated across the world.

    The coalition is made up of the Society for Family Health, Coca-Cola Nigeria Limited, Youth Empowerment and Development Initiative (YEDI) and the Youth Empowerment Foundation (YEF).

    Convener of the Coalition, Emeka Mba in a media chat in Lagos disclosed that the group was targeting over 3.5million people with the key message. He said it would provide access to free HIV Counseling and testing services to over 7,500 Nigerians across four states of the country including Akwa Ibom, Benue, Lagos and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

    He said that the scheme was going to be a mixture of advocacy, mobilisation and sensitization that would drive positive change while at the same time provide free access to HTC services to the communities, adding it would run for a couple of weeks

    Meanwhile, the group also organised a novelty match for entertainment celebrities from the corporate world. Mba said the match was important in driving the success of the initiative, as football has a very compelling power to bring people together. He added that over 2, 500 people would be receiving key message on that day and at the same time getting tested.

    “We have been driving this initiative over the last ten years with Coca-cola. We really thought it was important to bring this group together, people who are well-tested who know the hint around HIV to come together. There is so much we can do when we pull resources together,” he said. Adding, the group has put together plan that would drive the project to fruition.

    “We are also taking this beyond Lagos, which is one thing that differentiates this coalition, we are taking this across four states, in the course of our analysis, we have worked out some high risk zones in the country we have scheduled for the outreach,” he stated

    BCC Prevention Specialist, Society for Family Health, Lagos State, Emmanuel Olaoti, said people discriminate towards those living with HIV because of lack of knowledge.

    According to him there are probabilities that people are living with the virus and they will be silent about it even within their family for fear of discrimination.

     “We want to let people realise that they are doing a lot of disservice to themselves, to their families, to the community and to Nigeria as a whole by expressing discrimination and stigmatisation to people living with HIV”

    Olaoti said people still have the wrong notion about how HIV is transmitted and how it is not transmitted and that the coalition is out to correct this gap in knowledge. “We are going to tell people the simple ways that HIV is transmitted. If you have sex without condom either vaginal or oral sex or any form of sex without condom, there are chances that you can get infected with HIV; if you take unscreened blood, there are chances that you can get infected; if you share sharp objects, there are chances that you can get infected. If you are a pregnant woman and you don’t get delivered on your baby in a good clinic, there are chances that you can get infected during child-birth or even during pregnancy or when you are breastfeeding.”

    “We are also going to be talking about the way people cannot get infected with the virus. If I am HIV positive, it does not mean that people around me will get infected. People have the notion that if I am identified as HIV-positive everybody that shakes hands with me or hugs me will get infected. We want to make people understand that caring for someone who is living with the virus, eating in the same plate, showing love or even sleeping in the same bed with them does not mean you will contact the virus.” He also said that a parent does not have to withdraw their children from school just because a pupil in the school has HIV.

    The Executive Secretary, Youth Empowerment Foundation, Inalola Akin-Jimoh, said attention was being focused on young people not only within tertiary institution but also at the community, level adding that mostly young people acquire the HIV virus

    She also stressed the need for mothers to get tested, as this would help them know their status and help prevent passing the virus unto their babies.

    In the same development, the Executive Director, Youth Empowerment and Development Initiative (YEDI), Anuoluwa Ishola said the partnership was to ensure the reach of many more people

    She said: “With this partnership, we would be able to reach more people and do more. This coalition is no longer only a Lagos affair, as we are moving to other parts of the country to reach more people.”

    The Communication Manager, Coco-Cola Nigeria Limited, Sam Umukoro, said the company was committed to helping in public sensitisation, against stigmatisation, discrimination and segregation of people living with HIV.

    He said the partnership with the red ribbon coalition would go a long way in contributing to a sustainable community.

    “We believe that wherever we operate, we must make a difference and for us as a company partnering with this coalition is significant in developing sustainable communities where we operate.” He said.

    According to him, Coco-cola has been part of the public sensitisation for the past ten years, adding that it has partnered with some other organisations, including Hope Worldwide and Friends Africa.

  • Ebola: Between stigmatisation and misinformation

    I was quite young when I learnt about HIV/AIDS. From the popular TV show “I need to know”, several WHO and UNICEF sponsored awareness and a host of adverts on the electronic and print media illustrating the virus, its causes and its mode of spread, I had understood its nature, severity and control measures. With lots of genuine information that was and is still made available to the public on HIV/AIDS, one could hardly feign ignorance about its spread and fatality.

    However, this awareness was not confined to the bad sides of the disease, they also addressed its management and preventions. More so, they emphasised that HIV/AIDS was bad, but there was a worse killer: stigmatisation. The phrase “stigmatization kills faster than AIDS” is one we can hardly forget. Of course, the fear of stigmatisation still killed a lot of people faster than the AIDS virus itself.

    Today, many years after the advent of AIDS the world is experiencing a recurrence of another viral outbreak- the Ebola virus. Now peculiar to other viral infections the Ebola virus is easily transmittable and very deadly. Also unlike HIV/AIDS it has a very short incubation period of about three weeks and kills just as fast as it infects. Worse still the Ebola virus has no known cure and the world is still experimenting on several treatment methods.

    The Ebola virus, dreaded as it may seem has been surrounded by too many myths. Stigmatisation and misinformation, factors that seem very mild have surprisingly overthrown Ebola in terms of fatality in recent times. Misinformation took its first toll on Nigeria. Many Nigerians would recall how they heralded a new dawn with text messages and updates on social media that kola nut could now cure Ebola.

    The kola nut sellers had a swell time as it was bumper sales for them. Kola nuts that sold for just about N20 began to sell for the price of N50 and above. Nigerians failed to verify the sources of the information and more people did not consider the fact that excessive consumption of kola nuts was also a form of drug addiction. In this computer age and in Nigeria a country with the highest users of internet in Africa, I was disappointed at the vulnerability of our people. Luckily for us Nigerians no fatality was recorded as a result of our initial show of ignorance.

    But misinformation got its second chance when another round of misleading information reached the social media. This time, it was warm salt water that would prevent Ebola. Some of the updates ridiculously stated that people should have their bath with warm salt water and even use salt as body lotion and of course drink as much salt water as possible. Not a few fell for the bait. More surprising was the fact that even some educated health workers, people we would ordinarily meet for genuine information, were also among the peddlers of such false information. Sadly some Nigerians paid for their ignorance this time, and they paid the ultimate price. About five people reportedly died due to excessive consumption of salt water during that period. Misinformation proved it’s “worth” taking almost the same number of lives that Ebola took in Nigeria.

    Stigmatisation came next and is fast finding its feet. The sad thing about stigmatisation is that it kills slowly, painfully and yet indirectly. Most people live with it for so long before they decide they’ve had enough and most of the victims of stigmatization end up taking the painful decision of committing suicide.  And so it was that recently a Liberian woman was found dead hanging on a tree early in the morning in Magodo, a suburb of Lagos. Reports revealed that she had been stigmatised in the area where she lived because she was Liberian, her fellow countryman had brought Ebola into our country and the outbreak had not yet been successfully contained in her country. Nobody could risk contracting Ebola, and as a result her immediate society moved back to the ages of pre-civilisation and treated her like an outcast. With no family or friend to run to for succour, she committed suicide. The late nurse, Justina Ejelonus fiancés story is not less bad, though he’s lucky to be alive and free from Ebola. The virus took away his fiancée and stigmatisation took away his job, friends and almost his dignity in the society. A lot of families have been ejected from their homes and more people discriminated against because of their connection with some Ebola patients or even a survivor. With stigmatisation, it is painful to die but it is even more painful to live.

    With misinformation and stigmatization, Ebola has found strong competition and until we break free from their shackles, we might lose more lives and more importantly our sense of humanity. Luckily, Nigeria has been declared free from Ebola, but whether we like it or not, there may still be viral outbreaks in future and our immediate reactions to it determines says a lot about our understanding of empathy. The government has a role to play and it is in fact commendable that the Lagos state government invited all the Ebola survivors to the government house, a step I believe would go a long way in addressing stigmatisation.

    However, we have a greater role. The social media is one of the fastest and most efficient means of disseminating information. Hence we should post information from legitimate sources and verify messages sent to us before taking them hook, line and sinker. We must understand too that viral outbreaks respect no one, even the best doctors and nurses have died from viral infections. It could be anybody. And so, we should not in the name of precaution end up being cruel to people because of their medical condition.

     

    Sarat, 300-Level Applied Chemistry, UDUS

     

     

     

     

  • Jonathan’s anger over Ebola stigmatisation

    President Goodluck Jonathan might have lost his cool on Wednesday last week over the misplaced consequences of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) on Nigerians who travel to foreign countries.

    The disease was brought into Nigeria by the late Liberian-American, Patrick Sawyer.

    Jonathan did not hesitate to caution countries stigmatising Nigerians over the disease, which many international organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations (UN) had praised Nigeria for adequately containing it.

    The occasion for President Jonathan to criticise the countries that maltreat and pick on Nigerians over the disease presented itself when a Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr. David Navarro, visited him at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Wednesday.

    He condemned the trend of discrimination and stigmatisation of Nigerians who travel abroad at the meeting with Navarro, who had visited the countries that are worst hit by Ebola, including Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, before coming to Nigeria.

    The President particularly denounced the discriminatory actions which forced Nigeria’s team to the Youth Olympics in China to abandon its participation at the championship.

    None of such Nigerian quarantined and tested in the countries involved, as at last week, tested positive to the disease.

    The National Sports Commission (NSC) mid-last month announced the pulling out of the country’s contingent from the Youth Olympics billed for Nanjing, China.

    According to the Director-General of NSC, Gbenga Elegbeleye, Nigerian athletes, who were already in China perfecting strategies for the games, were treated like lepers by the organisers of the championship.

    The Nigerian athletes, who were billed to feature in wrestling, beach volleyball and athletics, he said, were not only quarantined by the organisers due to the news of Ebola virus in Nigeria, but they were also barred from training ahead of the competition alongside athletes from other countries.

    Most of the Nigerian officials for the championship, he added, were also denied visa before the competition started.

    A Nigerian in India was quarantined and admitted at Jogeshwari’s Civic-run Trauma Centre in Mumbai Hospital last month after the airport authorities were informed that the man complained of having fever.

    The 32-year-old Nigerian had returned to India via a connecting Emirates airlines flight from Nigeria.

    After the necessary tests and monitoring, it was discovered that the Nigerian didn’t exhibit any symptoms of the deadly Ebola disease.

    Another Nigerian was quarantined in Hong Kong, China for showing Ebola-like symptoms during a trip from Lagos via Dubai to Hong Kong in early August.

    He was vomiting and suffering from diarrhea when he arrived at Hong Kong.

    After admission in a hospital in China, the man tested negative to the deadly Ebola virus.

    A 30-year-old Nigerian woman was also quarantined in Germany in August when she showed symptoms similar to that of the deadly Ebola disease.

    The woman, who fainted shortly after returning from Nigeria, was immediately hospitalised by the German health authorities to prevent Ebola virus disease in the country.

    A Nigerian specialist, Mojeed Olayinka Agoro, who is a Production Assistant at Dung Quat Oil Refinery in the central province of Quang Ngai, Vietnam was also quarantined for Ebola monitoring in Vietnam after arriving from Nigeria early last month.

    A medical examination carried out on him later showed that he was in a normal health condition.

    To confirm the test results and for the incubation period of two to 21 days to elapse, Agoro was isolated at home and self-monitored his health under professional instructions from the Provincial Preventive Health Centre, with assistance from the refinery’s health unit.

    Besides Agoro, two other Nigerians who arrived in Vietnam last month were also isolated for monitoring for signs of the deadly virus.

    The two Nigerians, who flew to Vietnam on Flight QR961 of Qatar Airways that left Nigeria on August 18 and arrived in the Tan Son Nhat International Airport on Tuesday afternoon, were having fever.

    The two Nigerians were taken by health workers to the Ho Chi Minh City Tropical Diseases Hospital for medical examination in isolated conditions. They were expected to stay for 21 days for monitoring for signs of Ebola infection.

    Nigerian students were also not left out in the new trend as three university students were examined by Vietnamese health experts after returning to Vietnam from Nigeria.

    From tests carried out on them, it was confirmed that they had not been infected with the deadly Ebola virus.

    It was also reported that some Air France crew had to boycott flights to Nigeria for fear of contracting the disease.

    The company was said to have given its staff freedom to choose whether or not to fly to Conakry, Freetown and Lagos after British Airways and Emirates were said to have suspended flights to the region.

    One Air France union, SNGAF had, last month, launched a petition calling for the “immediate end to flights to countries hit by the Ebola virus.

    Sophie Gorins, the Secretary-General of the SNPNC, which represents cabin crew, was quoted as saying: “We know that our jobs put us at risk, but they are measured risks. This is completely out of control and the information is not the same from one day to the next.”

    Briefing State House correspondents at the end of the Federal Executive Council meeting on Wednesday, Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, noted that it was wrong for people from other countries to threaten to boycott Nigeria and that Nigeria rather should be the one to stop people from coming to Nigeria as the virus was first brought into the country by a Liberian-American visitor, the late Patrick Sawyer.