Why I employ persons
living with HIV
By EMMANUEL MAYAH
Saturday, March 18, 2006
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•Steve
Photo By Sun News Publishing |
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In a society where confessed HIV carriers are hounded out
of schools or have their appointments tacitly terminated,
a young employer is going out of his way to give jobs to HIV
victims.
Though Steve Aborisade has thrown in many years to HIV campaign,
his organization, Prajekt Hope is barely one year old.
Today however, it is a sanctuary of sort to a growing number
of Nigerians who hitherto had been driven to their wits end
on account of making public their HIV status.
Anyone who has been to the Omotayo-Ojo-Street office of the
NGO in Ikeja must have come away with the fact that over 90
percent of the staff are HIV carriers. They don’t look
it though; not with their luxuriant looks and positive approach
to life. Among them are Miss Aminat Alli and Monisola Ajiboye
both of whom you would find being cuddled by Nobel Laureate,
Prof. Wole Soyinka in a group photograph. Another is Fred
Adeboye, the student who made headlines two years ago when
he was kicked out of the Nigeria Institute of Journalism (NIJ),
Ogba after he had innocently confided in his Rector about
his HIV status.
For Aborisade, providing employment for this category of Nigerians
is firstly a bold attempt at confronting a monster called
stigma, which has turned out to be even more cold-blooded
than the HIV virus itself. It is also a new and pragmatic
approach in building victims’ self-condidence; a strategy
to signpost careers who are what he called “positive
models” and to use them to tell the story of new possibilities,
which is that there is still normal life after HIV.
Indeed, it is all in a day’s work for an organization
that has clearly braced up to rise above rhetorics in the
HIV-AIDS campaign. Speaking further on his guiding principle,
Aborisade said: “When you are talking politics, you
have to involve politicians; when you are talking about the
economy, you have to involve economists. When you are talking
about HIV/AIDS you just must involve infected individuals.
He who feels it knows it. What affect our staff affect other
people and we see these things. Adegboyega of NIJ is presently
with us on attachment; he’s going to continue afterwards
as a member of our staff. Last Christmas, I spent two days
at Ibadan with a family that is HIV positive. We share in
their pains. If you don’t get close you can’t
know. The only way to know is to involve them. Mojisola and
Adegboyega are report for us”.
HIV, not a killer disease
Speaking to Satuday Sun, Aborisade pointed out that the thrust
of the campaign of Projekt Hope is to shatter the myth that
HIV is a killer disease. The myth, he said, has endured as
a result of prolonged misinformation in the media over the
years. Infact, the mission of his NGO is “combating
HIV in Nigeria with accurate information.”
Contrary to the belief that HIV is a death sentence, the activist
who is the Editor-in-Chief of the on-line magazine, NigeriaHIVinfo.com
said; “It is a dangerous misinformation. That is why
people believe that once you test positive, the only thing
is to hide in your room and die quietly.
But no! The gap between HIV and AIDS is so wide to the extent
that if you are positive and you find out early enough and
you do the right things, you will never develop full-blown
AIDS. It will interest you to know that there are people who
have lived with the virus for 17 years and they never developed
AIDS. It is all about early testing.
In fact, there are people who tested positive over ten years
ago and they are not even on Anti-Retroviral Drugs (ARD).
The point is this: if you go for test and you are negative,
then you guide your status jealously by maintaining a risk-free
lifestyle. But if it turns out positive, you can quickly seek
those avenues that are now abundant to take care of yourself.
If you embrace treatment and care early enough, be sure you
can live a normal and healthy life for the rest of your life.
Most people on ARD are those who have been positive for three
or four years and their immune systems have been compromised
before they went for test.
But with early testing, the advantage is that you can be placed
on regimented diet and you won’t even need drugs and
your immunity would be boosted. The experience in Nigeria
is that most people will not go for test until they are dying.
It is only when they are terribly sick and they go for thyphoid
test and nothing is working and they are not responding to
treatment, that’s when they will say; let’s try
HIV test.”
To underscore the point, Aborisade added that he once did
an overview of a Lagos-based organization that runs free HIV
test in Lagos and Ogun states. To his horror, he found out
that in both states with population over 15 million, the organization
was only able to test about 1,000 people in one year, simply
because Nigerians are afraid to go for test.
My mission
Speaking on what obviously for him is a huge passion, Aborisade
stated that Projekt Hope is a media response conceived to
combat the social reaction of stigmatization and discrimination
facing people who are HIV positive, otherwise known as People
Living With HIV (PLWH). The mission is to counter the misinformation
and to present in a new light the realities about HIV/AIDS.
“We are poised to present a positive and accurate image
of PLWHAs and their ability to cope and continue to live normal
lives. Through our programs, we hope to trigger responses
of understanding, compassion, solidarity and support for HIV
positive persons in Nigeria.”
The major program of his on-line magazine is to give voice
and visibility to healthy individuals who actually have continued
to live productive lives despite their diagnosis. The Editor-in-Chief
quarreled with the penchant of mainstream media to feed on
societal fear and prejudice by constantly displaying only
ghastly images and stereotypes and nothing to show the other
side of the coin- HIV carriers who are healthy and productive
and have remained so for many years.
Speaking further on the motivation for the project, Aborisade
said he was disturbed by the fact that the war in Iraq was
more important to Nigerian newspapers than HIV/AIDS. “Our
papers devote pages after pages to movie stars yet they can’t
find time to write about what is killing us. They don’t
have time to research, to follow up on stories.
These are problems that have to be addressed if there’s
going to be any change at all.”
Having been involved for many years in training of journalists
on how to report HIV/AIDS and not getting the desired result,
Aborisade has picked up the gauntlet to “do it the way
it should be done.
We have decided to report HIV/AIDS ourselves. When they see
it, it will inform and guide them. We will give them the information
they lack. Most often, what you see in the media are pictures
of AIDS patients looking like ghosts. People conclude that
anyone with HIV will inevitably come to such ghastly end.
But that is not true. We are here to provide contents to the
media. If you want to talk to HIV/AIDS victims and you can’t
find them, give us a call and we’ll arrange the interview.
If you want pictures and materials on people living positively
we’ll supply them to you.”
HIV/AIDS magazine in local languages
Reacting to fears on the reach of his on-line magazine, given
the prevailing IT infrastructure in Nigeria, Aborisade reassured
that 70 percent of Nigerians have access to the internet.
“The internet is so popular very few people resort to
letter writing these days. Even if you have never heard of
our site, very soon you’ll get a mail from us, which
is probably one of the contents of our site, you may decide
to toward it to 100 people or more.”
In addition to his on-line magazine, Aborisade plans to target
the rural populace with a hard copy magazine called Positive
Living. He said Positively Living will be a quarterly magazine
comprising key contents of his site in the past three months.
“Packaged together in a magazine format, it will be
circulated far and wide. So for people in the rural areas
without access to the internet, positive living will be there
for them. And by the grace of God, if we have the funding
we plan to do the English edition, Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa
editions. What it basically means is translation. It will
be a summary of the site and contains stories that touch the
heart.”
Runs in the family
Presenting his profile to Saturday Sun, Steve Aborisade revealed
that activism actually runs in his family. His elder brother,
Femi Aborisade, is one of Nigeria’s early Marxists.
“It is a kind of passion that we have. We all do what
we believe in. I’m from Oyo State but grew up in Ondo
State, Akure, I’m a graduate of Philosophy, have post-graduate
diploma in Journalism.”
Aborisade said he owes his success so far to Dapo Olorunyomi,
Country Director of Freedom House. “Without him this
dream would just have died away, because I’ve had this
dream for a long time. What Dapo has given me is more than
money. He gave me the encouragement before he gave me a fully-equipped
office with computers for use for one year. He is paying the
rent. And before he returned to the US, when my friends who
are positive come around, he always identified with them.”
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