HIV Is Not Death Penalty —NGO Boss

The Programme Coordinator of Community Health Support and Empowerment Initiative, Mrs Priscillia Ingbian, has declared that contracting of HIV/AIDS is not a death penalty for victims.

She stated this during the organisation’s free malaria and HIV/AIDS test in Lagos State, Southwest Nigeria.

Mrs. Ingbian explained that such patients can still live as long as God wanted them to live on earth, saying all such patients needed was to know their status early and take adequate measure to control and care for themselves.

She also said the illness did not stop a woman from having sex and producing babies when such woman wants and the partner and that the baby would not be affected.

Ingbian lamented that people aviod going for test because of the stigmatisation and wrong impression that if one contracted it, one would die immediately.

According to her, HIV can only later result to AIDS if no measure was taken, adding that at this stage, death occurs.

She also lamented that because many Nigerians do not know their status, the spread of the illness has continued, adding that the virus had resulted in broken marriages and homes.

Ingbian advised Nigerians to come out and do the test because that will enable the government know and control it so that the society would be free again.

She said her group was formed to assist the government at the grassroots to attend to people’s health challenges and rehabilitation of the less privileged in the society.

—Cyriacus Izuekwe