The Programme Manager of the Akwa Ibom State Agency for the Control of AIDS (AKSACA), Dr. Nkereuwem Etok, has expressed fears over the alarming rate of HIV/AIDS infections among married men and women in the state.
He said recent testing statistics conducted by the agency revealed that married couples surprisingly account for the highest prevalence rate of 51.6 per cent while prostitutes and commercial sex workers constitute only 4 per cent.
Etok, who spoke during an interactive session with journalistsTuesday said most couples engage themselves in unprotected sex outside their marital home thus making them susceptible to the virus.
“We have areas of high prevalence, before the statistics started coming we were sure that the most-at risk population will be the commercial sex workers, we were sure that this group will be the most affected but our data showed surprisingly that married men and women are the ones with highest HIV infections with 51.6 per cent.
“The commercial sex workers recorded only 4 per cent while those engaged in casual sex recorded second highest with 30 per cent’’ he said.
The programme manager attributed the high prevalence rate among the couples to include denial that HIV/AIDS existed and the fact that most of them engaged in sex not minding the status of the other sex partners.
According to him people were still tied to the culture of marrying widows without minding what killed the husband of the wife they were taking over as wife.
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He said further that this category of people were rich workers who could afford to travel for businesses, seminars and workshops within and outside the country, thus exposing themselves to strange bed fellows whose status they cared not to know.
Etok called on the people of the state to make themselves available for testing which are carried out free of charge in designated places across the state.
He said his agency had recorded significant achievements in the second sphere of the World Bank HIV/AID assisted programme which ended on February 26, 2017.
These, according to him, include the production of and dissemination of HIV/AIDS workplace policy which provided the framework for the elimination of the stigma in workplace, reducing its spread and managing its impacts among others.
He disclosed that in 2015 AKSACA won the House of Representatives Excellence Award as the best SACA with positive impact in the rural communities in South-South geo-political zone of Nigeria despite still being the 2nd in HIV/AIDS prevalence in the country.
