Nigerian Newsday

Fifteen people living with HIV/AIDS in Nasarawa State attend monthly counselling and receive financial support from a Lafia-based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Family Advancement Health-Care Initiative (FAHCI). The reproductive health NGO since its inception in 2000, has been working tirelessly to provide relief to people living with HIV/AIDS in the state.

The organisation also organises programmes on family planning, youth empowerment, water and sanitation, and micro-credit loans.

The executive director of the NGO Mrs. Mary Asheneye, said the NGO was established to assist and create health consciousness among rural dwellers. According to her, when the state was created in 1996, the reproductive health awareness among rural dwellers was at zero level.

As a trained public health nurse, she took up the responsibility of educating and creating awareness in rural communities, on the dangers of HIV/AIDS and other reproductive health related problems.

In this interview with our reporter TITUS MANGUT, MRS. ASHENEYE spoke on the activities of the Family Advancement Health Care Initiative. Excerpts:

Newsday: What is Family Advancement Health Care Initiative all about?

FAHCI is a Non-Governmental Organisation, and our activities are focussed mainly on reproductive health and you know reproductive health has so many components. This organisation is into family planning, we give counselling to men and women on how to space their children and we are also into service provision like family planning drugs.

We distribute family planning commodities to the people at the grassroots. Family planning is one of our cardinal programmes.

We also care and support people living with HIV/AIDS. We have gone into communities and mobilised them, we were able to bring together some people living with AIDS. They have formed a group in this organisation. They come for a monthly meeting and during such meetings, we counsel them. We reassure them of the condition of their health. We also teach them about nutritions that will help build their bodies to enable them sustain their lives. We as well refer them to places where they can get cheap A.R.V. drugs. For those that do not want to attend our meetings, we visit them at their homes to give them support and advice.

The meeting holds last Saturday of every month in our head office, and presently we have 15 active people that come monthly. The number was more than 15 but some of the people stopped coming because of financial constraints. We really have a lot of people that are living with HIV/AIDS that are part of the support group.

Another programme that we do here is youth empowerment. This organisation sends out youth to learn various skills at the expense of FAHCI. Though we don’t have money, we are trying with the limited funds available to make youths productive. Community mobilisation is also our cardinal objective. We educate rural people on reproductive health and on how they can visit health institutions, especially pregnant women, because some of them live in pains and deliver in pains at home. We record high infant mortality rate because of ignorance, we tell them of the benefit of going to hospitals or maternity clinics.

We are also into water and sanitation programmes. We have mobilised and trained some youths to help educate others on how to dispose their refuse in the right places. We have earmarked some communities that we will teach about simple ways of preserving good drinking water.

Lastly, we are also into micro-credit loans, so far some youths have benefited from our motorcycle loans and they are paying back the loans, soon, we will give women some soft-loans to enable them go into businesses.

How are you able to get the 15 people that are living with HIV/AIDS?

When we went to communities to create awareness on prevention of HIV/AIDS, after informing people about the signs and symptoms of the disease, some people started suspecting that they might have HIV/AIDS. They approached us and we advised them to go for test. Some did and came back to tell us that they tested positive. We counsel them as we have pre-test counselling and we keep everything confidential, that is how we were able to get the 15 people who are active members in our meeting.

We started with two people, but as people got to know of our activities, they started coming and some of them are now our agents. They also counsel others who have the disease. Most of them are married couples, only one is single, while others are widows who must have lost their husbands through the disease.

Some communities in Nigeria are against family planning. Do we have such communities in Nasarawa State? If there are, how do you reach out to such communities?

We have such communities in Nasarawa State. What we do is that we have a form of community entrance process. Before you go into any community, you must go to the leaders. You start with advocacy, that is creating awareness to let the leaders know about the subject matter. It is the leaders who mobilise the people before we talk to them.

People that are against family planning take a long time to counsel and you have to be patient.

Do you get financial assistance from any organisation in running this NGO?

We don’t receive any financial assistance from anywhere, but members of this NGO contribute to run the programme without any problem. We contribute N200 every month and our board members also make financial contribution to the organisation.