The Federal Government has attributed the growing increase in the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Internally Displaced Persons (IPDs) camps to rampant rape of victims taking refuge at the camps. The Head, Humanitarian Assistance and Rehabilitation of the Presidential Committee on North East Initiative (PCNI), Dr. Sidi Mohammed stated this on Saturday on the sidelines of a meeting organized by PCNI in the Federal Capital Territory.
He however explained that PCNI was making concerted efforts toward addressing the issue while providing the necessary humanitarian assistance to the IDPs. He identified the major challenge confronting the Committee as absence of health practitioners. He explained that since the beginning of insurgency in the region, most health workers left the region leaving very few volunteers to address the health needs of the entire population.
According to him “the major challenge for us in the health sector especially in the north east is that of human resource for health. Don’t forget, at the beginning of the insurgency, the first people that were attacked are the teachers and the health care workers.
“They were killed, and naturally they are the first set of people to run away from the communities. Even before the insurgency, the north east has the worst maternal mortality, not only in Nigeria but the world over. I also admitted the fact that our camp coordination and management for now is very weak and therefore those people who are in the camp now are taking advantage of the people. So we intend to get it right by developing a humanitarian response plan for 2018 and 2019.”
“In that document, we need to capture aptly, what we think we need to do, to be able to bring a stop or put a stop to this situation of rape cases we see and increase in the rate of HIV/AIDS, that we are also noticing. Now as we speak, we have a lot of people coming to us to say we want to renovate your primary care center, we want to put drugs. But the people, the health workers that will work in these facilities are not there. For example, if you need to achieve reduction in maternal mortality, the group of health care workers that you need are the mid-wives."
“I can tell you, using Adamawa for example, Adamawa will need about three thousand plus mid wives today as we speak to be able to get to the minimum number they have. But what do we see in their school of nursing. Their school of nursing can only graduate fifty students at a time, in a year.”
“If you divide that by three thousand plus, you are going to get thirty something years, it will take Adamawa state assuming their population is static. But dont forget, the population will continue to increase, because even the North is unfortunately has the highest fertility rate again in the world, one of the highest fertility rate in the world, about 4.5%."
“So we need to get those people into those facilities, if at all our women would stop dying because they want to bring a baby into this world. Pregnancy is a thing of joy and therefore no woman, I repeat; no woman should die because she wants to bring a baby into this world.”
Meanwhile, Mohammed failed to disclose the identities of the rapist efforts toward apprehending the culprits."
