First, it is commendable for people in the electronic media to get involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS.However, it is not enough, the people who are more exposed to HIV infection are the rural dwellers in most poor devloping countries. Radio, in these communities is seen as a veritable tool for news and propaganda by government or people in power, therefore the locals hardly listen if it is not music or a programme in thier dialect. A more proactive way of reaching out to the people is by involving NGOs that can attract the people by visiting the most inaccessible areas and presenting dance dramas, information is passed this way without the rural people getting distracted. Pictures of victims and ways of prevention can be shown to the locals through the dance groups. Outside this, we are talking about a people that go out to farm or fish very early in the morning and come back at night, they hardly listen to radio to get bored with HIV/AIDS talk.
Journalist in Africa especially Nigeria, in thier attempt to enlighten people and remove the stigma of living with aids, often make it more hard for those living with the virus to own up. If people with terminal dieseases like cancer and other renal diseases come out openly to solicit for help and talk about it openly, why do journalist always empahsise 'the incurability?' diabetis and many more diseases are not curable.Some quacks and alternative medicine practitoners cash in on this and inform the hapless and ignorant sufferer that there is cure and they follow even avoiding the sustainble anti-retroviral drugs (that is if they can afford it). Journalists in Nigeria especially elecronic also make it look like carelessness and wayward lifestyle brings forth aids. If we must reach people and make them own up or go for tests, aids should be seen like another disease that kills and can be prevented therefore contracting it is not as a result of high flying life style. So many women in Africa am sure contact HIV not through sex but through skin piercing instruments they use in saloons while fixing their hair. 60% of Nigerian women fix one form of weavon-on or another and the stylists use needles to sew the artificial hairs on the scalp of the women. Sex of course is a major meduim of transfering the various but the religious inclinations of many Africans make it look like a terrible sin. Am looking forward to the day HIV positive victims can come out openly like other terminal disease sufferers to ask for assistance without a hood on their head.
It is a bold intiative but more africans living out side the major towns shuld be involved in the fight against aids even if it means organising fiestas, cinema shows, dance troupes etc. This way I believe we can catch the attention of the rural dwellers who still think aids is an urban disease, visitation of drama troupes will linger more in their memory than a talk show or a thirty second talk on aids.