AIDS Among Youths: Call For Continuous Attention

If care is not taken to curb the excessive sexual activities of youths in Cameroon, the AIDS pandemic will resurface powerfully indicating a melancholic future of the youths. The Minister of Public Health, Dr Manaouda Malachie in a recent interview granted Cameroon Tribune disclosed in telling statistics that in 2023 alone, 9,000 youths between 14-25 years were infected with HIV.
The infection figures the Minister disclosed are just a tip of the iceberg considering that they concern only youths who were screened and tested of HIV. There are likely more infected youths who are hiding among the population without knowing their HIV/AIDS status. Voluntary testing of the virus and consequently the disease occurs in rare cases. Most people including elders are tested in cases they are compiling their files to sit certain examinations, travel abroad for studies and go in for recruitment examinations as in the defence and security forces. The majority of people who undergo the HIV screening are patients who go to health structures for treatment and the medical officials would prefer to do their general health screening to determine the real causes of the sickness.  Pregnant women are also bound to do the screening and even when some of them are discovered to be infected, their male counterparts in some cases do hesitate to undergo the same test. Many girls who have unwanted pregnancies through difference sources are compelled to be screened but their either identified or hidden male counterparts flee the health centres.
The upsurge in the infection rate of HIV/AIDS in our youths is a wakeup call that all means must be deployed by the different stakeholders to handle and reverse the trend. AIDS was a scaring sickness in the 1980s and 1990s when it killed millions of people all over the world. The Day Hospital, the wards where AIDS patients were treated were terrible and frightful places. The physical appearance and suffering of patients then pushed many people to adopt responsible behaviours respecting the prescribed prevention measures. By then HIV/AIDS treatment was expensive till government and its partners stepped in to render the treatment almost virtually free now.
Times are changing, especially with the rapidly advancing information and communication technologies. The measures put in place to curb the spread and increase HIV infection rate have to also be adapted to the changing times. Youths of between 14-25 years who fall among the most vulnerable age group to the infection, paradoxically are those most exposed to the use of the evolving technologies, especially the use of android phones and other communication gadgets. The advancing technologies represent both salvation and death to the population depending on the purpose for which they are used. Instead of taking advantage of the education, professional, business and employment opportunities the communication technologies offer, many youths are more interested in pornography, scamming and consumption of all sorts of drugs. This state of affairs where the technological advancement cannot be reversed, calls for greater vigilance on the part of parents and society as a whole on how the youths use the technologies. Youths are more and more exposed to societal ills that lure them into sexual immorality after due to the influence of pornographic films, alcohol and/or drugs consumption.
Initiatives like the First Lady Mrs Chantal Biya’s “AIDS Free Holidays” have to be embraced and multiplied throughout the country. Parents and guardians have to encourage and even compel their children to take part in those activities where education and awareness creation on sexually transmissible diseases one of which is AIDS are the main focus. Campaign against AIDS in all stages and forms must be intensified in school milieus and others places where youths are gathered. The different sporting and leisure activities that bring youths together should be the venues par excellence for the campaigns against deviant behaviour, one of which is sexual immorality with one of its dangerous consequences being HIV infection. Government needs to impose obligatory medical examinations for pupils and students with AIDS being one of the diseases so...