By Susan Babijja (THE NEW TIMES) Teaching the young generation about the dangers of committing adultery will contribute towards fighting HIV/AIDS, the president of Mother’s Union in the Anglican Church in Rwanda has said.
Josephine Mujawiyera made the remarks yesterday during a training on Gender Based Violence and the fight against HIV/AIDS which took place in Kigali. The training brought together participants from all the 11 Anglican Church dioceses across the country.
It was part of the many UNaids funded workshops the church has been conducting since March, with the aim of effectively engaging the church leaders and the church in general to fight against HIV/Aids.
“As a union, we have been engaging in sex education but we can not do every thing; we need support in that other responsible people especially parents come on board to make sure that our children especially girls can not easily be engaged in actions that will cost their lives,” Mujawiyera said.
She noted that because there is lack of information and continuing reminder on what exactly may happen to the youth especially girls between the age of 18 and 22, they end up in actions that later affect them for the rest of their lives or even contract HIV.
Among other factors that restrict elders or parents from talking about sex with their children is culture, Mujawiyera said.
She however urged that it is time to realise the need to equally address issues that will distort the community and lead to losing more lives as she highlighted the HIV’s higher prevalence among girls in comparison to boys.
According to the Rwanda Demographic Survey 2010, HIV prevalence for girls between the age of 20 and 24 stood at 2.4 percent while it was 0.5 percent in the boys’ case.
During the training, participants expressed concern over the big percentage difference with some concluding that the higher HIV prevalence percentage among the girls is evidence that young girls are being engaged in relationships with old men.
