Uni lights candles for AIDS victims

THERE is optimism about the National AIDS Council’s rural grants project being piloted in Eastern Highlands, Manus and East New Britain.
Under the rural grants project, K50,000 has been allocated to enable provincial AIDS councils (PACs) to carry out activities in rural areas.
Eastern Highlands PAC response coordinator Simon Kange made this known during a candlelight memorial gathering for people who have died from the disease.
Kange said previously it was difficult for PAC offices to respond to the rural face of the epidemic at the district, council and ward levels.
“We can do the job and carry out the best awareness but the decision rests with individuals,” he said.
University of Goroka Vice-Chancellor Dr Gairo Onagi then invited Kange and his officers to use the facilities and address its staff and students.
In response to the HIV epidemic, UOG has established a HIV/AIDS committee that has implemented a policy to safeguard staff and students interests as well as a compulsory HIV/AIDS course called U100.
The institution has established a volunteer counselling and testing centre on campus.
Onagi said as chairman of the UOG HIV/AIDS committee, he permitted the distribution of condoms on campus.
“It’s not a matter of morals, it’s a matter of life,” he said.
Onagi said UOG aimed to reduce stigma and discrimination through tolerance of students living with HIV or those who became infected while studying.
During an early commemoration of World AIDS Day, students of the U100 HIV/AIDS course hosted a candlelight night in memory of people who lost their lives to the disease.
Disclosing her status for the first time, HIV survivor and advocate Lina Ataiya encouraged others to make safe decisions about their sex life.
Ataiya, who was diagnosed with HIV this year, said she was looking for money when she contracted the virus.
She advised students living away from their partners to get tested before they returned home.
She said it was easier for the grassroots to live with HIV compared to a highly educated person because of the shame and pain.
The candlelight night was part of the U100 HIV/AIDS course, in which students are tasked to organise and mobilise their own communities to openly talk about HIV-AIDS.