THE CHOICES WE MAKE LEADS TO HIV SPEAD.

As they come to the university, ‘freshers’ always look forward to the freedom and challenges that come with life on campus. However, only a small number of them are prepared to navigate the murky waters of adult sexual relationships. It is a possibility that about half of both genders have had sexual intercourse by the age of 18 when many young people join university. While it is true that sex education in schools is part of the country’s HIV prevention strategy, many teachers are not trained in the subject and young people often glean knowledge about sex from their peers. It is very normal to find students joining campus when they are faithful Christians who strongly believe in abstinence until marriage. These students remain virgins during their first year but later meet fellows who promise to ‘marry’ them and end up having sex with them only to regret when they realize their positive status. Female ‘freshers’ are often targeted by older students who are aware of the risk of HIV and perceive freshmen as less of a risk due to their relative ‘inexperience’. Some of these older students even give testimonies on their negative status despite having different girlfriends and a number of encounters of unprotected sex, with the belief that had they had sex with older students, they would have been positive. Majority of students only have protected sex once in a while and only a few use protection every time they have sex. (Have you done a study to verify this claim?) For some students, sex is a way of surviving through the university, while others even use it to send money home. The Higher Education Loans Board lends students money to meet their needs. However, some students instead send this money home and survive on gifts and cash from their sex partners. Even after receiving warnings on the dangers of risky sexual intercourse, reproductive health and risks associated with emergency contraceptives, students only adhere to these warnings earlier but abandon them later. On a similar note, many couples visit VCT a few weeks after their admission to the university. When they test negative, they assume they have a green light to start having unprotected sex forgetting that one or even both of them may be unfaithful. After infection, only a few come out about their positive status while a larger percentage prefer keeping to themselves for the fear of stigmatization. Both governmental and Non-Governmental Organizations use plays, concerts and other activities to keep the issue of HIV alive in the mind of students both old and young. However all these advances may go in vain as the decision remains fully personal. But who is to blame?