51% Of Married Couples In Akwa Ibom Are HIV Positive, Only 4% Of Prostitutes Are Infected – AKSACA

According to the Akwa Ibom state Agency for the Control of AIDS (AKSACA), 51.6% of married couples are HIV positive while 4% of prostitutes in the state are HIV Positive.

The Programme manager of the agency,  Dr. Nkereuwem Etok, in an interactive session with journalists yesterday, said most couples engage themselves in unprotected sex outside their marital home which makes them more susceptible to the virus.

He said,

“We have areas of high prevalence, before the statistics started coming we were sure that the most-at risk population will be the commercial sex workers, we were sure that this group will be the most affected but our data showed surprisingly that married men and women are the highest HIV infections with 51.6 percent.

“The commercial sex workers recorded only 4 percent while those engaged in casual sex recorded second highest with 30 percent’’ he said.

Etok attributed the high prevalence rate among the couples to include denial the existence of HIV/AIDS virus and the fact that most of them engage in sex not minding the status of the other sex partners.

According to him people are still tied to the culture of marrying widows without minding what killed their husbands He identified another group which comprises businessmen and women and government who attend seminars and workshops within and outside the country with their concubines.

Etok called on residents in the state to make themselves available for testing which he said are carried out free of charge in designated place across the state.

He said his agency has recorded significant achievements in the second sphere of the World Bank HIV/AID assisted programme which ended on February 26, 2017.