High sexual activities hit refugee camps
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araoyinbo said the body also carried out capacity building which served as a platform to link the volunteers to the patent medicine vendors the hot spots and the health care facilities where the condoms would be picked up1 the united nations population fund unfpa has discovered high level of survival sex in cameroonian refugees camps in cross rivers state1 it has therefore set up non-traditional condom outlets in the refugees settlements1 the intervention is to increase access to condoms in communities hosting refugees who fled from crisis hit anglophone southern cameroon1 unfpa said that after carrying out a joint needs assessment it was discovered that there was high level of transactional sex without access to condoms in the communities1 we have done this before but we are improving on it it is like a stop gap response1 we discovered there was high level survival sex in these communities and the women are not protected it said on friday1 the condom outlets target ikom obanliku boki akamkpa and etung local government areas of the cross river1 the project coordinator for unfpa dr idowu araoyinbo said on friday that the global body did a mapping to identify the health care providers close to the benefiting communities1 araoyinbo said that volunteers including refugees were engaged as focal persons to distribute and enlighten people in their wards on the benefits and proper usage of condoms1 we organised town hall meetings which served as information dissemination points to the communities on the availability of condoms in strategic locations and how they could utilise them effectively he said1 unfpa stated that the women involved in the communities were not protected with condoms1 he said a similar project had been carried out in the past which was not sustainable1 he said the volunteers picked up the condoms from the health care centres took them to the communities where they were given to the patent medicine vendors that already had dispensers available1 the dispensers he said were for control and were placed conspicuously in patent medicine stores so that the condoms were made available free of charge to communities1 the major challenge now is how the patent medicine dealers would be able to allow access because they dont work 24 hours but we hope to check this through the hot spots he said1 araoyinbo stated that he foresaw a future where patent medicine dealers would imbibe the culture of providing free condoms to their communities1 we told them that this would make them popular as there was nowhere in the world where people dont love business men who go beyond business to provide free humanitarian services he said1 he however said that though the project was aimed at sensitising people on condom usage the best form of prevention still remains abstinence1 araonyinbo also noted that statistics had shown that the sexual debut of nigerian youths had dropped to about 17 years for girls and 21 for the boys adding that efforts must be made to protect them1 our youths initiate sex early these days most of which are done without protection increasing the rate of hiv and other sexually transmitted diseases in our society1 because most new hiv cases are found among the youths the need to preach the use of condoms could not be over emphasised he said1 the project is being carried out in partnership with the nigeria red cross cross river primary health care agency state ministry of health as well as patent medicine dealers in benue and cross river1