Abidjan- Thirty men/women from press organizations have been in a brainstorming workshop at the Côte Sud hotel in Dabou since Tuesday, September 27, 2022, in order to orient their communications on the progress of the fight in terms of self-testing and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), in order to be able to communicate better and enable people to change their perception of HIV/AIDS.
According to the coordinating director of the National AIDS Control Program (PNLS), Professor Ehui Eboi, the context dominated for almost two years by Covid-19 suggests that there is only one disease, while the other diseases have not gone away, continue to evolve and kill.
He noted the importance of involving media men, each year, on the assessment of the HIV situation in the country, to have the real figures/data to inform our populations, and to announce that Côte d’Ivoire has begun its epidemiological transition because it is in the process of reversing the trajectory of AIDS.
“It is important that the whole population knows this, it is also important that all efforts be directed so that this reversal is irreversible, because our objective is to achieve the elimination of AIDS as a problem by 2030. major public health issue in our country. Efforts must be combined and who, better than you, the best relays, to bring information to the populations”, he explained.
The Head of the Communication Department of the PNLS, Dr. Alia Silué-Coulibaly, affirmed that this meeting with the media will be institutionalized each year for the press organs. “It is important to upgrade media men with different training sessions,” she said.
This five-day workshop will enable participants from the written press, online and audiovisual media to be better equipped to communicate on the new face of HIV, to have better knowledge of self-testing and PrEP, to produce articles and/or lead programs on HIV, disseminate accurate information that responds to national guidelines and priorities, etc.
Côte d’Ivoire, which has an HIV prevalence of 2.1% (Spectrum 2020) in the general population, is one of the most affected countries in West Africa. Since March 2020, PrEP has been implemented for vulnerable adolescents and young women aged 15-24, and the HIV-negative person in the serodiscordant couple. Self-testing and PrEP have been identified as complementary strategies to reach certain targets in populations that are difficult to reach through routine services.
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