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 Doctor
who gives female condoms to prostitutes
By JOSSY IDAM (jidam14@yahoo.co)
Saturday,
January 20, 2007 The Special Adviser to the governor
of Bayelsa State on HIV/AIDS and Community Health, Dr. Eruani
Azibapu Godbless is one of a kind. He holds a strong distate for
prostitution but he looks at the sex workers who beat the
streets of the state capital, Yenagoa with pity.
Suicidal instinct
“These women of easy virtues are a danger to themselves and
society at large”, he said.
With HIV/AIDS reaching a pandemic proportion in the world now,
he likens whores to people on suicide mission.
“As HIV/AIDS is ravaging worldwide, the end result of what they
are doing is early death. Knowing that death is certain and they
are still in the trade, it means they are suicidal. They have
instincts to self-destruct”, he submitted.
Oldest profession
To save the prostitutes from themselves, Dr. Eruani recently
visited some pubs in Yenagoa with a team of health workers and
gave out free female condoms to women in red light zones. Said
he: “As I’m fine-tuning my strategy on the whole matter, I
decided to empower them with female condoms. At least, they need
to protect themselves and their patrons”.
Asked if he wasn’t indirectly encouraging them and tacitly
giving them undue prominence and recognition, the medical
practioner frowned and said: “Sex work obtains all over the
world. It’s one of the oldest professions in the world. I can’t
pretend that prostitutes and their Patrons don’t exist. It’s
human nature and it’s a problem worldwide”.
He recalled attending an HIV/AIDS conference in Canada last year
where sex workers staged a demonstration and called for
recognition.
According to him, they said they are foremost stakeholders on
HIV/AIDS matters than other professionals and should be given
recognition and not to be treated with contempt and disdain.
“After attending such conference where sex workers openly
demanded for their rights, will I now go and be chasing them off
the streets when I haven’t prepared for them adequately? The
answer is capital ‘no’, he rhetorically said.
Capacity building
The doctor who is now in his late 30s is bent on rescuing and
re-tooling the whores. To this end, he has designed a programme
to rescue the still pliable ones among them from the streets.
“The next phase now is capacity building. We shall assist them
to take up other professions. There are vocational institutes
where they can be rewardingly re-directed”, he said. He told
Saturday Sun he has of late been holding regular meetings
concerning the project. “Their response is encouraging. A lot of
them are earger to change profession, he revealed.
Original link: http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/features/living/2007/jan/20/living-20-01-2007-002.htm
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