Singers, foot

ballers, and nans raise AIDS awareness

LAISA Vulakoro did it in Suva. So did Seru Serevi.

And some of the members of the USP football team did it too. In Samoa, Cindy, Samoa’s famous fa’afafine did it, as did netball player Rosie Ripley and the Reverend Falefatu Enari.

Tonga’s captain of the Rugby Union team, Fea’o Vunipola, Catholic nun Sister Senolita and -local DJ Tomasi from the Blue Pacific nightclub also did it.

And in the Solomons popular singer Eddie Fiti and the Catholic Church’s Archbishop Adrian Smith did it.

What did they do? They all spoke in support of the Force for Change: World AIDS Campaign with young people.

Launched during a series of workshops conducted by UNAIDS and PINA held in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, the campaign highlights the need to involve young people in the planning and implementation of STD/HIV/AIDS education and prevention programmes.

“One of the major lessons leamt from . over a decade of trying to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS is that if you want to change the behaviour of a particular group, you have to listen to that group, to their problems, aspirations and hopes and for mulate programmes that will meet their needs rather than just preaching to them.”

UNAIDS Inter Country Programme Adviser Steven Vete said. Over sixty per cent of the Pacific Islands consists of youth (defined by the UN system as young peo

pie between the age of 15 to 24 years though some Pacific Islands define it as up to 35 years of age). Forty two percent of officially reported HIV/AIDS in the Pacific are between the ages of 20- 29. And most of the STD cases in the Pacific fall within this age group.

In Tahiti in June, delegates to a region al Pacific youth meeting considered a draft UNICEF report on the State of Pacific Youth (SOPY).

The report was put together by a United Nations Inter Agency Task force on Youth consisting of a wide variety of organisa tions involved or concerned about youth work. The increasing incidence of STDs and unplanned pregnancies is cited as one of the major problems facing Pacific Island youth.

“And” as SV points out, “it is the same behaviour which can lead to an STD or unplanned pregnancy which can also infect people with HIV/AIDS - unprotected sexu al intercourse with an HIV-positive per son” But yet many people in the Pacific do not see the link.

“There is an urgent need to talk with and listen to young people because they are the future, they can make a change not only in their own behaviour but also in attitudes towards people living with HIV/AIDS” SV said. “The hope lies with young people”.

Some of the needs of young people identified in the SOPY report include the

availability of a user friendly reproductive

health service that can provide factual non judgemnetal information. ■