By Winifred Bulus
United nations HIV and AIDS, UNAIDS, and Chinese digital television provider, StarTimes, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to fight against stigmatization of victims of HIV and AIDS across Africa.
According to the agreement, signed in Beijing, the broadcast television would educate people on HIV and AIDS by broadcasting the epidemic on Star Times.
UNAIDS director, Michel Sidibe, expressed hopefulness in combatting HIV and AIDS, saying,
“With all the success being made against the virus, there’s need to double efforts in order to reach zero affection, zero death and zero stigmatization and discrimination.”
R also revealed some obstacles that stand in the way of eradicating the epidemic as well as the areas of success.
“The major challenge for us is testing, because we have people who are HIV positive and do not know.
If we continue at the same pace and accelerate, we will be able to put more people on treatment and reduce the transmission at 95% from person to persons. Over 12 million people in Africa are on treatment,” Sidibe said.
UNAIDS has a 90-90-90objective, targeted in putting over 30 million people on treatment and ensuring that 90% of HIV and AIDS infected persons know their status and are on antiretroviral. It also wants to suppress the epidemic by 2020.
StarTimes Group President, Pang Xinxing said there was need to put in more effort to totally eradicate the epidemic. He also stated that the media can make meaningful contribution in the fight against HIV and AIDS.
“If more hands are joined together, zero deaths, zero infection, and zero discrimination can be achieved. StarTimes has decided to work with UNAIDS because we have the capacity and we have our own social responsibility and that is why we joined hands together,” he explained.
Prsident of STarTimes also says its firm started HIV/AIDS awareness on its network back in 2016 and was even engaged with Ebola messages in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Guinea during the virus outbreak in West Africa between 2014 and 2015.