Nigeria

Chris Coleman 2/10/11 Period 4 AP World History

Nigeria

In Nigeria there is a distinct lack of HIV Testing programmes. In 2007, just 3 percent of health facilities had HIV testing and counselling services,and only 11.7 percent of women and men aged 15-49 had received an HIV test and found out the results. In 2009 there was only one HIV testing and counselling facility for approximately every 53,000 Nigerian adults, which shows how desperately the government needs to scale up HIV testing services.  Some reports have suggested that health care facilities offering HIV testing in Nigeria do not follow international standards about confidentiality and ethics. In one particular study, over half of people living with HIV reported that they did not know they were being tested for the virus and around one in seven health care professionals admitted to never receiving informed consent for HIV tests. ===Sex is traditionally a very private subject in Nigeria and the discussion of sex with teenagers is often seen as inappropriate. Attempts at providing sex education for young people have been hampered by religious and cultural objections. In 2009 only 23 percent of schools were providing life skills-based HIV education, and just 25 percent of men and women between the ages of 15 and 24 correctly identified ways to prevent sexual transmission of HIV and rejected major misconceptions about HIV transmission. === ===In some regions of Nigeria girls marry relatively young, often to much older men. In North Western Nigeria around half of girls are married by age 15 and four out of five girls are married by the time they are 18. Studies have found those who are married at a younger age have less knowledge about HIV and AIDS than unmarried women, and are more likely to believe they are low-risk for becoming infected with HI ===