Youth Global Platform on HIV/AIDS

Prevention is the key to breaking the cycle of HIV transmission. To end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, we must empower young people through a centralized platform to sustain prevention of HIV through youth response.

Youth Global platform on HIV/AIDS (@ygpoh) is a youth platform designed for young men and women mainly neigbours, community, regional and global citizens to network for the sole aim of uniting to enhance youth response to HIV.

People are now leading changes in the way they manage their health through peer-to-peer support networks such as Youth Global Platform on HIV/AIDS (@YGPOH). Online networks enable people to share, compare and contrast different diagnoses and treatments with people who have the same conditions who are anywhere in the world. Members of the online community can ask for advice, learn from each other, discuss test results, and compare how different medications, treatments, or combinations of drugs might or might not be working. This sharing of information creates a more informed and empowered society and can lead to a radical reconfiguring of the patient/care team relationship. As health professionals are no longer the only source of information, the relationship becomes more equal and collaborative. Which helps us return health care back to homes from mechanic garages called hospitals. This implies that we will be creating a paradigm shift from reactive fixing - responding to diseases to proactive building of transformational health care.

Since HIV is more prevalent among adolescents and the young people in our population, the HIV platform -Youth Global Platform on HIV/AIDS (@YGPOH) is a forum for young people, mainly of adolescent age to interact online on ways of adopting healthy sexual behaviors and utilizing HIV resource tools as shared by the platform as a rationale to make this age group, the agents of reversing the HIV epidemic.

Every 13 minutes, someone is infected with HIV; every 4 minutes someone dies of AIDS and every 1 in 4 infections is a young person. The reality is very clear. Every minute, a young person, mostly women is newly infected by HIV and at the same time, some are orphaned because of AIDS. Far too many women lack control over their finances and assets, when they lose their bread winners through HIV/AIDS. Therefore, leading to lack of equal access to education among young people and exposes our young women to lose control over their bodies and lives. It is clear, governments and communities in most countries have totally failed to provide a sustained response that enable young people to protect themselves from HIV, unemployment and poverty. This is highly unacceptable, particularly because the world can do much better to give these young people the future they want in this world as empowered young people are critical agents of change in reversing HIV/AIDS epidemic. In the most devastating global health epidemic of our generation, there is no time for judgment. Who are the innocent victims of HIV/AIDS? Who deserves what they get? Who cares? This is a fight that needs you. Check your judgments. Challenge your fears. Break the silence and ignorance. Take action today and save lives.

Hence the rationale for this platform because this epidemic is more concentrated among young people and has done more damages to children, young men and women than any other population in this planet. Young people are critical agents of change in the AIDS response and we all have a lot more to do if it is to be a place where young women and men are treated as equal, where they shape their own future and challenge social norms that block opportunities. Having facilitated this online platform for seven years through our social media tool and practical crowd sourcing of information among youth groups, I see prospects that we can retrieve the opportunities that HIV has taken away from young people including the dignity and rights of those young people living with HIV. But this can only be achieved, if we leverage on the opportunities of building strategic partnership with other stakeholders to help promote the activities of this platform-@YGPOH-designed to help young people and adolescents enhance universal youth response on HIV/AIDS.

Eloke Onyebuchi ---Facilitator