The National AIDS Council (NAC) and the Zimbabwe Community Health Intervention Research Behavioural Change Programme (ZiCHIRe BC) are training Brotha2Brotha mentors to capacitate them to provide comprehensive health information to youths.
Speaking to Spiked Online Media during a training workshop of mentors at Lake Chivero today, Obey Mukorera, the ZICHIRe-BC Programme Officer said available evidence is showing that, young people in Southern Africa are lagging behind as compared to other population groups in terms of HIV knowledge, HIV testing, treatment and prevention, hence the need to provide them with adequate information on the issues.
In 2016, around 610 000 new HIV infections were recorded among youths (15 – 24 years) and 41% of these were young men. In Zimbabwe, only 36% of young men have basic knowledge on how to protect themselves from HIV, half of the young men in Zimbabwe do not know their status and are less likely to start HIV treatment than women (DHS, 2016). An estimated 60% of youths in Zimbabwe use illicit drugs, with 66% of them being male users yet these young men and boys are usually marginalized from health and development focused programs that mainly target women and girls.
More so, some of these boys are faced with the same vulnerabilities as the girls like orphaned, drop out of school, live in poverty and become heads of households at very young ages yet no programs have sought to target such boys and young men. The ZIMPHIA results show that HIV infection among young women predominantly come from young men, as opposed to trends from previous years where young women would mostly get infected by adult men. (sugar daddies). PEPFAR health cascades have shown that boys and men are not accessing services as would be expected.
“It is from the aforementioned background that, ZiCHIRe and the National AIDS Council embarked on intensive training of Brotha2Brotha (B2B) mentors from all the districts of Harare. The B2B programme creates a favourable platform where club members can learn and safely from each other ask questions about their sexual and reproductive health, about support mechanisms that can help them address challenges that they are facing as men and where they can seek advice from peers that have faced and overcome similar challenges. In other words, the programme provides the much-needed impetus to increase knowledge and utilisation of integrated HIV prevention, SRHR and GBV among boys and young men from the ages of 10 to 24.
“The hallmark of this initiative is to complement the Sista2Sista programme that possesses the same aim and objectives for girls and young women in Harare and Mashonaland East Provinces. The programme strengthens community systems, create demand in terms of increasing uptake of SRHR, HIV and AIDS and SGBV services by the aforementioned age groups,” Mukorera said.
The training was guided by different outcomes which include but not limited to; role models positively influencing peers and community, established strong referral pathways, encouraging entrepreneurship and promoting talent scouting. Under the programme, talented young men are linked to senior clubs, school dropouts are brought back to school, while there is also rehabilitation of gender-based violence (GBV) offenders and survivors of substance abuse.
“Empowering and grooming boys and young men is the key objective of the B2B program. This is so because, when the right knowledge and skill is transferred to young people, they can take responsibility and the community becomes a better place for its people,” Mukorera added.