Hajiya Bilkisu
11 November 2009
analysis
Abuja — We arrived early for the workshop and there were just a few of us in the room, most of them were staff of an NGO, the Society for Family Health SFH, which organised the event.
A young man sat in a corner reading a book and when the workshop began he introduced himself as Danjuma Abdullahi a member of the Abuja based Ummah Support Initiative. The workshop theme was 'Promoting Sexual and reproductive Health: Make We Na Talk' and the participants were Islamic Scholars and members of Faith Based NGOs. When the participants made their contributions, there was a tendency to be judgemental in their approach to addressing the issue of HIV/AIDS. This often leads to stigma and discrimination in their treatment of those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. One of the scholars who spoke said those who are infected should be quarantined so that they would not infect others. Another one reminded participants that a hadith stated that if promiscuity becomes prevalent in the community Allah will inflict that community with incurable diseases as a punishment for violating religious instructions that require them to be chaste and shun all immoral sexual adventures.
However one of the scholars, who is an Imam of a Friday Mosque who had become a change agent and counsellor for People Living Positively With HIV/ AIDS (PLWA) said 'it is the duty of all Muslims but particularly the ulama to give succour to fellow Muslims in what ever difficult position they find themselves' He cited the hadith "Whoever dispels from a believer some grief pertaining to his world, Allah will dispel for him some grief pertaining to the last day.
Whoever makes things easy for someone who is in difficulty, Allah will make things easy for him both in this life and the next. Whoever conceals the fault of a Muslim, Allah will conceal his fault in this world and the next. Allah is ready to help a servant so long as the servant is ready to help his brother."When Danjuma Abdullahi spoke, he introduced his organisation, the Ummah Support Initiative USI based within the National Mosque in Abuja.
Recently while attending a Project meeting of the Nigeria Inter Religious Council NIREC, I took time to visit the USI. I met the staff of the organisation Ahmed, Hassana, Isa, Ibrahim, Musa and Haruna who took me round and briefed me on organisation. The USI is working to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS and poverty especially on women, youth, orphans, vulnerable children and disadvantaged communities nationwide. It enjoys the full support of the Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs NSCIA which at one time implemented an HIV/AIDS Project for the Muslim Ummah APMU. USI's mission is to advocate behavioural change among the Ummah and provide care and support for those infected and affected with HIV/AIDS to ensure a healthy Ummah. In achieving this it uses the following strategic approaches advocacy and mobilisation, capacity enhancement, HIV counselling and testing, service delivery, information, communication and education (IEC), Behaviour Change Communication BCC, networking and monitoring and evaluation.
In terms of project implementation, USI has been supported by various donors and collaborated with several others. Among them is Action Aid International Nigeria International; the project was supported by the UK Department for International Development DFID. It also worked with the Global HIV/AIDS Initiative in Nigeria (GHAIN) in the implementation of a project titled community response to orphans and vulnerable children in Nigeria with support from the United States Agency for International Development USAID. It also collaborated with British Council, World Bank, WINROCK International, CEDPA and others.
The USI staff are particularly proud of the fact that their organisation was able to initiate the development of an HIV/AIDS Policy for the Islamic Ummah. I was privileged to participate in a workshop where selected representatives of the Muslim community were invited to validate the draft policy and make recommendations for improving on it. We were glad to be part of that review the draft policy is a comprehensive document and except for a few corrections and improvement on references for the hadith and Qur'anic quotes not much alteration took place. However, the presentation from group three generated a robust discussion around the issue of confidentiality and disclosure. A medical doctor said he once experienced a conflict when he had a patient who was infected with HIV and who told him he was planning to get married to a young girl. He tried to counsel the young man against the marriage but he refused. It made him very sad because there was a conflict between his role as a medical doctor where he had to abide by the ethics of the medical profession which prohibits him from disclosing any information about the health status of his patients and his role as a Muslim medical practitioner where he is expected to protect the right of community members from being infected with a destructive disease such as HIV/AIDS. Members discussed and shared experiences of people who were infected but wanted to contract new marriages and it required intervention of health workers, religious leaders, counsellors or community members to stop such marriages. They said there was a need to balance the confidentiality clause in the global and national HIV/AIDS policies with the reality of what is happening in our communities where some infected people refused to disclose their status to their spouses of when planning to get married.
The participants noted that the draft policy has tried to protect the human rights of the people where it stated: "In Islam, marriage is a strong contract entered into by the couples under the stipulation that each partner is safe, fit and free from defects. Prospective Muslim couples are under an obligation to engage in partner disclosure in both discordant and concordant situations" but argued that in spite of this, some infected people would refuse to disclose their status. Participants then proposed that action should be taken against such people who violate Islamic precepts and jeopardise the health of the people by criminalising non disclosure of health status. The following proposals were discussed and it was agreed that they should be added to the draft policy: consider civil liability in cases of non disclosure, propose law reform to criminalise such action.
With the presentations completed, the participants expressed the satisfaction with the work done in validating the draft policy. The facilitator, Hajiya Fatima Shagari and the consultant Prof. Naiya Sada informed participants that the next step would be harmonisation of the document by including the suggestions of both the Lagos and Kano review workshops. The harmonized document will then be presented to the public at a crowd-pulling event some time in Abuja. I got a copy of the printed copy from the USI staff and is anxiously waiting for the public presentation.
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