A MEDIA advocacy group,
the Journalists Alliance for PMTCT in Nigeria, JAPiN, has been awarded the Defender
of the Girl Child Award.
Presenting the
award during the group’s 2016 National Meeting in Lagos, Nollywood film
producer, Mr. Dozie Eboh, said the award was in recognition of JAPiN’s contributions
towards the welfare and protection of the Nigerian girl child, adolescents and
women in general.
Eboh, who is the
CEO of View Trend Entertainment Limited, produced a movie on the Girl Child
entitled Reality, that is an expose on girl child
labour, early marriage, vulnerability to rape, abuse and prostitution that
consequently lead to infections such as HIV infection, entailing the need for
the eMTCT/PMTCT campaign.
He noted that
View Trend and JAPiN would work together towards dissemination of
the movie and building up the story line.
Receiving the
Award, JAPiN’s National Coordinator, Sola Ogundipe, said it would spur the group to be more
committed towards ensuring that the girl child is protected from early
marriage, teenage pregnancy and other forms of social vices that
increase the risk of mother to child transmission of HIV.
UNICEF HIV
Specialist, Dr. Abiola Davies enjoined the group to brainstorm
and come up with ideas that would help in projecting the movie in good light
and to ensure that the technical angle/content of the story is put in the right
perspective.
Since inception
in 2004, JAPiN has garnered a critical mass of journalists as change agents for
the prevention and elimination of mother- to- child transmission of HIV, PMTCT
and eMTCT issues.
Established as a
national and zonal network of journalists, the group has brought a fresh
perspective into related HIV/AIDS issues in the media and helped
enable positive response to related issues of MTCT of HIV within the
community.
