EMBASSY NEWSCENTRE
Students Pack Auditorium for AIDS Road Show
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Students of INP-HB, one of West Africa's largest university's, pack the school's auditorium to participate in the US Embassy's AIDS Road Show. (Photo: Honoré Koffi/US Embassy) |
Over 500 students piled in to the auditorium of Yamoussoukro’s INP-HB University, where the Director had canceled classes so that they could come learn about the disease that is with each passing day affecting more and more of their classmates. The students were not alone. Professors also attended in large numbers. Students enthusiastically addressed their comrades as they showed a strong understanding that AIDS is a major problem, which their generation must come to terms with, or die trying. When they took the microphone, their reactions were often part question, part commentary, and part suggestion. They urged the university to establish a committee to continue the efforts to create greater awareness about HIV/AIDS amongst the student population. They called for condom dispensers to be placed in the halls and for more information to be made available to them.
The students also posed frank questions about how the disease could be contracted and many openly condemned discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS. Co-Sponsor representatives from the Ministry of AIDS and the organization of artists, musicians, and journalists against AIDS (REPMASCI) helped to answer their concerns, questions, and dispelled rumors. The representative of the Ministry of AIDS and REPMASCI’s representative hailed the US for the work it is doing in Cote d’Ivoire against HIV/AIDS.
