Walungu, March 23, 2018 – Walungu is a locality situated tens of kilometres from the town of Bukavu in the South Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).  The main activity of the population in this mountainous region is farming. They toil the land to feed the hungry population in urban Bukavu and elsewhere within the country.

“The land is not quite fertile”, says one local resident, “what hinders our farming activities is the presence of scores of rebel groups who have come to settle here for illegal mining”, he informs. “There is no peace in this region because of the rebel groups,” he continuous, “We cannot do farming far away from here because we are afraid of rebel’s attacks, but we thank God that MONUSCO contingents are here to protect us from these attacks,” he concludes. 

The HIV and AIDS awareness-raising activities that took place in this rural locality is part of the ongoing programme of the HIV/AIDS Section to sensitize all MONUSCO contingents before their next rotation exercise. The activities carried out in Walungu included voluntary and confidential HIV testing for members of the Pakistani battalion, which is one of MONUSCO’s contingents in the DRC.

The sensitization team from the HIV/AIDS Section has said that the purpose of these activities was to sensitize and do the HIV test for all members of the MONUSCO contingent based in Walungu before they return to their regions of origin. According to the sensitization team, for these activities to be effective, the HIV/AIDS Section of MONUSCO has set up a comprehensive awareness programme on HIV and AIDS to encourage voluntary and confidential HIV testing in order to reduce the risk of HIV infection, and to improve the ability of peacekeepers to better understand HIV preventive methods.

Through these HIV and AIDS awareness activities, many peacekeepers can now understand and explain the different ways of transmitting and preventing HIV. All participants say they have improved their knowledge and understanding of the various ways of HIV transmission as well as prevention. Despite the religious and cultural barriers in some regions of the world including Pakistan, the beneficiaries of the training have confirmed that they can now sit down and discuss HIV issues with their partners, friends, and families.

After the awareness sessions, the message went home as dozens of people accepted to do the voluntary and confidential HIV test. Meanwhile the commanding officials who took part in the training used the occasion to call on participants to be more cautious and urged their medical service staffs to redouble their efforts in their mission to save lives. They thanked the HIV/AIDS Section for organizing the activities, which they said were very important and educative because HIV and AIDS are global health issues that concern everyone.

However, it is worthy of note that these sensitization and screening activities were part of a larger awareness campaign in which messages were delivered in forms of posters and brochures for wider reading and understanding. From Walungu, we have been reliably informed that similar sensitization activities will take place in other localities where MONUSCO contingents are based.