Dikgonnye settlement host candlelight commemoration
Mpho Mokwape | Tuesday May 26, 2015 16:38
This was said by the Dikgonnye Primary School Head, Sebilo Motlhaping, when addressing the residents Friday night.
The small settlement came to a standstill on the night of this year’s candlelight commemoration, in remembrance of people living with HIV/AIDS.
The commemoration under the theme ‘supporting the future, unite to demand a sustainable HIV/AIDS Response’ is an annual event the world over, and this year it has reached the relatively small residents of Dikgonnye.
The main objectives for the commemoration was to remember those who died of HIV/AIDS, encourage those living with the disease, teach others about the disease and fight discrimination.
Motlhaping said it has become a norm nowadays that when couples decide to test together and find that they are both infected, they start playing the blame game.
“We have a problem of people who test then start blaming one another even though before they got together, they never tested to know their status,” he said.
Motlhaping encouraged men to support their families, avoid multi-concurrent partners and also to test in large numbers with their partners. He said often, male partners in relationships are the root cause of many problems within the household as they are the ones who often fail to stay faithful while their female counterparts try harder to keep the family together.
“In most instances, we men are the problem in relationships. We fail to keep to one woman while our partners can remain faithful resulting in bringing infections to our partners. We need to protect the family,” he said.
Also addressing the residents on behalf of the health department in the area, the nursing official Moremi Barungwi said it was encouraging the rate in which the residents were willing to test. He said residents have lately been visiting the health post in large numbers to test and it shows that people were getting the message to know their status.
“Just recently Tebelopele Counselling and Testing Centre came here with only 50 kits for testing but the numbers were so overwhelming that they decided to come back to test the remaining batch,” he said.