Baylor organises football extravaganza

MPHO TLALE
Correspondent | Wednesday June 30, 2010 00:00

The event will include watching the two teams that will be playing at the World Cup and some players from the national team, popularly known as the Zebras have been invited.

The proceeds gathered from the event will go towards the building of an adolescent centre opposite Baylor, which will cater for teenagers. Baylor has a Teen-club that addresses HIV positive adolescents. The club's mission is to provide a safe, welcoming and nurturing environment for HIV positive adolescents to build healthy relationships, their self-esteem and reinforce positive habits that will ensure a healthy transition into adulthood. Baylor recently launched a new publication called Teen Talk, which is aimed at addressing HIV positive youth. Teen Talk was printed with the assistance of Barclays and it is written in a question and answer format. The book covers a wide variety of youth related topics that include reproductive health, nutrition, Anti-retroviral treatment, adherence as well as issues relating to multiple concurrent partners.

The 48 page Teen Talk is written in Setswana and English and is printed in a colour. It also has depicted scenes that Botswana youth are familiar with and can relate to. Commenting about Teen Talk, Edward Pettitt, who is the coordinator of the Teen Club, stated that the book is geared at answering questions that are mostly asked by the youth He stated that adolescence is associated with emotional turbulence, little care for personal well being and difficulty in internalising abstract concepts.

Pettitt further pointed out that there is a lack of accurate, youth friendly information material available to adolescents living with HIV on how to live a healthy life, hence the need for a book like Teen Talk. According to Pettitt, more than 3,000 adolescents in Botswana will need Anti-retroviral (ARV) medication by 2011 and more efforts need to be done to address the unique needs of this age group.

Speaking at the launch of Teen Talk, the executive director of Baylor, Gabriel Anabwani, said the launching of Teen Talk is certainly a milestone for improving service provision for adolescents living with HIV, not just in Botswana but for the entire region. Baylor has Teen Clubs in six countries, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi, Uganda and Tanzania, which gives youth living with HIV a chance to discuss issues that affect them.

Since its inception in 2005, in Botswana Teen Talk has grown to have over 400 people though it started with only 4. On interviewing one of the first members of the Teen Club, he stated that the club has helped deal with his status.

He also added that he has learnt self-acceptance and gives credit to the club as a good place for him to communicate his feelings with the other youth who are also HIV positive. Baylor is a collaborative partnership between the government of Botswana and the Baylor International Paediatric AIDS initiative (BIPAI), which provides HIV and AIDS testing and treatment to infected children.

Since its inception, the centre has tested more than 10,000 children for HIV over 2,000 of whom have been started on highly active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART)