In January of 2024, the Njaboute Foundation Traveled to Sinchange Alagie Gai to host a HIV/AIDs education session.
Once again, we have made the local news for our work in Sinchang, a village in the West Coast District of The Gambia.
The Njaboute foundation visited the village alongside Gambia Group attendees and 20-30 junior doctors visiting from Sweden. The goal was to provide an open field day centered on sexual and reproductive health, and rights focusing on HIV/AIDs concepts. Secondary aims included dispelling common misconceptions and addressing the discrimination of persons living with the disease.
Specifically:
To raise awareness among the people of Sinchang on HIV/AIDs
To test the knowledge and attitude of the community on HIV/AIDs
To create a sense of unity among villagers to join the fight against HIV/AIDs
To help them locate service points and services for treating HIV/AIDs
Compared to Sweden, HIV/AIDs suffers in The Gambia sometimes suffer from mistreatment and significant amounts of prejudice. Often these misconceptions are the result of misunderstandings of how HIV/AIDs is spread and can be treated.
This issue is compounded by the lack of accessible and affordable healthcare in The Gambia and reflected in the rate of HIV/AIDs sufferers when comparing Sweden to The Gambia.
In Sweden, approximately 0.2% of citizens live with HIV/AIDs. In The Gambia, this figure is roughly 2.4%. However figures for testing HIV in The Gambia is very low, the actual figure HIV/AIDs rates may be much higher.
Foday Bojang, a field supervisor for the Njaboute Foundation in The Gambia, reported back to us in Sweden on the event's success. All comments in italics are taken directly from his report back to the Njaboute Foundation.
The meeting started with prayers by the village imam (religious leader), followed by welcoming remarks by the village Alkali (village head) and there was a welcoming entertainment song and dance by the women group upon the arrival of the guests with a huge turnout by the villagers.
Notice some of the visiting doctors from Sweden in the background!
Islam is the primary religion in The Gambia, with approximately 96% of the population being devoted Muslims. Villages often rally behind religious leaders such as the Imam, the one who leads a group of Muslims in prayer.
This devout faith can also be a challenge when working to overcome misinformation. Over the past couple of months, this has become a very relevant issue, with a former State House Imam in the Gambia attempting to decriminalize Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). These arguments are made in part on religious grounds, however, this remains disputed by Islamic scholars across The Gambia.
This is why we believe that charity activates should be lead by Gambians, who best understand local cultural practices and religious texts. They are able to reference information and current events which are not understood by Swedes living in Europe.
Next on the agenda was the opening remarks (introduction of topic) and introduction of Njaboute members by Mr Ousman A Bah.
Ousman A Bah is the Administrator of the Gambia Group and was assisting us with the event. Working with the Gambia Group is helping is achieve regular and bigger projects in the field.
He introduced all the members of the foundation present and highlighted some of the achievements and constraints. He went on to show appreciation and gratitude to Future in Our Hands foundation and the regional HIV & AIDs coordinator for Kanifing Municipal council (KMC) and Banjul City Council (BCC).
Mrs Isatou Bobo Jallow and Mr Gibril Sannah pondered on the Definition of HIV & AIDs, Causes and Signs and symptoms of HIV to the participants in two of the local dialects (Wollof and Fula) for better understanding.
Gibril Sannah, is the Kanifing Municipal council and Banjul City Council HIV & AIDs coordinator. He was brought into this project by the Njaboute Foundation as an expert in the field.
Isatou Bobo is the Njaboute Foundation's HIV/AIDs/TB project Coordinator.
However, the epidemiology, mode of transmission and prevention and control was presented by our honorable guesses from Sweden, Matilda Tryggveson and Lisa Baideson which was translated by Isatou Bobo Jallow to the participants. The presenters took their time and explained how HIV & AIDS can be transmitted from person to person and how someone can prevent his or herself from the virus.
The number of languages spoken in The Gambia is usually surprising to newcomers. The Gambia has 10 commonly spoken languages (over 0.5% of the population speaking them). More surprising is that the most popular language - Mandinka - is only spoken by around 38% of the population, less than half the country.
Furthermore, diagnosis, testing and treatment centers was discussed by Mr Gebril Sanneh and he went on to discussed on all the treatment centers in The Gambia and how can one be diagnose for AIDs and a recap was done by Mr Foday Bojang to access the understanding of the participants before given room for question and answers which was led by Mr Gibril Sanneh and Mrs Isatou Bobo Jallow.
At the end of the session, our media and communication officer Fatoumata Sanyang gave words of appreciations and gratitude on behalf of Njaboute Foundation. The village development committee chairman Koyo Kandeh on behalf of the entire village asked for more health awareness support and gave his word of appreciation and closed the meeting.
This event was a successful example of how our partnership with Gambia Group allows us to do more, including collaborations with Swedish doctors, local experts and Gambia Group specialists.
Usually I like to conclude these blog posts with a nice summary of the event and something positive to round things off. I will give that honor this time to Foday Bojang, by directly copying his event report conclusion to the Njaboute Foundation in Sweden below.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The event was marked with entertainment by traditional attire of cultural dresses, singing and dancing. The community being the center of nowhere is hard to reach, little or no access to health care, no access to clean drinking water, no school with poor road network linking to nearest health facilities. Thus, the community acknowledged and appreciated the information session and prayed for more in the future. They maintained that the sensitization has provided meaning and boosted their understanding about the infection, its mode of transmission, progression, treatment, and prevention. It has dispelled a lot of misconceptions and broken-down barriers between the infected and unaffected whilst breaking the discrimination and marginalization for people living with HIV. The biggest achievement was that a baby who was delivered a week ago was named after Karin Ahlstedt, one of the visiting doctors from Sweden. We can conveniently report that this event was a huge success by all indications.
Thank you again for your continued support.
Christopher Hyde
Vice Chairperson
Njaboute Foundation
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