LAGOS, 09/21 – About 80 percent of Nigerians think HIV/AIDS is not real, a Nigerian government official said here Monday. Babatunde Osotimehin, chairman of the National Action Committee on HIV/AIDS (NACA), told reporters in the nation`s commercial capital Lagos that “ninety percent of Nigerians know about HIV/ AIDS, but only 20 percent believe it is real.
This statistic from the Angola Press has me really messed up.
I read this statistic along with the Village Voice story of Fela, the biggest pop star in Nigeria, who died of AIDS in 1999, but denied the whole while that AIDS existed. His brother was the minister of health of the country.
I can’t even get my brain around this.
Basically it boils down to, how to you know something is true? Who is a trusted source? Would you trust something that comes from a report of the World Health Organization or something that you heard in the local market? Would you listen to your grandmother or your minister of health? Or your brother, who happens to be the minister of health?