“Be Healthy, Wherever you Are!” campaign launched

The Ministry of Health of Moldova and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) are launching an awareness raising campaign themed “Be Healthy, Wherever you Are!”, Info-Prim Neo reports. In a news conference, Minister of Health Vladimir Hotineanu said the persons who intend to leave the country will be informed about the risk of getting HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis and about reproductive health in October-November, in partnership with the mass media. The campaign will include the distribution of brochures, broadcasting of advertisements on the radio and television, holding of seminars. Informative sessions will be organized in nine regions of Moldova for tenth-twelfth graders. Brochures will be also distributed at the border crossing points Otaci, Criva, Giurgiulesti, and Tudora, Vladimir Hotineanu said. Constantin Marin, the president of Teleradio Moldova Company, which is the media partner of the campaign, said the information will be disseminated through Radio Moldova and the public TV channel Moldova 1 as well as TVM International. Simion Terzioglo, Program Coordinator at IOM Moldova, said that such campaigns are staged in over 120 countries, including the EU and Russia, where there are many Moldovan migrants. Martin A. Wyss, the head of the IOM Mission in Moldova, said the Moldovan migrants must know the risks to which they are exposed while they are far from home. According to the information presented in the news conference, most of the Moldovans working abroad are aged between 25 and 44. In Moldova, there are over 6,000 HIV-infected people. 236 persons of the 200,000 who did the test in 2009 found out that they are infected. Over 100 of them returned from abroad.