It is not true that if you don’t practice sex you will have difficulty in producing in future. In fact, if you delay to have sex, you are avoiding acquiring STIs, HIV/AIDS and other consequences of sex that you cannot handle as a student. Infections now may even hinder you from having children in future. You do not have to practice now. When you are old enough and ready, it will automatically come and you will enjoy it.

It is normal for girls and women to have a vaginal discharge (a fluid or mucus stuff) that comes out of the vagina. All women have this vaginal discharge.

The purpose of the vaginal discharge is to keep the vaginal area moist and to protect against damage or infection. The discharge comes mainly from the glands in the cervix (the neck of the womb) and is slightly acidic which helps to keep the infections at bay.

Normal vaginal discharge should not be thought of as unclean or unhealthy. It is part of the self-cleansing mechanism of the vagina through which the vagina cleans itself and very effectively.

The amount of discharge varies from girl to girl.  Some girls produce a lot of vaginal discharge whilst others produce very little. Throughout the month, the discharge may vary a little in colour, what it feels like, how sticky it is and how much of it there is. The vaginal discharge tends to be a bit heavier around the time a girl ovulates, which is when an egg is released from the ovary and moves into the fallopian tubes.

Normal vaginal discharge should never cause itching or burning and should not be smelly. You should not worry if your discharge is normal.

 If your vaginal discharge is smelly, causes itching and is of a different colour than the usual e.g. it is yellow or green, this may be indication of a vaginal infection and you need to see a doctor.

It is perfectly normal to have small hips and a flat chest at the age of 15.
Don’t compare the size of your hips and breasts to those of your friends because we all grow at different rates and girls at the same age can have different hips and breast sizes because of differences in families, hormones and weight. Be yourself and love the way you are because each one of us is unique.

You should not be deceived by your friends that you need sex to get “vitamin S” to help you grow big hips and to develop breasts. The truth is at same age (which may vary from person to person) in the life of a girl, the pituitary gland which is located at the base of the brain sends a message to the ovaries to begin producing the hormone estrogen. Estrogen travels throughout the body of a girl and is responsible for stimulating the changes that take place during puberty like the development of breasts and broadening of hips.

You should just relax because you really don’t have to do anything to develop breasts and big hips. These are some of the body changes which occur naturally in girls when they reach puberty. Just wait for your time to come.

At your age of 15 you need to concentrate on your studies, don’t even think of having sexual relationship simply because your friends are advising you to do so. Sexual intercourse may lead you to lack of concentration in class, early unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted Diseases (STDs) and school drop-out.

Yes it is possible for a couple who are both HIV positive to produce a child who is HIV negative using Preventing Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) of HIV.

The child is not infected at the moment of conception as sperm and ova do not carry the HIV virus and they are what create the foetus. The baby is usually infected during pregnancy as the mother exchanges blood with her child through the placenta. It is during the delivery that the risk of infection of the child is highest due to exposure to maternal blood and vaginal secretions. The baby can also be infected by the mother’s milk, which contains HIV during breastfeeding.

Mother-to-child transmission of HIV can greatly be prevented through regular testing of pregnant mothers. Free ARVs are given at the hospital to the HIV positive mothers during pregnancy, labor and delivery, after delivery and to the newborn babies for the first few weeks of their life. There are should also be no breastfeeding of the baby.

No. it is not true that ARVs cure HIV/AIDS. Antiretroviral medicines (ARVs) are not a cure for HIV/AIDS and cannot prevent HIV infection but can significantly improve the quality of life of people living with the HIV virus. ARVs taken correctly reduce the ability of the HIV virus to replicate or multiply. This in turn increases the ability of the body to fight diseases.

ARVs therefore change HIV from a terminal (fatal) disease to a chronic disease like diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma. A chronic disease is one which can not  be “cured” but can be controlled.

HIV uses CD4 cells (infection-fighting white blood cells) as an HIV factory to replicate or multiply. ARVs get into the CD4 cells at different places and reduce the ability of the HIV virus to replicate so less HIV virus can be made. Because of the nature of the replication cycle of the HIV virus, ARVs usually work in a combination, each acting at a different stage and in a different way to prevent HIV replicating with the CD4 cell.

The amount of HIV in a person’s blood is called viral load. People with a high viral load are more likely to progress rapidly to AIDS than people with a low viral load.

A person on ARVs should not stop even if he or she feels better. It is extremely important for the person on ARVs to adhere to a course of ARV treatment as recommended by the health care adviser. Adherence means to take the correct combination of the ARVs, the correct dose, the correct frequency and at the correct time. A person on ARVs needs a support network (friends, family, HIV+ peers) to encourage and remind him or her to adhere to the course of ARV treatment.

If a person on ARVs misses a dose, it becomes easier for the virus to change its form (mutate) inside the body. Once this happens, the original ARV course will not be effective against the new virus that has mutated or changed form.

Frequent poor adherence, may lead to greater risk of transmission, susceptibility to other infections, increased health costs, drug resistance, limited future ARV treatment options and faster progression to AIDS.

Your challenge is a diverse one in the sense that you not only have to live with yourself but also with the different world in your life like your friends, classmates, the school community and family. This entire world of yours has to be in good balance for you to live comfortably in school. In them all however, you should not look at yourself as someone “gone” with no hope at all because the truth is that you still have a future to achieve your dreams in life. A number of HIV positive people are still living successful lives.

With yourself, you may need to try and accept your status and better look after yourself by taking your medication consistently (that is if you started on ARVs), keeping out of stressful situations so as not to burden your mind, feed in a healthy way, go for routine counseling for support and guarding your life from re-infection or infecting others.

With friends and classmates, hard as it might seem, you may need to let your friends know about your status so that all can better protect themselves from getting infected, to earn yourself social support which you will so much need and to be a role model for other students that might have the same challenge as you but with less courage.

While in school, you might have to empower yourself with skills to build your confidence because in as much as stigma against HIV positive students is going down, not everyone will have a positive attitude towards you. If you don’t have confidence, you may feel less of yourself and even perform poorly in class.

Besides friends, you have to let medical personnel know about your condition, so that you can easily be helped in case you have need for medical assistance.

At home, one of the main things you need is social support- to remind you about your medication, provide for your good feeding, offer you a stepping stone of confidence, just as it needs to be for any other family member.

All in all, you are going to need to love and appreciate yourself, try to build a firm social network and to live positively. You are still very youthful and still have a lot to offer to your world.

Effectively communicate to him and let him know and understand that you are not interested in him as a boyfriend not even as a friend and tell him to stay away from you. Try hard enough to speak to him with confidence and respect. Avoid hostile and abusive language because that could work against you by making him violent at you.

You could tell him something like: “You are a nice person, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I am not interested.”

Hopefully, he will leave you alone. If he does not, tell a teacher or an adult person to talk to him. It may seem embarrassing to you to talk to the adult person but you have got to stop him as soon as possible otherwise things could get worse.

Female Genital mutilation (FGM) is the practice of cutting any part of the external female genitalia for non-medical reasons and is sometimes called female circumcision. It is a cultural practice well ingrained in certain cultures and is carried out by traditional circumcisers.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around the world between 100 and 132 million girls and women have been subjected to FGM and each year a further 2 million girls are at risk. Female genital mutilation is mostly practiced in Africa. In Uganda, female genital mutilation is most prevalent in Kapchorwa, Bukwo and Karamoja.

The most common form of female genital mutilation involves the cutting or removal of the clitoris and other vaginal tissues. The reasons for carrying out FGM varies from culture to culture with some believing that FGM reduces a woman’s desire for sex and in doing so reduces the chances of having sex outside marriage.

Internationally, female genital mutilation is considered as a violation of the human rights of girls and women as it involves removing and damaging healthy and normal female genital tissue and interferes with the natural functions of girls’ and women’s bodies.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) has no health benefits for girls and women. FGM harms women’s psychological, sexual and reproductive health. Immediate consequences of FGM can include severe pain, shock, excessive bleeding, tetanus, urine retention and injury to nearby genital tissues. Long-term consequences of FGM can include recurrent bladder and urinary tract infections, infertility, increased risk to childbirth complications and newborn deaths and increased vulnerability to HIV.

Self-esteem is the value and respect you have for yourself and how you think others think of you. Your self-esteem affects how you think, act, behave, relate to other people and even affects your potential to be successful.

With a high or healthy self-esteem you will be confident, happy, highly motivated and have the right attitude to succeed.
Low self- esteem means poor confidence and that also causes negative thoughts about yourself which means that you are likely to give up easily rather than face challenges.

Below are some of the things you can do to boost your self-esteem:

• Think positive thoughts about yourself. Focus on your strengths and not your weaknesses.
• Value yourself, your ability and your contribution in the world because you are unique.
• Set yourself realistic goals that are not too high or too low and thereafter always strive to do better than your goals.
• Give yourself credit when you reach your goal and praise yourself when you have done well.
• Don’t compare yourself to others. Remember you are fine the way you are.
• Learn to be assertive. Express your thoughts, opinions, needs and feelings openly at the same time respecting those of others.
• Forget your past mistakes and focus on your successes encouraging yourself to greater achievements in the future.

Thank you for inquiring. Both reasons given to you for sex by this boy are wrong. The fact that you are in puberty, means that you grew from conception to infancy, childhood and now puberty, all without having sex to help you grow.
Breast size just like growth is also not determined by playing sex. At puberty, a hormone (substance that regulates body processes) called oestrogen, produced by the ovaries stimulates all major parts of your breasts to grow including the fatty tissue which makes the breasts grow bigger.
It is therefore not true that sex would make you grow or make you breasts bigger. Don’t be fooled by the boy who may even be having other intentions.
Your breasts may be smaller than those of your colleagues. This is normal because we all grow at different rates.