Journalists attend writing clinic on AIDS (Mirror News)

Sat.November 13, 2009

The Director-General of the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC), Dr Angela El-Adas, has said although some progress has been made in the nation’s response to HIV and AIDS, reaching the universal access target still remains a major challenge.
She said one area which needed serious attention was the tangible gap which still remained in respect of the basic rights of people infected with the virus.
She was addressing 30 participants at the opening of a writing clinic held at Atimpoku in the Eastern Region last Saturday.
It was organised by the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), with sponsorship from the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC), as part of a project dubbed, “Using the Media to Create Awareness of HIV and AIDS”.
Dr El-Adas said since 1986 Ghana had undertaken a wide range of interventions aimed at preventing the spread and mitigating the impact of the disease on people.
She noted that through its implementing partners and with unfailing assistance from donor partners, the GAC had been working with most-at-risk populations (MARPS) and other vulnerable groups, providing counselling, treatment, care and support for People Living with HIV (PLHIVs) and supporting orphans.
Other interventions, according to her, were promoting abstinence among the youth, promoting safe sex among adults and intensifying the administration of anti-retroviral (ART) therapy for adults and children.
She said in all those areas, significant achievements had been made but pointed out that one area which still remained a challenge was stigmatisation and discrimination against PLHIVs.
She urged the media to lend a hand to the national response to ensure that people were educated on issues of HIV and AIDS.
For his part, the Director of Technical Services of the GAC, Dr Richard Amenyah, stated that Ghana was lagging behind in its quest to achieve universal access to HIV and AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support for infected people.
He explained that universal access was defined as being as close as possible to providing sustainable and quality HIV services for all in need by 2010.
He said that would require increased resources, working towards the elimination of stigmatisation, enhanced access to affordable medicines, a reduction in vulnerability of persons affected by HIV and AIDS, particularly orphans, children infected with the virus and the aged.
Dr Amenyah indicated that HIV was still a serious problem in Ghana, in spite of the fact that the annual rate of infection had reduced from 3.6 per cent in 2003 to 1.7 per cent in 2008, adding that HIV prevalence among MARPS was still high and explained MARPS to include female sexual service providers and also men who slept with other men.
He said currently there were an estimated 240,802 HIV positive cases in Ghana, as against 236,151 in 2008, adding that 15,841 people died of AIDS related diseases in 2008.
He urged media practitioners to set the agenda to encourage others to have interest in HIV and AIDS issues so that the country would move ahead to achieve the target of universal access which was less than 15 months away.
The Chairperson for the programme, Dr Doris Dartey, advised media practitioners to have interest in issues of health and not spend all their time writing and talking about politics.