"Stigmatisation affects us more" (Nov. 11,2009)

PEOPLE Living with HIV (PLHIVs) say stigmatisation from especially close relations affect their general well-being and efforts at improving on their health.
Stories told by some of them at a meeting with health reporters in Koforidua on Saturday described the trauma some of them went through as their spouses, parents, siblings and sometimes their children refused to have any contact with them as soon as they got to know of their HIV status.
The experiences were narrated during a three-day writing clinic organised by the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) under the association’s project “Using the Media to Create Awareness on HIV and AIDS”, which is being sponsored by the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC).
As part of the event, which had participants from the southern sector of Ghana, a meeting was held between two groups of PLHIVs and the participants to enable the PLHIVs tell their own stories. The two groups were the Matthew Chapter 25 and Peace and Hope.
Majority of the members of the groups were mainly young women, who said they had either lost their spouses to the virus or their spouses had abandoned them.
They told the participants how almost all of them had lost their livelihood as a result of the stigma attached to their situation, adding that as they tried to help themselves as a group, people in the community refused to purchase items such as palm oil, gari and even tie and dye and batik which they produced.
The PLHIVs, who were mainly women in the reproductive age bracket, had been supported by others to form those associations to receive support to enable them to buy anti-retroviral (ART) drugs and also engage in income-earning activities.
They received counselling as to how to manage their situation and also to care for themselves as they received treatment.
To some of them, stigmatisation and discrimination from society worsened their situation and made it difficult for them to effectively respond to treatment since they went through a lot of stress.
Earlier at the opening of the writing clinic at Atimpoku, the acting Director General of the GAC, Dr Angela El-Adas, urged journalists to be passionate about issues of HIV and AIDS since they affected every individual either directly or indirectly.
She explained that the media stood could use their tools to help Ghana achieve target of ensuring universal access to prevention of HIV infection, treatment, care and support for PLHIVs by 2010.
Dr El-Adas appealed to journalists to identify specific areas of HIV and AIDS, and acquire the needed information to enable them to present the issues as they were.
She took the opportunity to advise the public not to have the notion that HIV was no more a problem, since the virus was infecting and killing people on daily basis.