Cape Coast, Dec 3, – HIV and AIDS
have become leading causes of death in Africa with a total of 15,116 Ghanaians
killed by the disease in 2016, while 20,418 new infections were recorded, the
Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC) has said.
Of the new HIV infections, 17,375
representing 85 per cent were made up of adults above 15 years and 3,043
consisting of children under 14.
In the same year, Ghana had an
HIV prevalence rate of 1.62 per cent, however the prevalence rate among
pregnant women was 2.4 per cent.
This was made known by Mr William
Kwaku Yeboah, Central Regional Technical Coordinator of GAC during an HIV and
AIDS awareness walk organised by Central Regional Ghana Red Cross Society to
commemorate this year’s World AIDS day on Saturday.
The celebration was on the global
theme “the right to health” and a national theme “the right to health: know
your status, seek early treatment”.
The three hour walk, which
brought together more than 500 school children, volunteers and staff of the Red
Cross Society and the GAC was to help raise awareness to combat HIV and AIDS in
the region.
The participants displayed
placards with the inscription: “Protect your dream, protect yourself and your
partner,” ”It is your HIV status, seek early treatment,” ”Let us join hands to
end AIDS by 2030 “Youth sex abstinence is the best”, “Say no to stigma and
discrimination” among others.
Mr Yeboah who was speaking in an
interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) disclosed that a total of 2,339 new
HIV infections were recorded in the Central Region in the year under review.
He was concerned that despite the
high level of awareness on the disease among Ghanaians, personal risk
perception was still low.
He added that majority of the
youth did not perceive themselves of being at risk and continued to engage in
negative activities that put them at risk.
He admonished all HIV and AIDS
working partners to maximise their efforts to facilitate faster positive
behavioural change to reduce the rate of its infection and to ultimately reduce
it to the barest minimum by 2030.
Mr Yeboah said HIV and AIDS
remained an important obstacle to the socio-economic progress of the country
and all must contribute towards achieving the long term goal to end AIDS by
2030.
Mr John Aidoo, the Central
Regional Manager of the Ghana Red Cross Society said there was the need for
Ghana to completely wipe out discrimination and stigmatisation of persons
living with HIV because it was preventing people from getting tested or
disclosing their status to relatives and partners.
He said the AIDS walk was to
remind Ghanaians that the disease was still prevalent and stressed the need to
have an attitudinal change towards indulging in things that were likely to get
people infected with the virus.
He said the Red Cross would
continue to educate communities on the disease and encouraged Ghanaians to be
bold to test to know their status.
GNA
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