Fighting HIV/AIDS in Ghana

The world has been living with the HIV/AIDS menace for years now and it has been a battling phenomenon that has unfortunately taken and continues to take the lives of many of our young brightest individuals who otherwise could have gone on to make valuable contributions in the countries they lived in.

A vaccine for the treatment and cure of the disease is still to be found which makes it imperative for governments worldwide to find ways and measures of curtailing the spread and infection of the virus that causes AIDS.

Some measures have been adopted over the years in an effort to control the disease including education on why it is important to abstain from premarital unprotected sex, which is the major cause of the virus that leads to one catching the disease.

In Ghana, the government has allocated $200 million to support the national HIV/AIDS programmes for the next five years in response to the decision by the Global Fund to withdraw its support by 2013.

The Global Fund’s five year support for the treatment of 49,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Ghana ended in April last year but it has been extended to April 2013.

The extension does not however, include some 12,000 people living with the disease in Ghana who were not part of the programme five years ago.

The board of the cash strapped international fund recently announced that it would not be making any new grants until 2014.

Sources say it needed $20 billion to support projects across the globe to combat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis but received only $11 billion.

The Ghana government is stepping in to support in the fight against this pandemic with the money it has allocated although a lot more resources would be required to sustain it.

There are an estimated 61,393 HIV/AIDS infected people living on anti-retroviral drugs in Ghana and out of this number, 2,812 are children with the adult population around 58,581 with about 8,000 of them being pregnant women.

The government has initiated healthcare programmes to address the pandemic through the establishment of the National AIDS Control programme which has gone some distance in seeing a significant reduction in the pandemic from 3.6 per cent in 2003 to two per cent in 2010.

To beat this figure down further, the Ghana government has launched a yearly HIV/AIDS fair whose chief aim is to strive towards zero new HIV infection, zero AIDS related deaths and zero discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS.
Prevention and support services have been scaled up to include the supply of anti-retroviral drugs which continues to serve as the main source of survival for people living with the disease.

Although resources are limited in the quest to sustain these programmes, the initiative taken in Ghana to help combat the HIV/AIDS menace, is a commendable one which if well funded, would go along way in beating down the spread of the disease.

It can be looked at by other governments worldwide in the drawing up of programmes to fight the menace in their countries which, with good funding and other support measures by donor agencies, would help in the quest to give the world a clean bill of health at least.
The world has been living with the HIV/AIDS menace for years now and it has been a battling phenomenon that has unfortunately taken and continues to take the lives of many of our young brightest individuals who otherwise could have gone on to make valuable contributions in the countries they lived in.

A vaccine for the treatment and cure of the disease is still to be found which makes it imperative for governments worldwide to find ways and measures of curtailing the spread and infection of the virus that causes AIDS.

Some measures have been adopted over the years in an effort to control the disease including education on why it is important to abstain from premarital unprotected sex, which is the major cause of the virus that leads to one catching the disease.

In Ghana, the government has allocated $200 million to support the national HIV/AIDS programmes for the next five years in response to the decision by the Global Fund to withdraw its support by 2013.

The Global Fund’s five year support for the treatment of 49,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Ghana ended in April last year but it has been extended to April 2013.

The extension does not however, include some 12,000 people living with the disease in Ghana who were not part of the programme five years ago.

The board of the cash strapped international fund recently announced that it would not be making any new grants until 2014.

Sources say it needed $20 billion to support projects across the globe to combat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis but received only $11 billion.

The Ghana government is stepping in to support in the fight against this pandemic with the money it has allocated although a lot more resources would be required to sustain it.

There are an estimated 61,393 HIV/AIDS infected people living on anti-retroviral drugs in Ghana and out of this number, 2,812 are children with the adult population around 58,581 with about 8,000 of them being pregnant women.

The government has initiated healthcare programmes to address the pandemic through the establishment of the National AIDS Control programme which has gone some distance in seeing a significant reduction in the pandemic from 3.6 per cent in 2003 to two per cent in 2010.

To beat this figure down further, the Ghana government has launched a yearly HIV/AIDS fair whose chief aim is to strive towards zero new HIV infection, zero AIDS related deaths and zero discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS.
Prevention and support services have been scaled up to include the supply of anti-retroviral drugs which continues to serve as the main source of survival for people living with the disease.

Although resources are limited in the quest to sustain these programmes, the initiative taken in Ghana to help combat the HIV/AIDS menace, is a commendable one which if well funded, would go along way in beating down the spread of the disease.

It can be looked at by other governments worldwide in the drawing up of programmes to fight the menace in their countries which, with good funding and other support measures by donor agencies, would help in the quest to give the world a clean bill of health at least.