AIDS C’ssion to eliminate mother-to-child transmission

4/11/2010

Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
THE Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC) has drawn up a five-year national strategic plan to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS in the country by 2015.
The President, Prof John Evans Atta Mills, is expected to launch the strategic plan in Koforidua on December 1, this year.
The Director-General of the GAC, Dr Angela El-Adas, made this known yesterday at the launch of the 2010 World AIDS Day at the Ridge Hospital in Accra.
The theme for this year’s World AIDS Day is; “Universal access and Human Rights”, but Ghana has added, “Action Now” to the theme to ensure the country’s ownership. Activities lined up for the celebration include national and regional talk shows on television and radio, sponsored health walks and HIV/AIDS counselling and testing services.
Dr El-Adas said the focus of the strategy was to reduce by half new HIV infections in the next five years.
It was also to sustain and scale up the treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS.
Dr El-Adas said although Ghana was among countries with a low general HIV prevalence of 1.9 per cent and a prevalence of 2.9 per cent among pregnant women, “the efforts for fighting the epidemic need to be sustained and scaled-up to maintain and eventually reverse the trend”.
The Minister of Women’s and Children’s Affairs, Mrs Juliana Azumah Mensah, said elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS required sustained political and donor commitment.
Besides, she said, “there would be the need to think outside the box and introduce innovations to improve quality of service delivery for underserved populations”.
She expressed the hope that if all stakeholders co-ordinated their activities, “we should be able to achieve virtual elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS by 2015”.
The Minister of Education, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, stressed the need for babies to be protected from contracting HIV/AIDS from their mothers.
Dr Leo Zekeng, who spoke on behalf of the United Nations System, said stakeholders had the means to prevent young people from contracting HIV, prevent HIV infected mothers from transmitting the disease to their children and treat those affected with the disease.
The President of the Network of Persons Living with HIV (NAP), Mr Clement Azigwe, appealed to the government to wave the payment of GH¢5.00 paid by HIV/AIDS patient monthly for antiretroviral drugs.