Some people on procession to mark the day
ABOUT 6,907 persons are living with HIV in the Northern Region, Nuhu Musah, Technical Coordinator of the Ghana AIDS Commission in the Northern Region, has disclosed.
Mr. Musah, who disclosed this at the World AIDS Day celebration in Tamale recently, said currently, about 4,544 HIV positive clients were receiving treatment in the region.
The Tamale Metropolitan Chief Executive, Sule Salifu, appealed to the public to stop discrimination against persons living with HIV.
“People living with HIV are not bad people, they are human-beings like us and any of us can be affected, so persons living with HIV must be loved and respected, and we must see them as our brothers and sisters and live with them with harmony and dignity, but if we discriminate against them it can trigger the spread of the virus,” he said.
The Programmes Coordinator of Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG), Northern Zone, Adam Azabre Abugbik, lamenting the stigma attached to the HIV disease, noted “People do not go out looking for HIV, so we have to be compassionate towards them and give them the necessary support, if not when people start dying because of a disease like HIV that can be managed, then we are losing a lot of human resources as a country,” he pointed out.
He disclosed that PPAG has distributed 7,200 pieces of condoms to the general public for free.
“We fight HIV by promoting the use of condoms, and yes we understand that there’s the need for abstinence, but sometimes sex is a necessity, so we are urging people to have protected sex and for that matter we distributed about 7,200 pieces of condoms for free,” he added.
FROM Eric Kombat, Tamale