15% Of Donated Blood HIV Infected

The Ghana Aids Commission says about 15 per cent of blood donated to people in hospitals is HIV infected.

The Director of the Commission, Dr Sylvia Anie who announced this at a forum on HIV/AIDS, explained that the situation has raised the consciousness of health workers to thoroughly screen bloods donated before transfusion. She said "However, if the antibodies were not much in an infected blood, it could be passed for transfusion”. She however gave the assurance that the laboratories are doing their best to reduce the risk but was quick to add that, "yet we still get some percentage of screened blood infected."

The workshop organised by Abibiman Foundation in collaboration with The Ghana AIDS Commission and the Tema Municipal Assembly was under the theme: "Peace As The Needed Ingredient In Our Campaign Against HIV/AIDS". Participants were drawn from various youth groups in Tema and Ashaiman.

Dr Anie called on married couples to talk about HIV/AIDS as an issue, so that their male counterparts, who are regular travellers, would appreciate the need to wear condoms or allow their wives to use the female condoms. She cited the case of a HIV/AIDS positive woman, who claimed her husband infected her saying, "this shows that we (women) are seriously at risk." The woman believed the husband contracted the disease in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where he attended a two-year course.

She said her husband died shortly after he returned to Ghana. In few months, she realised she was pregnant and later had a child which also died after nine months. It was later that she was diagnosed HIV positive and had lived with the disease for 14 years. The HIV/AIDS patient stunned the audience when she said close relatives shunned her because of the stigma about the disease.

Dr Anie said it is important to discuss the issue of the disease in the home, "since it is not our custom for a married woman to tell the husband to wear condom after he's returned home from work or trek." She said Ghana's HIV/AIDS prevalent rate of 3.5 percent is under estimated, adding that apart from promiscuity, other unnatural behaviour such as anal sex and lesbianism had become rampant among the youth in schools.