AIDS commission broke

The Ghana AIDS Commission has appealed for the immediate procurement of more test kits and Anti-retroviral drugs to help the Commission manage the present national response.

According to the Commission, it would need about one million test kits and 5,882 pieces of Anti-retroviral drugs to deal with the current national challenge.

Besides, the one million test kits is sold at $1 each, amounting to $1 million (?3,200,000), while the 5,882 pieces of Anti-retroviral drugs is valued at $170 each, totalling $1 million (?3,200,000).

Mr Jacob Sackey, acting Director General of the Ghana AIDS Commission, made the statement at a meeting between the Vice-President, Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, and religious leaders at the Flagstaff House in Accra.

The meeting between the two groups centred on ways of funding the Ghana AIDS Commission from local private sources due to the dwindling donor support for the programme.

Mr Sackey stated that the Commission is in dire need of the test kits and Anti-retroviral drugs to manage HIV cases in the country.

He said as a result of Ghana’s lower-middle income status, donor support for the Commission to manage the national response is declining.

He said the Commission, therefore, came out with a strategy to mobilise local resources to drive the national HIV response, adding that the target of the strategy was to focus on the private sector.

Mr Sackey noted that the Commission has also met the various players in the private sector on the resource mobilisation, adding that the general resource mobilisation strategy of the Commission is still on course.

Vice-President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, who chaired the meeting, stated that the major problem facing the Ghana AIDS Commission currently is funding.

He said, currently, the government is constrained and cannot provide all the resources to the Commission to carry out its activities.

Vice President Amissah-Arthur appealed to the religious bodies to assist the government to provide test kits to the Commission to enable people to know their HIV status early and to minimise its spread.

“We have a responsibility to give cheerfully and not because we were compelled to do so,” he added.

The representatives of the religious bodies pledged to support the initiative by the Commission to raise funds from the private sector to carry out its programmes.