AIDS walker reaches Nsawam

A 25-year old man, Nana Kesse Ntim-Adu on Monday arrived in Nsawam after completing the first phase of a 200-kilometre Anti-AIDS campaign walk aimed at creating awareness about the deadly disease in the South Akwapim District of the Eastern Region.

The walk which took him through 325 towns and villages begun at Brekuso in the region on February 10 where he had stops to preach against the disease. He was welcomed to Nsawam amidst the sounding of a siren and a crowd lined the streets with a number of placard bearing school children who gathered at the forecourt of Ghana Education Service office where he later addressed them.

Nana Kesse, who is the director of Save the Future Foundation, an NGO said he was motivated to undertake the walk following the declaration of the District as the second highest in the prevalence rate of the disease in the Eastern region. Kwabibrim was first in ranking.

He attributed the spread of the disease to promiscuity that takes place during wake-keeping when people were sometimes drunk and were left off guard. Nana Kesse has therefore, urged the Eastern Regional House of Chiefs to place a total ban on wake- keeping in the region, especially in the Akwapim South district as a means of checking the spread of the disease.

He said during interactions with the communities, it came to light that people were not going for voluntary testing because they feared the cost involved. Voluntary testing was free and that one only had to pay, if a doctor or an institution requested for it, he said.

Nana Akua Okyerewah I, Presiding Member of Akwampim South District Assembly, in her welcome address said people who contracted the disease should be treated humanely.

She urged the pupils not to make a mistake of falling in love at their tender age to be lured into other undesirable acts such as sex. Nana Okyerewaa also urged barbers and hairdresser to always were gloves when working to avoid contacting and spreading the disease in the course of their work.

She told the women, "Do not put yourselves into compromising situations that could lead to rape", "Do not encourage children to go hawking since they could be enticed during such times into engaging in undesirable sex that could lead them to contract the HIV/AIDS."

Dr Emmanuel Tinkorang, a Deputy Director, Public Health said the reported cases of HIV Aids in the country currently stands at 47,000 for the year 2001, adding the Ministry of Health however, believed that over 450,000 cases were not being reported to the health institutions. The Assembly later presented Nana Kesse with a cheque for 300,000 cedis to support him in the educational walk.