CBO trains peer educators

Gomoa Ankamu (C/R), Aug 20, GNA - The Gomoa District HIV/AIDS Monitoring and Evaluation focal person, Mr Eric Akobeng has urged Ghanaians not to be complacent with the 3.6 percent prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in the country.

Mr Akobeng said the rate might look small as compared to the rate in some African countries but said those countries might have taken a longer period to record that rates.

He said in Ghana only 42 people had the virus when the disease was first detected in 1986 and if within a period of 16 years the infection rate got to over 500,000 ''then we can see how fast the disease is spreading.''

Mr Akobeng said this at a training workshop for peer educators at Gomoa Ankamu near Apam organised by Progressive Club, a local Community Based Organisation (CBO) in collaboration with Ghana AIDS Commission. Mr Akobeng mentioned people's unwillingness to change their sexual habit and discrimination against people living with the disease as major factors impeding the efforts to reduce the spread of the disease and appealed to organisations engaged in the fight against the spread of the disease to direct their programmes to those factors.

Alhaji Osman Moro Fukuyamah, a member of the District AIDS Committee, advised the educators to stress on abstinence from pre-marital sex than on the use of condom.

He advised them to form AIDS education clubs in their communities. Mr John Kobena Yamoah, the chairman of the CBO, urged the youth to accept the HIV/AIDS pandemic as a challenge to refrain from sexual promiscuity.