HIV/AIDS should be seen as greatest leadership challenge - Akobeng

Gomoa Potsin (C/R), April 18, GNA - Mr Eric Akobeng, Gomoa District HIV/AIDS Monitoring and Evaluation Focal Person, has called on traditional leaders to see HIV/AIDS as the greatest leadership challenge they have to face in their communities.

Mr Akobeng said since wars no longer posed a challenge to traditional rulers, attention should now be on HIV/AIDS, which was threatening the survival of mankind.

He made the call at a peer educators training workshop for some selected children from 20 schools at Gomoa Potsin in the Gomoa East constituency

It was organised by Social Development Partners, a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) and sponsored by the Ghana Aids Commission.

Mr Akobeng, who is also the Gomoa District Budget Analyst, urged Ghanaians to abolish the culture, which made discussion of sex education at homes a taboo.

"The high time we erased the misconception people have that those who talk about sex the better it would be for the nation," he said. He appealed to HIV/AIDS campaigners to adopt drama, film shows and other practical methods to deliver their messages on the disease. Mrs Ekua Tawiah Assomaning, a Lecturer at the University College of Education, Winneba, advised the youth to concentrate on their education and abstain from pre-marital sex to avoid contracting the disease. Mr Kwamena Boakye, Executive Director of the Social Development Partner, called on the government to create more poverty reduction intervention for the people to take them out of paucity, which was the root cause of sexual promiscuity.

Nana Tweiku VIII, chief of Potsin, who chaired the function, admonished the youth not to allow the elderly people to corrupt them. He asked them to say no to the "Sugar Daddies and Mummies," who would approach them for sex.