"Review policy on pre-paid metres for hospitals"-Ofosu-Ampofo

Koforidua, Aug 3, GNA - Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, the Eastern Regional Minister, has appealed to the Electricity Company of Ghana to review its policy on the use of pre-paid meters for hospitals that administer the Anti-Retroviral drugs (ART) for HIV/AIDS patients. He said experts said those drugs are to be kept in fridges to maintain their efficacy but the situation where some hospitals were using pre-paid meters which could run out of "units" at any time and therefore making their storage difficult was not the best.

Addressing a pre-implementation meeting on 2009 Multi Sectoral HIV/AIDS Programme M-SHAP for the region in Koforidua, he said if victims of the virus could be saved, then no effort must be spared in putting favourable conditions in place for their care and management. Mr Ofosu-Ampofo said the high incidence of teenage abortions in the area and their attendant health problems gave an indication that people were indulging in pre-marital and unprotected sex. He suggested to District Chief executives to make information vans available for dissemination of information on HIV/AIDS in communities. Dr Richard Amenyah, the Director of Technical Services of the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC), said records showed that the Eastern Region was recording high prevalent rate of the virus and urged stakeholders to tackle the issue with all the approaches adopted by the GAC without recourse to any doctrine.

Dr Samuel Ofori, the Regional Coordinator of the AIDS Programme, advised pregnant women to embrace the Voluntary Testing policy during pregnancy at the ante-natal clinics since drugs were available for those of them who would test positive to ensure that their babies were not infected.

He said a pilot programme to prevent mother-to-child transmission at the Saint Joseph Hospital at Koforidua proved satisfactory when out of the 50 pregnant women who tested positive only three of them had their babies infected during delivery. 03 Aug 09