Western Region ROSCO launched

Takoradi, Oct. 9 GNA - Mr Emmanuel Fiagbey, Country Director Johns Hopkins University Centre for Communication Programmes, has called on leaders of the various religious organisations to lead a relentless crusade to prevent further spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Mr Fiagbey was launching the Western Region branch of Reach Out Show Compassion (ROSCO), a group of peer educators on HIV/AIDS. "There is no society of people in Ghana where the fight to overcome HIV/AIDS and its devastating challenges can be better organised and fought than among our religious communities", he noted.

He urged the Leaders to work to remove key barriers that militated against their effective involvement in the fight to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, which he said included the controversy about their opinions over condom promotion and use.

"Many Leaders of religious organisations still remain silent about HIV/AIDS, thinking and rather erroneously that it is a curse from God or it is punishment for the immoral", Mr Fiagbey noted.

He said whereas the national prevalence of the disease was between three and four per cent, there were communities in some Regions including the Western Region, where the rate was more than five per cent, making the situation more critical in those Regions.

In the case of the Western Region, Mr Fiagbey attributed the comparatively high prevalence rate to the fact that it now served as home for many people from neighbouring Cote D'Ivoire because of the political instability in that country, among other factors. He expressed the hope that the trained peer educators and supporting leaders of religious organisations would work with enthusiasm and commitment to remove the stigma and discrimination that surrounded HIV/AIDS.

Three hundred and thirty thousand adults are said to be living with the disease in the country and it is projected that 550,000 people would be living with the disease in 2004.

Nana Kobina Nketsia V, Omanhene of the Essikado Traditional Area, who chaired the function, called on chiefs and other opinion leaders to coordinate their efforts to enhance programmes to check the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country.

He advised the people to check their HIV/AIDS status at the voluntary counselling and testing clinics.

Thirty members of the peer educators were presented with HIV/AIDS kits.