Teachers attend workshop on HIV/AIDS

Apam Aug. 4, GNA - One thousand and ten primary and senior secondary school teachers in Gomoa District have attended a workshop aimed at bolstering their capacity as agents of dissemination and change in national efforts to control HIV/AIDS in the country. The workshop was under the auspices of the World Bank, Danish fund for International Development in collaboration and the Ghana Education Service.

Speaking at the opening of the first of the series of the three-day workshop at Apam, Miss Esther Boansi, Gomoa District school health education programme coordinator, commended the Ghana AIDS commission and the sponsors for involving teachers in the fight against the dreaded disease.

Miss Boansi said although teachers were the best medium of propagating information, majority of them lacked access to information on the HIV/AIDS.

She said the workshop was to introduce the teachers into how to integrate HIV/AIDS topics into other subjects such as social studies, religious and Moral education.

Mrs. Emman Baaba Quarcoo, District Director of education, said the launch of Ghana Business coalition against HIV/AIDS for chief executive, offices managers and lecturers indicated the importance the government attached to controlling the disease.

She said under the coalition, departments, institutions and business concerns would harness resources to fight HIV/AIDS. Mr. John Yamoah, District Focal person on HIV/AIDS, said the disease has posed the greatest leadership challenge of our time because it has defied social, bio-medical and natural phenomenon. Mr Yamoah said the disease was eroding the manpower needs of African countries and appealed to the teachers to take the workshop seriously.

Mr. Mohammed Ackonu, Headmaster of Potsin T.I. Ahmadiyya secondary school who chaired the function urged teachers to change the attitude of people who believed that "every death is death", and to make them to know the harm they were doing to the society.