Ghana to spend huge amount on HIV drugs

Ghana would have to spend 250,000 Ghana cedis every day if all the 250,000 people living with HIV in the country are to be put on the Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) at a cost of one Ghana Cedis per tablet.

The amount could increase if more people get infected with the virus and this calls for measures to control the further spread of HIV.

The Eastern Region Focal Person for the National AIDS Control Program (NACP), Dr Emmanuel Amoa, said this at a two-day workshop for district and municipal HIV Focal Persons in the Eastern Region at Koforidua on Saturday.

He called for resources for community health nurses and health volunteers, to implement the national strategies for HIV prevention at the community level.

Dr Amoa was stepping up of know your status campaign and the Prevention of Parents to Child Transfers to help prevent new HIV infections among babies and to enable people to know their status.

He said the Eastern Region had designed a tracking tool to enable the region to track all pregnant women in the region next year to test all the children that they would be giving birth to.

Dr Amoa said out of 46,000 pregnant women tested in the region by mid year, 1,000 were HIV positive and called for more vigilance and efforts to promote the Prevention of Parent to Child transmission.

Dr Sampson Ofori, an HIV Consultant, called on the media to name and shame some heads of some religious organizations falsely claiming that they had found a cure for HIV.

He called for efforts to control the shortages of HIV testing kits and other supplies essential in the HIV prevention activities.

Ms Golda Asante of the Eastern Regional Technical Support Unit of the Ghana AIDS Commission said the national policy on HIV prevention did not forbid the sale of condoms to young people below 18 years.

She explained that under the policy, condoms found in the bag of a woman could not be used against her in any court of law as evidence that the woman was a sex worker.