HIV/AIDS rate alarming in Fanteakwa

Begoro, Oct. 31, GNA - The Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Yaw Barima, has advised the people of the Fanteakwa District to reflect soberly over their sexual habits in order to help reverse the high rate of HIV/AIDS infections in the District.

He lamented that whereas recent statistics showed that the national HIV/AIDS prevalence rate declined from 3.6 per cent, the prevalence rate in Fanteakwa increased from 6.6 per cent to 6.8 per cent making it the second highest in prevalence rate nationwide.

Mr Barima made the call in a speech read for him by the Regional Co-ordinating Director, Mr Sylvester Manu, at the durbar to climax this year's celebration of the Odwira festival of the people at Begoro on Saturday.

The Minister expressed concern at the menace of the high prevalence rate of the disease in the District and asked chiefs in the area to re-examine their cultural practices and bring into focus socially-accepted ones that could help check the pandemic. He asked parents to capitalize on the fee-free education policy of the government to send their children to school.

The District Chief Executive for Fanteakwa, Mr Ebenezer Ofoe Caesar, expressed concern that even though the District Assembly had instituted a scholarship scheme for the youth in the area to attend nurses training and return to work in health institutions in the District yet only a few people had applied.

He said the Assembly would soon construct nurses' quarters at Begoro to help solve the accommodation problem facing nurses in the town.