Media urged to step up campaign against HIV/AIDS stigma

Accra, Dec. 22, GNA - The Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) on Tuesday urged the media to intensify reporting on HIV and AIDS related issues, stressing stigmatisation and discrimination as the key factors militating against behavioural change.

Mrs. Joyce Larko Steiner, Programme Coordinator, Human Rights and Gender, CCG, at a press conference in Accra, said factors such as the high degree of stigma associated with the HIV and AIDS led to situations where the disease remained hidden and shrouded in secrecy.

"The belief that time of death was pre-determined also leading to acceptance of this fate by most people infected with HIV." She said ideally, HIV and AIDS should be seen as a national emergency that required the sustained attention of all sectors of the society, with the media being key partners in the campaign for prevention, treatment and care.

Mrs. Larko said nation should embark on a massive treatment and literacy campaign which will disseminate messages on anti-stigma and discrimination.

Under such a grand scheme, encouragement of people to take HIV test, place on the affected on Anti Retroviral therapies and induce them to adhere to their treatment regimen would help to bring about change in thought and behaviour.

She therefore urged the media to conduct extensive research into monitoring stigma and the ARV rollout, as part of maintaining pressures on government to ensure that the drugs were available and that the health infrastructure was adequately structured to deliver the rollout programme. Mrs. Steiner said media coverage on HIV and AIDS-related issues had been found out to be generally patchy and mixed, with several shortcomings. She added that the reason behind stigmatisation and denial had not been systematically examined, yet stigma formed one of the major barriers to dealing with HIV and AIDS and it was gradually becoming a barrier to people going for treatment.

"We used to assume that once people know how HIV is transmitted, they will change their sexual behaviour. However, there is little evidence that knowledge alone changes behaviour," Mrs. Steiner said, adding that same researchers have even found that many young people were tired of hearing HIV and AIDS messages.

She said the Christian Council had been committed to the fight against the disease since 2004 and believed that it was vital that clear information on the mode of transmission of HIV be readily available to help prevent further transmission and also allay fears and prejudices caused by misinformation.

Rev. Albert Kwabi, an official of CCG, said the Council had no policy on condom usage, adding it had programmes with all the various categories of persons in the society, therefore designed appropriate messages for each category.

He said the Council, as much as possible, preaches total abstinence as an option, but in cases where persons are extremely sexually active, condom use was advised. 22 Dec. 09