A specialist with the HIV/AIDS clinic at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Dr Anthony Enimil, is calling for condom use campaigns to be stepped up in the country.
His concerns come in the back of a report of the joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) which suggests that below 10 percent of Ghana’s middle class prefer to use condoms during sex.
According to the United Nation’s subsidiary responsible for the fight against HIV/AIDS, data available to them indicate that, there is very low patronage of condoms in Ghana.
It also revealed that more sex workers use condoms than the other youth groups including university students who generally fall in the middle class.
The research revealed that commercial sex workers' use of condom is now 90 percent which has impacted in the drop of sex work based AIDS infections in the country from 80percent to 12 percent and still declining.
But among the youth based in the urban centers, in the universities and youth who are generally employed within the middle class, condom use was established to be below ten percent.
This Dr Enimil fears this could derail the gains attained by Ghana in the fight against AIDS.
He indicated that a challenge facing the fight against new infections in HIV/AIDS was currently to do with people’s consistency in the use of the condom as “people might use it only in the first two attempts of sex.”
Explaining difficulties people face fueling the trend, he said “condom use in general calls for waiting time, but if they are in the heat of having pleasure, they need to stop to wear [a] condom and this is not forthcoming among the class of people we are talking about”.
“Condom wear, depending on the synthesis and the manufacturer, reduces sensitivity of contact and people will want to have the actual pleasure rather than to use it a bit with a form of a barrier,” he pointed out.
He also stated “another practical challenge on the ground is the female condoms which are actually more cumbersome to use and the women may have to take their time to insert it causing much displeasure to the men.”
He indicated that even though Ghana scores very good points in HIV/AIDS prevalence, there are still records of new infection.
He advised strongly that people considered the repercussions of contracting sexually transmitted diseases during unprotected sexual intercourse and exercised some restraints to keep themselves safe. “In not taking your time, the woman or the man that you are going to have an affair with may be harboring a sexually transmitted infection like gonorrhea, syphilis, HIV, hepatitis B, C et-cetera.”
“So if there is something to reduce your pleasure, but can prevent you from getting these diseases, I think it is rational and better than to go in for all the pleasure and then stand the risk of getting all these diseases,” he admonished.
He added that it would be very important for the education to go out more strongly to help reduce the risk of new infections of STDs in the country.
