CBOs sign contract agreement on HIV/AIDS awareness campaign

The New Juaben Municipal Assembly and 12 Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) in the municipality on Monday signed agreements to implement the Ghana AIDS Response Fund's (GARFUND) on HIV/AIDS Second Call programme.

Eleven of the CBOs would receive 9.8 million cedis each for public education while the St Joseph's Hospital at Effiduase-Koforidua was allocated 17 million cedis to sustain its "Faith and Hope CBO" project on People Living With AIDS (PLWA) for a year.

Nana Adjei Boateng, New Juaben Municipal Chief Executive, said the 12 beneficiaries were selected from 365 CBOs from the municipality and the selection was based on the Ghana AIDS Commission's (GAC) criteria.

He said GAC gave 125 million cedis to the Assembly to be given to CBOs while the Assembly also received 100 million cedis for its HIV/AIDS monitoring activities.

Nana Adjei Boateng told the beneficiaries that the agreement imposed on them the obligation to operate strictly under the GAC guidelines and warned that anyone who would misappropriate the funds would face sanctions including prosecution and recovery of the amount misapplied.

He said the Municipal AIDS Response Initiative would monitor their activities to ensure full compliance of the proposals.

The Municipal Director of Health Services, Dr Dominic Amarh Quaye, expressed concern about the increasing rate of HIV infection in the municipality and cautioned that if the trend continued it would overtake areas in the HIV/AIDS prevalence by the end of the year.

Describing the rate in the Eastern Region as "staggering and worrying", he said it had overtaken the Ashanti Region and attributed the situation to the refusal of people to adopt safe sex behavioural changes despite the awareness campaign and the prevalence of the pandemic.

He, therefore, urged the CBOs to adopt efficient public education messages to influence change of attitude.

Dr Quaye said the municipality that recorded 150 cases of the HIV/AIDS in 2000 and 146 in 2001 surprisingly shot up to 258 in 2002 and added that among 305 blood donors screened last year 181 of them proved HIV positive.