Central Region DCEs to lead anti-HIV/AIDS campaign

Winneba, June 12, GNA - District Chief Executives in the Central Region have resolved to champion anti-HIV/AIDS educational campaign currently underway in their respective districts. The decision was the outcome of a special HIV/AIDS workshop organised by the government for some District Chief Executives in the country in Accra last week.

Briefing the press on the deliberations that took place during the workshop, Captain Steve Kwamena Armah (Rtd), District Chief Executive for Awutu-Effutu-Senya, advised Ghanaians to take the HIV/AIDS prevention campaign seriously to reduce the spread and the killings of the youth by the disease.

He urged Ghanaians not to be swollen-headed by the three percent infection rate of the disease in the country to indulge in illicit sexual practices that promote the spread of the pandemic.

Capt. Armah expressed deep concern about the high infection rate of the disease among the youth as well as people in their middle age who, he said, were the country's window of hope as far as productivity and industrial growth were concerned.

He said District Chief Executives who participated in the workshop agreed in principle to lead special anti-HIV/AIDS education groups in their respective assemblies, will set up to go from church-to-church, market places, educational institutions in their areas of jurisdiction as well as other public gatherings to effectively sensitise the public on the need to protect themselves against the disease.

This way, the DCEs would be adding greater impetus to what anti-AIDS campaigners operating in their districts have been doing over the years so that the impacts of the AIDS campaign could be felt.

He strongly advised parents and guardians who have virtually left their adolescent children loose to do whatever they like, to live up to their parental obligations by ensuring that such children quickly turn over a new leaf to make the battle against HIV/AIDS pandemic to succeed. Capt. Armah charged institutional heads, family heads, church leaders, chiefs, market queens and chairpersons of the various voluntary organisations in the regions to initiate their own educational programmes to supplement government efforts to break through the threatening effects of the disease.