Don't stigmatise, discriminate against Aids patients- NGO

Takoradi, Nov 26, GNA - Mr Donkris Mevuta, President of Friends of the Nation (FON), an NGO, said on Wednesday that discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) are major challenges that stakeholders in the fight against the spread of the pandemic must tackle. He therefore, called on Ghanaians to change their negative attitude towards such people. "Loneliness, deprivation and poverty could worsen their plight and kill them early."

Mr Mevuta said this at a day's HIV/AIDS seminar for selected members of the Western Regional Branch of the Ghana Hairdressers and Beauticians Association (GHABA), as part of activities to mark World AIDS day, which falls on December 1.

The seminar was on the theme, "stigma, discrimination, key obstacle to HIV/AIDS prevention".

Mr Mevuta called on all to accept PLWHA to minimise the spread of the disease. "Many who contracted it through sex, may be compelled to spread it if families, churches and their neighbours, shun their company and make them feel unwanted".

He appealed to the district assemblies to support graduate apprentices with part of the Poverty Alleviation (PA) and Social Investment Funds (SIF) to enable them to establish their workshops.

"Many young graduates who do not have any capital could have multiple sexual partners and thereby expose them to the HIV/AIDS pandemic," he said. Mrs Olivia Opoku-Adomah, Western Regional HIV/AIDS focal person, appealed to hairdressers, beauticians and barbers to sterilise their equipment frequently, to avoid the spread of the HIV/AIDS.

"The current rate of spread, could be reduced, if we all learn to show some love and compassion for PLWHA", she said.

She said though retroviral drugs were available, they were only meant to increase one's lifespan and not to cure the disease. Mrs Elisabeth Boosman, Western Regional President of GHABA said the association would continually organise internal training programmes for its members on the proper uses of creams, legal implications of the profession, business management, ethics and the HIV/AIDS.