KNUST SRC institutes HIV/AIDS lectures

Kumasi, March 24, GNA- The Students' Representative Council (SRC) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has instituted a bi-annual HIV/AIDS lectures as a measure to evolve new strategies and ideas to promote attitudinal changes amongst the youth in other to halt the spread of the pandemic.

The lectures also seek to create the needed awareness of the pandemic and other sexual reproductive issues among students in the second-cycle schools.

Speaking at the launch of the maiden lecture at the Yaa Asantewaa Girls Secondary School in Kumasi on Wednesday, Mr Bernard Okoe-Boye, Vice-President of the SRC and initiator of the lectures, said the move formed part of the Council's agenda to intensify anti-HIV/AIDS campaign in the country.

Mr Okoe-Boye expressed regret that statistics from the Ghana AIDS Commission indicated that about one million people were expected to be living with the disease by the end of 2005, saying, "this gloomy scenario was a clarion call on Ghanaians to step up efforts in combating the disease".

He said the phenomena does not augur well for Ghana's socio-economic development.

Mr Okoe-Boye called for collaborated efforts to halt the spread of the pandemic, which is affecting mainly the youth. He said the KNUST SRC would train about 100 peer educators in the next four years in the Ashanti Region as a way of intensifying the campaign against the pandemic.