NGO to introduce door-to-door HIV/AIDS education

Han (U/W) Feb. 22 GNA - Rural Aid Action Programme (RAAP,) a nongovernmental organisation (NGO) has entered into partnership agreement with Plan Ghana, an international NGO, to intensify education on reproduction health among adults and adolescents.

To buttress their agreement, 370 individuals are to be trained in 10 pilot communities to run door-to-door education on HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The Programme Coordinator of RAAP, Mr Evans Sinkari, who announced this during a day's stakeholders' workshop for 36 participants at Han, said the main objective of the programme was to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in the communities through door-to-door educational programmes. Participants were drawn from their operational communities, which included those of Dasima, Zini, Nyntie, Fielmua, Gaapari Nyivili, Tiwii, Gbal, Du-west and Wiiro all in the Sissala West District of the Upper West Region.

Mr Sinkari said in view of the traditional set-ups in the country, there was the need to include chiefs, assembly members, health workers and community leaders in the programme to ensure its success. Mr William Agyekum Acquah, Northern Sector Manager of Plan Ghana, said his outfit would be more child-centred in the coming years to ensure community development in the Region.

He explained that many people in the Region were wallowing in abject poverty because of ignorance and illiteracy and gave the assurance that Plan Ghana would do everything possible to raise the educational status of people in the Region for them to fight poverty at all levels.

Mr Acquah appealed to chiefs, opinion leaders and assembly members to support the partnership of the two NGOs to eradicate poverty, illiteracy, ignorance and disease in the area.

RAAP, which started operating in 1998 has since been engaged in educating rural communities on income generating activities, HIV/AIDS, environment and building the capacity of the communities to become self-reliant.