Daily Graphic, Pg 47, Thursday, May 07/09
Story Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho
A WORKPLACE programme on HIV and TB for the Ministry of Justice and Attorney-General’s Department and its allied agencies, was launched in Accra last Monday.
The programme, which is supported by the German Technical Co-operation (GTZ)’s Legal Sector Reform Programme as part of its effort to mainstream HIV and TB in the working environment, will benefit over 1,000 employees of the ministry and their dependants.
Among the objectives of the programme is the prevention and diagnosis of HIV and TB, treatment, care and support of infected employees and their close family members. It also aims to create an enabling and non-discriminative working environment in the framework of an HIV and TB policy.
The Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, Mrs Betty Mould Iddrisu, who chaired the launch of the programme, called on all leaders to set the pace for their subordinates to follow by ensuring that they tested to know their HIV and TB status.
She said no country could ignore the devastating effect that HIV was having on both their human resource and economy and therefore said it was important to have a workplace policy to help workers to be more informed about HIV and TB.
She also called for an urgent need to address the issue of stigmatisation of infected and affected persons, saying that “stigmatisation has been one of the main scourges in finding ways of addressing the HIV and AIDS pandemic”.
She, therefore, called for an enabling environment where working colleagues would feel free to discuss their HIV status without fear or inhibition.
She called for intensification of public education on stigmatisation, adding that people should be made aware that contracting “HIV was not a death sentence”.
A representative of the German Ambassador, Mr Hans-Christian Winkler, in an address, said HIV and TB were still some of the biggest threat to human existence and therefore called on people to help stop them.
He commended Ghanaians for their effort in keeping a low prevalence of 1.9, saying that HIV was also one of the greatest threat to posterity if not effectively controlled.
The Programme Manager of the GTZ’s Legal Sector Reform Programme, Dr Elisabeth Leiss, said her outfit was committed to supporting institutions with workplace policies on HIV and TB with the aim of raising awareness about the two diseases.
She called on institutions and organisations to ensure that their staff registered with the National Health Insurance Scheme so that they could benefit from it.
A representative from the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP), Dr Nii Akwei Addo, said although 97 per cent of women and 99 per cent of men were aware of HIV and know how to protect themselves, there was no increase in the rate of the use of condom in the last five years.
According to him, 15 per cent of persons living with HIV were also TB positive but said TB could be cured within six months and therefore called on people to seek early treatment.
The team leader of the project, Dr Holger Till, reminded people that TB could be cured and HIV could be managed and therefore called on people to get tested.
The Director-General of the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC), Prof. Sakyi Awuku Amoa, said his outfit together with the USAID and the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) had intiated moves to address the issue of stigma in the Ministry of Justice and Attorney-General’s Department, the Judiciary, the Police and Prison’s services and the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU), as part of a programme dubbed “HIV and AIDS stigma reduction and Human rights initiative”, aimed at addressing stigma in the country.
He emphasised that the need for HIV and AIDS to be acknowledged as a major business issue in the public and private enterprises could not be underestimated in view of the profound negative impact on workers and their families in enterprises in particular and on the national economy in general.
Prof. Amoa said it was, therefore, imperative that public and private sector organisations took responsibility for managing HIV and AIDS at the workplace and put in place effective policies and intervention programmes to address the complex ramifications of the epidemic.
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