No shortage of HIV test kits in E/R

Story Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho
THE National Programmes Manager of the Ghana AIDS Control Programme, Dr Nii Akwei Addo, has debunked a Ghana News Agency (GNA) report that there is a shortage of HIV testing kits in some parts of the Eastern Region.
He said the Eastern Regional Medical Stores have enough stock of the test kits and, therefore, called on sites and hospitals that have shortages to request for supply from the regional medical stores.
Dr Addo, who was reacting to a GNA report, called on Civil Society Organisations working in the region to contact the district health administration where they operated to restock their supplies.
According to the GNA report, efforts to contain the spread of the HIV in the Eastern Region were being hampered by the shortage of HIV testing kits and reagents to determine the CD4 counts of people diagnosed to be HIV positive in the region.
The CD4 count of a person diagnosed as HIV positive determines if the fellow could be put on anti-retroviral therapy and to help control the ability of the individual to infect other persons with the virus.
According to the report, as a result of the shortage of the HIV testing kits, the region was concentrating its efforts on the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV, yet investigations conducted by the GNA indicated that pregnant women in some health facilities were not tested for their HIV status due to the shortage of the testing kits.
 The report continued that as a result of the situation that the region found itself, 105 leading civil society organisations that had been  funded by the Ghana AIDS Commission to promote various activities to help reduce the rate of HIV infections in the region were not likely to meet their targets.
Investigations by the GNA also revealed that even some health facilities in the region had challenges in getting testing kits to diagnose patients suspected to be HIV positive.
The report further stated that currently, the region was expecting it’s next supply of 12,000 HIV testing kits next month but that could not meet the needs of the region for a month because according to some health officials who spoke to the GNA on conditions of anonymity, the region would need about 15,000 testing kits for a month and 90,000 testing kits for six months.