Story By: Zigi Reginald Mawuli:
The Ghana AIDS commission under the auspices of the office of the president of the Republic of Ghana, held a round table breakfast discussion at the Movenpick Hotel this Friday, April 15, 2016 to mobilize resources for HIV/AIDS response with a strategic subject dubbed Ghana’s first 90 campaign which demands that by 2020 90% of Ghanaians will know their HIV status in order to achieve the agenda 90-90-90 of the UNAIDS by the year 2030.
The program which is supported by the UNDP was chaired by the Managing director of Stanbic Bank Ghana, Mr. Alhasan Andani, who mentioned that the private sector need to step up their social responsibilities in their own interest to keep HIV and other pandemic under control for the development of our country. He stated that “Let us start to think beyond HIV and to create the nation pandemic fund”.
According to Mad. Gladys Ghartey, Chairperson for the National Resource Mobilization Committee, the HIV found its way to point six of the United Nation’s MDG of which some targets of that goal has not been achieved before the end of the goal. Again the HIV has found its place at point three of the newly birthed SDGs of the United Nation. Which gave the courage to agenda 90-90-90 of the UNAIDS. Explaining that, by 2030, 90% of people living with HIV will know their status, 90% of those who know their status will receive medications and 90 % of people on medication will live a life of viral suppression. Meanwhile the nation has problems with donor fatigue and the reason for the shift in funding environment from the donor level to the private sector alliance. She said this is the third round table breakfast discussion with the private sector towards mobilizing recourses for HIV interventions. In addition she said the GMPC, Goil, UT care foundation together has provided some funds to the AIDS commission last year.
In furtherance, Dr. Angela El-Adas said “emphases on preventive measures than curing interventions must be considered”. HIV was reported in 1986 with current HIV prevalence is 1.47% as at last year. New HIV infections continue to decline which is a good indication for us as a country. The AIDS commission is poised to working to break transmission cycles in the country. According to Dr. Angela “if we are able to get logistics available to work with the people in their communities we will get everyone effectively tested. Our major problems are with lack of logistics, policy issues, human resource for resource mobilization, HIV related stigma, and cost of mass media campaign. Dr. Angela said, the commission needs a total of 212,949,942 dollars to accomplish her set goals by 2020.
The Keynote speaker at the meeting Hon. Dr. Rashid Pelpuo, Minister of state, Private Sector Development and Public Private Partnerships said, HIV has lead to lost of lives, decline in labor force, and increase labour cost and the reason the AIDs commission is working hard on strategic work place policies and to help the private sector gets their work force back on truck. He made a call on all private institutions in the country to pledge their support towards the resource mobilization in the eradications of HIV in Ghana. Soon a short code 9090 will be lunched to mobilize resources for the Ghana AIDS commission.
Source: ritefmonline.org
