The communities Alokpatsa, Tokpo and Amewoyi are off the national grid, and this is negatively affecting the socio-economic livelihood of the people.

The project which benefited the communities’ basic schools and health centres, were solely funded by PEG Africa, a renowned off-grid solar company in West Africa, as part of its corporate social responsibility, dubbed “PEG Boafo”.

The initiative seeks to support remote communities in the areas of education and healthcare delivery.

Inaugurating the projects at separate events, Sales Director of PEG Africa, Siddique Habib, noted that the gesture forms part of PEG Africa’s long-term vision of providing energy solutions to bridge the gap between rural and urban areas in terms of access to electricity.

He disclosed that PEG Africa is developing learning centres fully equipped with lights, within the schools of the beneficiary communities to provide a conducive atmosphere for children to do their homework as well as study at night.

He added that teachers in the communities would also be motivated to be present during study hours to lend support to students who may require extra attention.

Mr. Habib hinted that his outfit intends to extend the project to other deprived communities in the country to impact more lives through the “PEG Boafo” initiative.

The Chief of Alokpatsa, Nana Alokpatsa, who commended PEG Africa for the project, noted that the lighting systems at the basic school will motivate pupils in the community to take their studies seriously to excel in their academics.

He said the installation of lighting systems at the Alokpatsa CHPS Compound which provides medical services to surrounding communities has brought relief to the people since emergency services in the night can now be delivered effectively.

The event was used to provide free medical screening where hundreds of people were screened for malaria, syphilis, HIV/AIDS and high blood pressure.

Some pregnant women in the communities had free ultra-sound scans and antenatal consultations.

PEG Africa, which is a winner of the prestigious Ashden Award (UK), was also named among BBC Top Tech Trends in Africa (2018).

The company delivers Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) asset-based financing to consumers living on $3-5 a day who lack both access to reliable electricity and formal banking services.

It also distributes solar home systems to most remote areas, including those without roads or running water, and currently serves over 200, 000 individuals.

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By: King Nobert Akpablie/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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The Commission has, therefore, advised persons living with HIV (PLHIV) to stick strictly to the Anti-Retroviral medication to stay healthy.

The Director General of the Ghana AIDS Commission, Dr Mokowa Blay Adu-Gyamfi, who refuted the claims of a herbal cure for HIV at a media briefing in Accra, said these claims should be ignored.

She told PLHIV that; “If you think herbal medicines are good for you, have them as supplements like you take vitamins. Please tell everybody who is living with the virus never to neglect taking the antiretroviral medication in addition to the therapy.”

The briefing was held at the end of a two-day Annual Strategic Planning Meeting of the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC), and it aimed at charting the way forward in the fight of HIV epidemic for 2018.

It was attended by regional, district and national officers of the Commission, and chaired by Dr Adu-Gyamfi.

Dr Adu-Gyamfi said the strategic objectives of GAC for 2018 were to ensure the availability of funding for all relevant HIV programmes and review and formulate policies towards epidemic control.

She said currently there were enough antiretroviral drugs in the country, including pediatric medication, emphasising that “GAC is not short of medication”.

She said the Commission, however, had challenges with funding, which would enable it to carry out it education, counselling and testing activities, among other things.

A Ghana AIDS Fund will be launched by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in May, this year, to encourage private entities and businesses to contribute to the cause.

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Source: GNA

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“I want to use this medium to appeal to the queen mothers and opinion leaders; we should get involve; we should educate our girls; the girls are our future. If we are not around they would be there for us,” she said.

[contextly_sidebar id=”MORPq7AztaLpEJi6cJgr3BbKkpmyq9Er”]Naana Dugbakuwor Dugba said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the sidelines of the Public Hearing on the Medium Term Development Plan (MTDP) of the Ningo Prampram District Assembly (NPDA) to transform the District into an industrial and economic zone within Greater Accra.

Reacting to the high HIV/AIDS prevalence and teenage pregnancy rate as presented by the planning officer of the District during the hearing, she said, “The issue of teenage pregnancy is really becoming a torn in our flesh.”

She observed how those in authority could not control the girls because “sometimes you try to talk to them and it ends up differently, but we are trying our best.”

She added that, “We collaborate with some nurses and teachers to educate them to know the consequences. It gets to a stage where you need to know about your sex, what sex is and what it would do to you as a teenager.”

She said even though the prevalence rate had been on the rise, much education was going on so they were gradually gaining control over it.

She however observed that sexual indiscretion was not only peculiar to the Ningo Prampram District “but it’s something that cuts across the various communities in the nation, and therefore the need to come together as queen mothers to fight it.”

She said that even though parents were trying to protect their girls, it was necessary for them to educate their children concerning sex at home, adding that “it’s not supposed to be a taboo to talk about sex with our girls, so they will know what to do and prevent teenage pregnancy.”

The District Chief Executive (DCE) of Ningo Prampram, Mr. Jonathan Teye Doku, explained that if HIV and teenage pregnancy prevalence rate were high in the District, it did not mean the phenomenon was on the ascendency in the District, “But we have resolved to do whatever we will to get the prevalence rate down.”

He added that, “Ningo Prampram has become a cosmopolitan area with a lot of people moving in so it is not as if it is the natives only who represent the high prevalent rate, but there are a lot of people from outside the District who contribute to the figures due to the fast growing nature of the District.”

It was estimated by the planning officer that HIV infection rate kept rising with 190, 200 and 308 cases in 2014, 2015 and 2016 respectively.

Additionally, teenage pregnancy in the District was 13.5% higher than the national 11.8% and the Regional average of 6.1

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Source: GNA

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They have been accused of, among other impediments, keeping in their prayer camps and shrines people suffering from the diseases and denying them of or delaying their access to better, orthodox treatment.

Though other factors like migration and misinformation on the ailments have been cited for the soaring cases, the actions of the faith-based healers in the fishing community has been ranked a key factor.

The revelations were made over the week by Dr. Caesar Atuiyere, the President of AMICUS ONLUS, a non-governmental organisation that owns the Baobab Medical Centre at Biriwa, at a free medical screening for the community.

Citing Africans’ known spirituality as the reason, Dr. Atuiyere said, “The African way of seeing things is that the human being is not just a body; Western medicine sees the human as a body. We see the human being as body and spirit, but what tends to happen is when people are sick, instead of curing both body and spirit, sometimes they look for only spiritual solutions to the detriment of the body, and when things are really bad they come to us at the clinic”.

On his part, the Administrator of the Baobab Medical Centre, Isaac Baiden, added that, the opinion leaders of the community have not also helped in fighting the communicable diseases as the organization of public education is usually frustrating due to the chieftaincy disputes at Biriwa, saying, “At times you don’t even know whom to talk to; you go to this person and they don’t seem to have any interest in it”.

Commenting on the challenges posed by faith-based healers, Mr. Baiden noted that, the religious leaders do not collaborate with the medical centre in fighting the diseases because they appear to think orthodox healing is a threat to their spiritual method that serves as their source of income.

However, Mr. Baiden indicated that, it is ironic that some of the religious leaders quickly come to the Centre when they are unwell, revealing that, “Even with headaches, those people will seek treatment, and even when they come, they want to have preferential treatment.”

The Baobab Medical Centre at Biriwa was established in 2005, and has since cured over three hundred thousand people, mainly combining treatment with health awareness campaigns on preventive measures, free screening and community mobile health assistance in nearby villages.

Biriwa, lying along the Accra-Cape Coast highway, has a population of about ten thousand people, who are mostly fisher folks, and the inhabitants are a combination of indigenes, workers in the formal sector, and migrants from other fishing communities from the Western Region and other places.

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By: Joseph Ackon-Mensah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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She said if community members do not change their attitude towards such persons, all the efforts aimed at improving their lives would be a farce.

Mrs Nuamah-Agyemang, made the call at a workshop organised by SEND-Ghana for coordinators of activities of the Participatory, Monitoring and Evaluation Committee under the People for Health (P4H) Project in some five districts of the Greater Accra Region.

[contextly_sidebar id=”Gy2UHNCeMjIqFuXWu0s5XYKyFE0RVzfW”]It was sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with support from Penplusbytes and the Ghana News Agency.

The workshop aimed at strengthening the capacity of the collaborating agencies such as the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies, was to also improve their assessment on P4H projects in the communities, and come out with emerging issues.

It was also to help establish problems associated with stigmatization and discrimination against Persons living with HIV/AIDS, as well as the benefits of victims disclosing their health status to their relations.

Mrs Nuamah-Agyemang expressed the hope that the strengthening of monitoring and evaluation programmes, would have a positive effect on persons living with the disease.

She said although there had been various ways of educating the public, some people had ignored the advice, and continued with the stigmatization and discrimination.

Mrs Nuamah-Agyemang said the knowledge of HIV among the public was high, but stigma and discrimination was common, hence the need for the workshop to enable the coordinators to report on the activities they encountered during their meetings with the communities.

Miss Sandra Sakwabea, the Project Officer of SEND-Ghana, took the Committee members through their responsibilities to ensure that the right things were done.

New executive members were elected for the Committee with Mr Isaac Ampomah of La-Dadekotopon Municipal Assembly being elected as Chairman, while Madam Jane Oku of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, and Reverend John Azumah won the Vice Chairperson and Secretary positions respectively.

–

Source: GNA

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The condition, which is caused by HIV, used to be one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide.

A report by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAids) showed deaths had fallen from a peak of 1.9 million in 2005 to 1 million last year.

It said the “scales have tipped”, with more than half of people getting drug treatment for the first time.

An HIV infection cannot be cured – it can only be contained with daily doses of antiretroviral therapy.

Unchecked, it destroys the immune system, causing Aids. At this point people tend to die from other “opportunistic infections” such as tuberculosis.

Worldwide, 36.7 million are living with HIV and 53% of them are getting the therapy that gives a near-normal life expectancy.

Michel Sidibe, the executive director of UNAids, said: “We met the 2015 target of 15 million people on treatment and we are on track to double that number to 30 million and meet the 2020 target.

“We will continue to scale up to reach everyone in need and honour our commitment of leaving no-one behind.”

UNAids said eastern and southern Africa were “leading the way” and had cut new HIV infections by nearly a third since 2010.

Life expectancy has increased by 10 years over the past decade too.

The agency has set a series of goals known as the 90-90-90 targets.

The aim is for 90% of people with HIV to be diagnosed, 90% of those to get therapy and 90% of those to have their infection suppressed, by 2020.

In 2016 the figures were 70%, 77% and 82% respectively.

Mr Sidibe added: “Communities and families are thriving as Aids is being pushed back.”

However, the agency warned that inadequate treatment in north Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe had seen death rates increase sharply.

–

Source: BBC

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2453 of the number are on treatment in various health facilities in the region whilst 63 of them died of the disease as at December last year.

Yakubu Dramani, Upper West Regional Technical Coordinator for the Ghana Aids Commission revealed this at a stakeholders’ meeting in the regional capital, Wa.

The meeting was to share the outcome of Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) site visits embarked upon by the Regional Social Accountability Monitoring Committee in 2016.

He said the figures were obtained from the records of all the ART sites in the region.

The regional technical coordinator said despite several interventions to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS, the stigma against persons living with the virus still continue to be a bane, making some infected persons shy away from treatment.

This and many other challenges have pushed the Upper West region to move from the second lowest in 2015 per the 2016 HIV sentinel survey results to tie with Western regions as the 5thmost HIV-infected region in the country with 2.5% prevalence rate.

Mr. Dramani opined that 261 persons who were diagnosed with the virus “are lost to follow-ups” and “this is worrying because we cannot guarantee the kind of lifestyles they are living”.

He appealed to stakeholders in the region to double their efforts in other to nip the practice in the bud. “We cannot win as a team if we allow these clients to continue to be stigmatised against. This is the time to wage war against stigma if we want to ever have HIV-free generation”.

Section 28-38 of the Ghana AIDS Commission Act 938 states in no ambiguous terms that no person should be discriminated against because of his/her HIV status.

But Mr.Mohammed Osman, Upper West regional president of persons living with HIV/AIDS disclosed that many people are abused on the blind side of the law because they are tested positive for the virus.

“People keep pointing fingers at us. Some of us are discriminated against at workplaces. Just recently a lady was sacked because her boss said she liked taking drugs”. He appealed to the law enforcement agencies to help curb the practice.

Meanwhile, Mr. Sabastian Ziem, a deputy chief investigator at the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice has admonished victims of any form of human rights abuses to report promptly to the Commission for redress.

He said as part of measures put in place to swiftly address such cases in the country, his outfit has launched an e-platform to fast-track complaints to the commission.

By: Mahama Latif/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Twenty-year-olds who started antiretroviral therapy in 2010 are projected to live 10 years longer than those first using it in 1996, it found.

Doctors say that starting treatment early is crucial to achieve a long and healthy life.

Charities say there are still too many people unaware they have the virus.

More effective prevention

The study authors, from the University of Bristol, said the extraordinary success of HIV treatments was a result of newer drugs having fewer side effects and being better at preventing the virus from replicating in the body.

It is also more difficult for the virus to build up a resistance to the most recent drugs.

Improved screening and prevention programmes and better treatment of health problems caused by HIV are thought to have helped, too.

But many people with HIV still do not live as long as expected, especially those infected through injecting drugs.

Antiretroviral therapy involves a combination of three or more drugs which block the normal progress of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus).

They have been called “one of the greatest public health success stories of the past 40 years”.

Drugs ‘do work’

Jimmy Isaacs, 28, discovered he had been infected with HIV by a former partner nearly three years ago.

He takes three drugs once a day at 18:00 and will continue to do so for the rest of his life.

“My health is absolutely fine. I’m eating healthily and drinking healthily,” he said.

“It doesn’t impact on my job and hasn’t impacted on my social life either.”

Although it took two changes of medication to find the right combination for him, he says he now has no side effects at all.

“I had heard a lot of bad stories about the drugs back in the ’90s – but when I did some research, I realised the drugs had completely changed.”

Not all his employers have been supportive since his diagnosis and he says that is down to ignorance.

His current employer has given him time off to tour the country and speak to students and school pupils about HIV prevention and treatment.

The researchers looked at 88,500 people with HIV from Europe and North America who had been involved in 18 studies.

They based their life-expectancy predictions on death rates during the first three years of follow-up after drug treatment was started.

They found that fewer people who started treatment between 2008 and 2010 died during this period compared with those who began treatment between 1996 and 2007.

The expected age at death of a 20-year-old patient starting antiretroviral therapy (ART) after 2008, with a low viral load and after the first year of treatment, was 78 years – similar to the general population.

What is antiretroviral therapy?

Image copyrightSCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

• First used in 1996, it involves a combination of three or more drugs that stop the HIV virus from replicating
• This means damage to the immune system caused by HIV can be prevented and it stops the disease spreading to others
• More recent drugs are even more efficient and have fewer side effects
• The World Health Organization recommends that antiretroviral therapy is started as soon as possible after diagnosis

Dr Michael Brady, medical director at the Terrence Higgins Trust, said the study showed how much things had changed since the start of the HIV epidemic in the 1980s.

But he said it also meant people aged over 50 now represented one in three of all those living with HIV.

“As it stands, the healthcare, social care and welfare systems simply aren’t ready to support the increasing numbers of people growing older with HIV.

“We need a new model of care to better integrate primary care with HIV specialist services, and we need a major shift in awareness and training around HIV and ageing, so that we’re ready to help older people live well in later life,” he said.

‘Medical achievement’

Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, who chairs the Royal College of GPs, said: “It’s a tremendous medical achievement that an infection that once had such a terrible prognosis is now so manageable, and that patients with HIV are living significantly longer.

“We hope the results of this study go a long way to finally removing any remaining stigma associated with HIV, and ensuring that patients with HIV can live long and healthy lives without experiencing difficulties in gaining employment and – in countries where it is necessary – obtaining medical insurance.”

She said steps were being taken to increase appropriate HIV testing by GPs.

The proportion of people with undiagnosed HIV has fallen steadily over the past 20 years.

But one in eight people with HIV is still thought to remain undiagnosed.

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Source: BBC

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She noted that though various quarters within the traditional and religious circles had proclaimed one cure or the other for the epidemic, these claims could not be substantiated in the research institutions in the country, adding, “we are yet to find any cure for the disease”.

Dr. El-Adas was responding to a question during the interactive session of the Western Regional Dissemination of the National HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan 2016-2020 in Takoradi.

[contextly_sidebar id=”CKmXUodm5fEv94JEJIOWcYo5Q7bfAAQs”]She explained that the HIV and AIDS virus was a retrovirus, which changed form at any given time, thereby making the work of scientists even more difficult to produce a vaccine or a complete cure for it.

Dr. Roland Sowah, Western Regional HIV /AIDS Coordinator, mentioned that numerous attempts to follow up on herbalists who professed cure for the epidemic at Noguchi, Mampong and other research facilities had not yielded the desired results.

He, therefore, advised such herbalists to stop cashing in on the innocence and desperation of victims of the disease.

The National Strategic Plan (NSP), according to Dr. El-Adas, had documented lessons from previous plans to help improve on the quality of response as well as preventing new infections.

Highlights of the plan looks at the High Impact activities such as behavioural change interventions, promotion of condoms and lubricants, concentration on key population, treatment and care for all to ensure universal access and equity.

It would also look at the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and programmes to fast track the 90-90-90 targets, which aims at ensuring access to care by victims to help reduce viral load.

The NSP would achieve its set targets by strengthened health systems, increased health facilities and staff as well as piloting self-testing and peer-led testing for HIV.

Currently, the Regional Prevalence rate had reduced from 2.4 per cent to two percent.
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Source: GNA

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