HIV/AIDS support groups collapsing
Mr Emmanuel Beluzeb, President of the Ghana Network of Persons Living with HIV/AIDS (NAP+) has noted that support groups that provided counselling and psychological therapies to HIV/AIDS patients across the country are collapsing due to lack of funding.
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The situation, he noted, had deprived many people diagnosed with the disease from getting the needed psychological support to lead a normal life.
Mr Beluzeb expressed these concerns when he interacted with The Mirror in Accra.
“Funding to some of the support groups stopped four years ago.
This situation is militating against our efforts at helping the fight against the disease,” he said.
Most of our support groups across the country are ill equipped and lack basic office equipment to operate,” he noted.
He said the Global Fund through the Ghana AIDS Commission and the National AIDS Control Programme provided financial support for the welfare of people living with HIV/AIDS but the support from the Global Fund was limited to only regions with high prevalence rate.
Currently, Mr Beluzeb noted that only the Greater Accra, Ashanti, Eastern and Western regions which had high prevalence rate were funded, leaving the remaining six regions without funds.
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Three-prong strategy
Ghana’s HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is declining and currently stands at 1.37 per cent. Also, the proportion of women living with HIV/AIDS is 57 per cent compared to 43 per cent for men.
Mr Beluzeb said the NAP+ had adopted a three-prong strategy to help further reduce the prevalence rate and also equip people infected with the disease.
The first strategy, he indicated was for people living with the disease to be stationed at major hospitals to provide psychological therapies to people newly diagnosed with the disease.
They also have peer educators offering assistance and counselling to weak patients, as well as providing community based public education to people to protect themselves against the disease.
The third strategy, he said, involved a monthly meeting that provided and equipped people living with AIDS with the needed information that made them have self-worth and confidence to seek help.
Unfortunately, all these strategies, he feared, had suffered a setback because of the lack of funding.
ART medicine
The president of NAP+ also called on the government to expedite plans aimed at producing anti-retroviral (ART) locally by assisting pharmaceutical companies to produce them.
He said presently, ART medicines were imported into the country whereas countries such as Nigeria and Sierra Leone imported their ART medicine from Danadams Pharmaceuticals Ltd, a locally based pharmaceutical company.
HIV/AIDS patients empowerment
He said HIV/AIDS patients are now better empowered than ever because there were laws that protected them against discrimination.
Mr Beluzeb said their network was currently working with some non-governmental organisations which were providing income generating opportunities to its members.
This initiative, he noted, had helped some of their members to be self-reliant and therefore appealed to people who had been diagnosed with the disease to come out and join the network.