HIV RESPONSE PROGRAMME...Needs greater attention on women, children (PAGE 11, DEC 24)

The Minister of Women and Children's Affairs, Ms Akua Sena Dansua, has stressed the need to focus greater attention on women and children as part of the national HIV response programme.
She said tests conducted on some female sex workers in the Accra-Tema and Kumasi metropolises showed that a number of them were HIV positive, adding that many factors put women more at risk of HIV infection than men.
In an address read on her behalf at the first conference held to give an update of HIV and AIDS in Africa, organised by the Africa Health Research Organisation in Accra, the minister mentioned factors such as discrimination, inequalities in power relations between men and women, lower educational status, dependence on men for economic survival and formidable cultural practices and social norms, as contributors to women’s inability to refuse or negotiate safer sex.
She said other issues that compounded the problem was the fact that women tended to have sexual intercourse at an early age than men, and most often, their sexual partners were older men who were already exposed to sex.
She also said the culture of silence around sexual and reproductive health and the cultural belief among Africans that did not allow open communication on sex, made it difficult for women, including married ones, to discuss reproductive health problems and sexually transmitted diseases, making women vulnerable to the virus.
According to the minister, HIV and AIDS, which was claiming more lives and threatening lives of people in the productive age, was a great challenge to the country's development, stressing that about 80 per cent of young women between the ages of 15 and 25 lacked sufficient knowledge on HIV and AIDS.
Furthermore, she said mother-to-child transmission accounted for about 80 per cent of HIV infections among children, and urged civil society organisations, as well as policy makers, community and religious leaders to address the issue of the protection of women and girls from violence and discrimination.
The Chief Executive Officer of Africa Health Research Organisation, Dr Abubakar Yaro, said a newly initiated programme was underway in support of the HIV response programme, and indicated that the project would cover research on drug monitoring, education, provision of drugs and nutrition supplement to needy persons infected with the virus.