A director of research, monitoring, and evaluation at the Ghana AIDS Commission has disclosed that Ghanaian women are now more scared of getting pregnant than contracting HIV AIDS.
According to Kyeremeh Atuahene, in spite of the numerous campaigns on the mode of contraction of the HIV virus, the infection rate is soaring in the country.
“Women now fear pregnancy than HIV. The best way is to seek dual protection by using condoms. Condom use during high-risk sex is low. Anecdotally, you can realize that Ghanaians are becoming more and more exposed to this virus. Those who are cohabiting are those who contribute to most of the infections. The people who are prone to the virus are those with very risky behaviors. Those who engage in indiscriminate sex without condoms,†he said.
He further stressed: “Currently we have about 297,000 people who have been diagnosed with HIV. It is quite worrying for us, the prevalence rate of HIV in the country. The rate of concurrency in the country is very high. Concurrency in the sense that it’s high for a partner to acquire the virus from the other partnerâ€.
He, therefore, encouraged Ghanaians to get tested in order to know their status.
“In order to reduce the risk of those who have the virus to transmit it, they must be on anti-retroviral drugs. 90% of those who know their status must be on anti-retroviral drugs. We want to test as many people as possible so that we know the number of people who have the virus in the country. It’s important to know your HIV status as early as possible so that it does not progress to AIDS. We are doing targeted testing so we are looking for people under surge conditionsâ€.
Credit: Starrfm