The 2022 World AIDS Day was commemorated in Kpone by the Kpone-Katamanso Municipal Health Directorate in the Greater Accra Region with a free health screening for the locals.
The goal of the 2022 World AIDS Day celebration was to win over the support of all stakeholders, including business organisations, in order to ensure that the HIV AIDS epidemic was eradicated by the year 2030. The topic of the event was “Equalizing Multi-Sectoral HIV response.”
Dr. Esther Priscila Biamah-Danquah, the municipal health director for Kpone-Katamanso, told the Ghana News Agency in Kpone that the rate at which HIV infections have increased in the municipality need urgent attention.
Dr Biamah-Danquah hinted that the prevalence rate in the Municipality was currently at 2 percent as against the regional rate of 1.68 percent, a situation she claimed was worrying.
She stated that over 9,200 people were screened this year for HIV/AIDS within the municipality out of which 47 tested positive for the HIV virus.
She said that the more you screen the more you are able to detect and start treatment as early as possible.
The Kpone-Katamanso Municipal Health Director further explained that the infected persons have been linked to care within the Municipality adding that there were various Anti-Retroviral Treatment (ART) centers dotted across the Municipality well equipped with trained health officials to take care of infected people.
Dr Biamah-Danquah called on the residents and most especially pregnant women to frequently visit the various health facilities for testing to know their status.
Meanwhile, Dr Stephen Ayisi Addo, Programme Manager for the National AIDS/STI Control Programme has disclosed that most men who have sex with men in Ghana are bi-sexual, which exposes their regular female partners to the risk of sexually transmitted diseases.
“We have noticed in our data that a lot of the men who have sex with men in Ghana are young and are bi-sexual, what it means is that though they practice homosexuality they have sex with females too,” he said.
Dr Ayisi Addo who disclosed this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency-Tema Regional Office explained that such homosexuals that were also bi-sexual serve as a bridging population just like female sex workers.
“So, they get the high-risk from homosexuality and give to their female partners and then they too transmit to other partners,” he said.
Explaining the high prevalence rate among the LGBT+ population, Dr Ayisi Addo said it was due to the likelihood of getting bruises and cuts on the anus during the practice of their sexual preference making it easy for transmission of the disease.