ONMA Marks World AIDS Day …With Free Health Screening Exercise

Hundreds of residents at Fadama and its environs in Accra yesterday benefited from a free health screening exercise to mark the celebration of World AIDS Day.

The event organized by the Okaikwei North Municipal Assembly (ONMA) in collaboration with the Ghana AIDS Commission saw scores of people taking advantage of the exercise to know their health status.

Beneficiaries were tested for blood sugar, Body Mass Index, HIV testing and counseling as well as individual counseling in other health related matters.

Khadija Ali, Public Health Nurse and HIV Coordinator for Okaikwei North said about three hundred people are expected to benefit from the exercise with personnel drawn from the Achimota Hospital, Abeka Municipal and the ONMA Health Directorate.

She said the exercise would help identify persons living with the HIV disease and offer the needed assistance to them in the community.

Khadija stated the HIV figures have been rising in the country, the reason such outreach programs are critical to the fight against the disease.

Khadija bemoaned the situation where Ghanaians do not go to the hospital for checks ups but wait to be seriously sick before attending a health facility.

The Senior Health Officer took the gathering through sensitization on the modes of infection and prevention of the HIV disease.

The 2020 celebration of the World AIDS Day is on the theme: “Global Solidarity, Shared Responsibility: Stay Safe. Let’s End AIDS by 2030”.

So far in Ghana there a total of 342,307 people living with HIV with 122,321 of the number being males and 219,986 females.

By way of regional breakdown, the Greater Accra Region recorded the highest number of new HIV infections last year with about 4,593 people contracting the disease.

Currently, the region leads with the most number of persons living with HIV (77,132) across the country and though out of the figure, about 28,000 people were using anti-retroviral (ART), close to 3,000 people died in the region of the disease in 2018.

The 2018 HIV/AIDS National Estimates and Projections released by the Ghana AIDs Commission (GAC) in Accra showed that 2.06 per cent of the adult population in the region were at risk of the virus.

The report, which pegged national estimated number of persons living with HIV (PLHIV) in the country at 334,714, with 19,931 new infections, cited the Ashanti Region as the second with the highest HIV prevalence (75,675).