Story: Abdul Aziz
THE government has called on the civil society organisations (CSO) to partner it to empower women and to make them capable of negotiating safe sex.
This is because the Abstinence, Be faithful and Use Condoms (ABC) concept, as a means of halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, has been facing several constraints.
The Deputy Minister of Health, Mr Abraham Odoom, who made the call at an international conference on AIDS, said one of the major constraints of abstinence was that it was not an option for poor women and girls who had no choice but to marry at an early age.
He said being faithful was also not protecting women whose partners were not faithful to them.
Mr Odoom reiterated that the tool for using condoms for protection against HIV/AIDS had been found to be a decision that was not made by women but by only men.
He said the Ministry of Health and the civil society, therefore, needed to strategise to put the power and the tools for preventing HIV in the hands of women to safeguard their health status.
He explained that a strong collaboration between the CSOs and the government could reach out to women, whether they were faithfully married mothers or sex workers trying to make a living, to be independent and never needed their partners’ permission to save their own lives.
Mr Odoom, therefore, urged participants who were drawn from Central, East, West and Southern Africa, Europe and the United States to make central theme of the 2-day conference how to empower women to negotiate safe sex and not depend on the caprices of men.
Prof. S.A. Amoa, Director-General of the Ghana Aids Commission (GAC), said actively engaging the civil society organisation had been high on the agenda of the GAC, because CSOs had been identified as vehicles through which the grassrooots communities could be reached.
He said contrary to the belief that CSOs misused funds provided them for intervention activities, they contributed in no small measure towards achieving the objectives of the national response.
Mr Vitus Nanbigne, Co-ordinator of Woyome Foundation for Africa (WOFA), an international HIV/AIDS charity organisation, commended the Ministry of Health for supporting the NGO to hold the conference in Ghana.
He said the core objectives of WOFA was to establish hospitals, treatment, rehabilitation and research centres across Africa.
He said construction of the first hospital in Africa would start in Accra next year.
Mr Nanbigne said the AIDS Hospital in Accra would comprise 350 rooms, an HIV/AIDS research facility that would be opened to all researchers.
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