The Upper East Regional Focal Person for Aids Commission, Majeed Suleman, has said the fight against HIV/AIDS in the region has become difficult due to stigmatisation against people living with HIV /AIDS.
Speaking to Mark Smith on the Daybreak Upper East show, Mr. Suleman said the current HIV prevalence rate has gone up from 1.9 in 2020 to 2.0 in 2021 in the region.
He said, “We are using the 2021 HIV prevalence survey. In the 2022 survey, we just finished the sample collection and are in the process of drawing the final conclusions. Our prevalence rate in the Upper East Region is 2.0, a little bit higher than what we had in 2020, which was 1.9.”
Touching on stigmatisation against people living with HIV/AIDS, Mr. Suleman said “stigma is a major drawback to the fight against HIV in the country. HIV stigma comes in two forms. We, [as a] society, stigmatise persons living with HIV and [there is] what we call self stigma among persons living with HIV. So we are dealing with two now. So when even we are working on the community one, we try to work on their own stigma.”
He expressed worry about the young population contracting the virus based on the current figures being analysed.
He said, “Our worry in the country and in the region is the shift in the HIV concentration from the adult population to the adolescent and youth population. That is where the trend is moving towards across the whole country and in the Upper East Region.”
Meanwhile, the Upper East Regional Director of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Abdulai Jalaldeen, has cautioned the public to desist from stigmatising people living with HIV/AIDS. Stating that anyone found guilty can go to jail, pay a fine, or face both.
He admonished victims of stigmatisation to report to the police or CHRAJ for action to be taken.
“When somebody has HIV/AIDS, there is a law that protects how we should deal with that person. So if you do anything that tries to stigmatise another person, the law says that once you’re found guilty, you can be convicted to a fine not less than two hundred penalty units and not more than five hundred penalty units, or to a term of imprisonment not less than eighteen months and not more than three years, or both. So if you stigmatise, discriminate, or divulge information concerning any person living with HIV/AIDS, once you treat that person in any manner that the law frowns upon and you are found guilty, you can be punished for that.”
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Samuel Adagom|Ghana
