Director-General of the Ghana AIDS Commission, Kyeremeh Atuahene
• The Ghana AIDS Commission has cited transactional sex as a contributing factor to prevailing HIV/AIDS numbers
• The Ghana AIDS Commission boss in an interview said some men are luring underprivileged girls into sex
• Ghana currently has a total HIV population of 346,120
The Director-General of the Ghana AIDS Commission, Kyeremeh Atuahene has reported that some men have been luring less privileged girls into sex with noodles and paltry sums of money.
Speaking on the prevailing number of HIV/AIDS infections in an interview with Asaase Radio monitored by GhanaWeb, Mr Atauhene listed transactional and commercial sex as one of the leading contributors to this development.
“It can be even between students; the good ones helping the less fortunate ones and demanding sex, it can be in the workplace where a young lady or young man wants job and the boss says give me sex if you want to have it.
“Recently, some chiefs banned the use of Okada in their town because they said that some Okada riders are impregnating the girls because they just buy them Indomie or give them GH¢10 and that’s it,” he stated.
According to figures from a recent report by the Ghana AIDS Commission on HIV/AIDS, around 346,120 persons are living with the virus in the country. In a regional breakdown of the figures, the Ashanti Region had the highest HIV population with over 73,000 followed by the Greater Accra Region with over 70,000.
The region with the lowest HIV infected population is the North East Region which has a total population of 2,000.
According to the Director General, the Commission is set to conduct a study in areas with high HIV numbers in order to gain an insight into the cause of infections in such communities.
“Places where we have sex worker population increases, it appears to have some influence on the level of HIV infection or transmission in such communities.
“We are going to do a study on that, we want to see the actual contribution of at-risk groups like sex workers, men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and their likes to see their contribution to the incidents and see how it influences the spread,” he said.
The new report by the Ghana AIDS Commission puts the gender ratio in terms of HIV population at 4,325 females representing 83% and 886 males representing 17% males.
The total number of new infections of children from ages 0-14 mother to child transmission stood at IT’S INCOMPLETE
Out of the 18,928 new HIV/AIDS infections in 2020, a total of 5,211 are young people between the ages of 15 and 24, representing 28% of all new infections in 2020.
The report also indicates that out of the 18,928 new HIV/AIDS infections recorded in 2020, adults of 25 years and above constitute 10,032, representing 53%.