Editorial of the Daily Searchlight of Monday 11th March, 2024
Dr. Stephen Ayisi Addo, Programmes Manager of the National Aids Control Programme (NACP), has asked seekers of care for sexually transmitted diseases to not be driven off by fear following the passage of the bill on human conduct.
Parliament passed the Family and Human Values Bill and is awaiting the President’s assent.
Data show that a significant number of STIs were being hosted by members of the same sex and queer communities and Dr Addo assured them that their health needs would not be affected even in the event of the law’s final passage.
“All our recipients of care should not be afraid that when we are treating them, they will be arrested,” the Programmes Manager said at the ongoing joint HIV/Tuberculosis Annual Review Meeting in Ho.
Top of the agenda at the three-day joint meeting was the overview of programmes for the years 2024 to 2026, being powered by the Global Fund’s Grant Cycle 7 (GC7), which is a 234 million dollars to help fight HIV/TB and Malaria in the country.
A target of 1.9 million people would be tested for HIV under the GC7, and the Programmes Manager told the Ghana News Agency that stigma and discrimination was sure to rise and hamper the health efforts with the passage of the human conduct law.
“The law would have a certain impact, but we will do our best to manage it. Health workers take care of everybody irrespective of their sexual conduct,” he said.
The Daily Searchlight says;
In all the screaming and bile being spewed against people with certain preferred sexual tastes, the concern expressed above are just one of very real concerns likely to be being swept under the carpet.
It is indeed a fact, that in order to be able to adequately care for people with certain health needs, that care takers ignore the causative factors that led to their condition, or at least underplay these factors.
A law that criminalizes certain sexual conducts, have the very real potential of scaring off people who contract sicknesses from seeking medical care.
The real danger, in such a situation, is that the people with the sicknesses may venture/vector into the general population and become a danger to all.
It is one of the reasons why it has been suggested that a degree of care be taken before this Bill is signed into law.
We believe that before the Bill is ratified into law, such views as above need to be taken on board, to ensure that we mitigate all unintended but very harmful consequences of this law.
