Bolgatanga, Dec. 17, GNA – Mrs Lucy Awuni, Upper East Regional Minister, has appealed to Corporate Ghana to complement government’s efforts at helping to find the resources to fund the treatment and prevention of HIV and AIDS.

The Deputy Minister who made the appeal at a durbar in Bolgatanga to commemorate this year’s HIV/AIDS World day stated that the withdrawal of the major international donor funding agency, the Global Fund to support the treatment of HIV/AIDS would be a daunting challenge to the Government.

“As you may be aware, the Ghana AIDS Commission will not be supported financially by our major international donor partner, the Global Fund” ,she stated, and called for vigorous local financial mobilization in order to achieve a “Zero New HIV infection, Zero Discrimination, Zero AIDS related Deaths” target the country and the Global community want to achieve.

She said Ghana’s current National Strategic Plan (NSP) 2011-2015 takes into account the unique challenges the country faces in addressing the HIV epidemic.

Ghana, she said, was among countries with low prevalence rates at fighting the epidemic and needed to be sustained and scaled up to maintain or lower the prevalence.

Mrs Awuni also said the Media was a powerful tool which could be used extensively in the prevention of HIV and AIDS in the country.

She called on the Media to be more proactive in disseminating accurate, objective, balanced and non judgmental information on HIV and AIDS.

“Members of the media therefore have both social and ethical reporting responsibility, when it comes to ensuring that HIV and AIDS issues remain in the public domain”, she said, adding that by disseminating facts on the disease it would help in the relief of physical and psychological pain of people living with HIV and AIDS.

She stated that the 2011 World Aids Day report released by the UNAIDS, indicated that Ghana was among five countries in the sub region whose HIV prevalence declined by more than 25 per cent between 2001 and 2010 among young people.

The Deputy Minister said the focus of the NSP was to reduce new HIV infections by 50% in the next five years and virtually eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV as well as sustain and scale up the proportion of people living with HIV (PLHIV) who are undergoing treatment.

She called for the need for all stakeholders in the teaching, prevention and awareness creation programme on HIV and AIDS to involve the youth in their activities to achieve the national target.