Accra, Feb. 16, GNA - Captain Nkrabeah Effah-Dartey (rtd.), Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, on Monday said all hands must be put on deck to fight the HIV/AIDS menace, which was causing a great havoc to humanity.

He said, "our generation is going through a terrible epoch, and we have to do all we can, to deal with this emergency. This is the only way to guarantee any tomorrow for our children and grandchildren."

This was contained in a speech read for him by Mrs Patricia Dovu-Sampson, a Deputy Director, at the ministry, at the opening of a two-day HIV/AIDS sensitisation workshop for selected district chief executives and their planning officers in Accra.

About 40 participants are attending the workshop being organized by the Ministry with its collaborators from the Western and the Greater-Accra regions.

The workshop falls under the Ministry's District Response Initiative (DRI) programme, which seeks to encourage every district at the local level to carry out specific programmes to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Under the DRI, DCEs with their planning officers are sensitised on the disease, and equipped to be able to draw up strategies that would enable them to manage or reduce the disease at their various districts.

Capt. Effah-Dartey reminded the DCEs that AIDS was a real pandemic and that a major means of dealing with the scourge was to "get everybody at the community level involved."

He urged the DCEs to reach out to the people with the real issues of the disease and the need to change behaviours so that its spread would be reduced.

Mr Robert Kuwornu, Director in-charge of Policy at the Ministry, said under the DRI programme, initiated in 1999, similar orientation workshops had been organized for all regional coordinating directors and economic planning officers and other facilitation teams, all in the effort at controlling the disease.

He urged the DCEs to work hard to ensure that efforts by government to fight the menace brought a change in people's living conditions. Topics to be discussed at the workshop include, the "Global/National HIV/AIDS Situation, Essentials of HIV/AIDS and Development and Care and Support for People Living With HIV/AIDS".