Kumasi, March 28, GNA - Young persons have been advised not to feel shy to discuss sex life education with their parents or their Sunday School teachers. Miss Paulina Mensah-Bonsu, Midwifery Superintendent and a student at the Community Health Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), who gave this advice, said this was the only way out of their health or physiological development problems that would face them. She was delivery a talk on HIV/AIDS with the theme: "My Future Is My Choice" to members of the Bantama District Junior Youth (JY), a wing of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana in Kumasi, on Saturday.

The children led by their leaders had earlier undertaken a clean-up exercise from Nurom Hotel at Suame Magazine to Suame Police Station where they desilted gutters, swept and cleared the premises of the station. They also worked from Bantama Market through the principal streets of Bantama and ended at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) where they swept open spaces, picked pieces of polythene bags and desilted gutters. Miss Mensah-Bonsu urged the children not to give in to their peers on immorality and other bad behaviours that could lead them into trouble, adding that they should not also take HIV/AIDS educational programmes for granted. She told them that the HIV/AIDS pandemic was real and that it was killing people all over the world and advised that they should be determined not to allow anybody to have sex with them because of beauty, riches or profession.

Miss Mensah-Bonsu said Ashanti Region recorded 2,816 AIDS cases last year, as against 3,261 in 2002, stressing that out of the figure, 1,639 were women and 1,177 men. Kumasi, she said, recorded the highest figure of 1,540 followed by Adansi West with 267 cases and the Atwima District recorded 139 cases with the lowest being Sekyere West with 20 cases. Miss Mensah-Bonsu explained to them that 80 percent of people acquired HIV/AIDS through sex, 15 percent through mother to child and five percent through contaminated equipment and tools that was why the major campaign was on sex as a means of avoiding contracting the disease. She cautioned them to refrain from alcoholism and other dangerous drugs, which could ruin their lives and concentrate on their education to become useful citizens.

Mr Isaac Oppong-Yeboah and Mr Albert Owusu Mensah, district president and secretary respectively, advised members to be faithful and obedient to their parents. They also advised them to continue to involve themselves in the programmes and activities of the church to the glory of God.