Kumasi, Feb 2, GNA - A call has gone to school authorities not to place too much emphasis on the use of condoms when educating students so as not to create the impression that pre-marital sex was permissible in the Ghanaian society.

Mr Julius Oddoye, the Deputy Ashanti Regional Director of Education who made the call, said, "if our youth are told in plain language to abstain from pre-marital sex and promiscuous lives, it would help greatly to reduce the prevalent rate of the pandemic among the youth".

He was addressing the eighth annual week celebration of the Ashanti Regional Students Representative Council in Kumasi on Monday. Its theme was, "The Threat of AIDS to Our Education: A Clarion Call to Students".

Representatives of all second cycle schools throughout Ghana are attending the celebration.

Mr Oddoye said besides reducing the infection rate of the disease, stressing on the need to refrain completely from pre-marital sex would inculcate in them the need to lead morally upright lives.

He advised leaders of youth groups to co-ordinate with corporate bodies and NGOs to vigorously campaign against the disease, since the country had reached the cross roads in the crusade against the disease. Professor Edward Agbenyega, Dean of the School of Medical Sciences (SMS), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), cautioned students not to delude themselves into thinking that, the disease was not real since that attitude had the tendency to hasten the spread of the disease.