Koforidua (C/R), April 5, GNA - The Cape Coast Metropolitan Committee on HIV/AIDS has intensified its educational campaign to remind communities that the prevalence rate of the pandemic was still high in the metropolis and therefore they needed to guard against contracting it.

An outreach programme was therefore launched in six communities including, Abakam, Duakor, Akotokyir and Efutu Koforidua during which more than 300 people went in for the voluntary counselling and testing with six people including a 65-year old woman testing positive. Mrs Rebecca Antwi-Baffoe, Cape Coast Metropolitan Focal Person on HIV/AIDS, expressed concern that the disease was high in the metropolis because some of the people still believed it was a spiritual disease and sought treatment at spiritual churches. She educated them on how one could contract the disease through the use of infected instruments like blade, needles, shaving sticks and syringes and urged the public to also desist from engaging in indiscriminate sex and promiscuous lifestyles. Mrs Antwi-Baffoe said discrimination against HIV/AIDS patients was still strife despite public education on it, and reminded the public that it was not through only sex that one could get the disease.

She therefore expressed the hope that people living with the disease would be treated with love and affection to help prolong their lives. She said the committee would work hard and collaborate with other stakeholders in its efforts to combat the disease and called on the people to take the education on it seriously and focus on prevention other than cure. Free condoms were distributed to people after the programme.