Koforidua, Nov.30, GNA - Students and the youth have been called upon to use their knowledge and skills to spearhead the fight against the spread of the HIV-AIDS pandemic since they command a great influence on their peers and even the general public.

They were further urged to show compassion in a meaningful way, including praying for those who have fallen victims to the disease so that, "even in their plight, they would enjoy an inner peace to sustain them longer."

Mrs Phyllis Opare, a tutor at the Koforidua Secondary/Technical School and an adult educator on the disease, was addressing students from the second cycle institutions in the Eastern Region on the topic: "Care and support-stigmatisation and discrimination against PLWHAs", on Saturday at Koforidua.

The programme was organized by the Ghana United Nations Students and Youth Association (GUNSA) in collaboration with the World Education, an NGO for students, on the dangers and combating the spread of the disease to commemorate the International World AIDS Day that falls on the first day of December.

Mrs Opare noted that people die quickly from the disease because the society in which they live stigmatised and discriminated against them and stressed the need for people to accept victims of the disease equally as they would do to any healthy person.

She said the issue of AIDS had now become a societal and global threat that calls for concerted efforts by all categories of people, including students and the youth.

Mrs Opare urged the students to abstain from pre-marital sex and concentrate on their studies for a bright future, emphasising that, "even though abstinence is not easy, yet it is the best form of staying clear of the disease."

The General Secretary of GUNSA, Paa Kwesi Ofori-Atta, said they had noticed from research that despite the message being spread about the pandemic, "most students were still of the view that it was not real."

He noted that to give the disease the human face as far as the students were concerned, GUNSA had embarked on series of programmes in the second-cycle institutions with the aim of clarifying that notion.

He said for the effectiveness of the programme, GUNSA had given intensive training to twenty students as focal persons and five tutors as adult educators to supervise them in most second-cycle schools in the Eastern Region to lead the campaign against the deadly menace.

Paa Ofori-Atta noted that PLWHAs were most often shunned in society and stressed the need for support and care that students and the youth are expected to give to such people and said, "there are diseases that are more infectious than the AIDS menace."