Accra, Feb. 18, GNA - A day's seminar on HIV/AIDS was held at Chorkor in Accra on Saturday for peer educators in the community. The Seminar, organised by the Disciples Aid Foundation (DAF) a local NGO, was attended by 60 youth leaders drawn from the Chorkor Lanteman and its environs.

Speaking at the seminar, Rev. Dr. Abel Solomon of the Reality Foundation International urged the participants to accept the reality of the existence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and to do everything possible to avoid it, adding, 93 you need not to experience it, it would be too late".

He said, it was important that the youth took this warning very serious, because as leaders of tomorrow, the nation's prosperity and development depended on them.

Rev. Solomon explained that the economic development of the nation would be so much affected, if the able-bodied youth were annihilated by this dreadful disease.

He told the participants that the surest way to avoid contracting the HIV/AIDS was absolute abstinence, 93for the condom was not full proof".

He also cautioned them against friends who would lure them into tobaco smoking and homosexuality, which he said, was spreading very fast in some of the communities and urged them, as leaders to counsel their peers against such practices.

Rev. Bishop Abraham Annoh, president of DAF said the purpose of the seminar was to arm the youth leaders in the communities with the requisite knowledge of the pandemic and its prevention methods, so they could educate their peers.

He said due to the socio-economic environment that they lived in, the risk factor was very high and therefore, the need to strengthen the youth to stand up against the disease.

Bishop Annoh said DAF, which was founded about three years ago, had organised several of such seminars in 10 project communities in and around Chorkor.

He said, DAF had also organised basic entrepreneurship skills training for several fishmongers, as Chorkor is a fishing community. Rev. Bill Forcher, an evangelist and publisher said the HIV/AIDS pandemic had a spiritual undertone and therefore must be tackled both physically and spiritually.

He explained that illicit sexual relationship was the root of sin and most problems of the world today and urged the youth to avoid sexual relationship of any kind before marriage.