Sokode-Gbogame (V/R), GNA - New Seed International (NSI) Ghana, a community oriented Non Governmental Organisation, has opened a palliative centre, the first in the country, at Sokode-Gbogame in the Volta region. The centre is to take care of AIDS patients and other terminally ill persons in need of special care. It will also promote research into HIV/AIDS. Mr Livinus Acquah-Jackson, Executive Director of NSI Ghana, said this at the inaugural opening of the Centre on Thursday. The 122,000-dollar facility, known as the Integrated Palliative Care Centre, has a 26-bed clinic with a laboratory to provide free medical services and a pharmacy to give drugs at highly subsidized prices.

He said the Centre, which had a day care centre for children including those orphaned by AIDS, would also provide skills training for young girls to take them off activities likely to predispose them to HIV/AIDS.

Mr. Acquah-Jackson said the NSI office and Solace International both in the United States provided 80 percent of the cost of the project with NSI Ghana paying the remaining 20 percent. Mr Acquah-Jackson said home based care was important to help AIDS patients and other terminally ill persons to live longer. He said palliative care, considered internationally as affordable, was lacking in Ghana where stigmatization and neglect tended to cut short the lifespan of such patients.

"Ideally suited to home-based care, it (palliative care) supports people during illness and enables them to die with dignity", he said. He said the centre was designed "to meet the physical, emotional, socio-economic and spiritual needs to improve the quality of life of persons living with HIV/AIDS, affected families and orphans". Dr Sally-Ann Ohene of the World Health Organization commended NSI Ghana for its role in helping to address the HIV/AIDS menace in Ghana. She said WHO would continue with its collaboration with the NSI and support it to fight the HIV/AIDS menace. Reverend Terry Emmanuel Adjah of the End-Time Assemblies of God Church in Ho said self-control in sexual matters was essential in curtailing the HIV/AIDS menace in the country. He said adherence to Christian principles and social norms regarding sex provided the surest antidote to the HIV/AIDS menace.