Winneba, Nov 24, GNA - Ms Helena Arkoh, District Director of Education for Awutu-Effutu Senya, has called on teachers to help curb the spread of the HIV/AIDS by incorporating it in their lessons. She stressed that students could easily carry the message about the dreadful disease to their homes and educate their parents and neighbours about it.

Ms Arkoh announced this at the opening of a four-day HIV/AIDS sensitisation workshop for Junior Secondary School (JSS) teachers in the Awutu-Effutu-Senya district at Winneba.

She stated that the sexual behaviour of students and adults would change when HIV/AIDS was made part of their lessons to boost the efforts of the government to control the spread of the disease. Ms Arkoh noted that the disease had become a global problem, which could affect every body and urged teachers to tackle it with all seriousness.

She said that in Uganda, many public schools had been closed down because HIV/AIDS had killed many teachers as well as students and pupils.

The Director of Education cautioned head teachers who were collecting school fees from parents before admitting their children to stop because of the capitation grant.

She stated that the government to cushion poor parents who could not send their children to school introduced the grant.

The Director asked teachers to stop collecting 50,000 cedis and 100,000 cedis from parents since the condition of teachers had improved. He called on them to take advantage of the Distance Education and ICT to attain higher qualifications themselves.

Mr Ato Bortsi, head teacher of the Winneba Catholic JSS in welcoming address appealed to the teachers to take the workshop seriously to stop the menace to promote socio-economic advancement.

He said teachers as professionals, owed it as a duty to assist the government in her efforts to educate the masses about the pandemic.