Winneba (C/R), April 14, GNA - Female lecturers and students of the University of Education Winneba (UEW), are to enjoy free breast-cancer screening by MAMOCARE-Korle-Bu.

The move is being engineered by the Gender Desk of the University with the support of the University administration. Ms Judith T. Zabrina, the outgoing NUGS' Women's Commissioner for the University, announced this at a day's seminar on HIV/AIDS organised by the outgoing executives of the commission at the North Campus on Tuesday.

Resource persons for the seminar were Reverend Father Bobby Benson, Founder and Leader of Koforidua-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), Matthew Chapter 25, which caters of the welfare of people living with AIDS, and two persons from Father Benson's organisation. Ms Zabrina commended the Gender Desk and the University administration for their useful initiative and hoped it will go a along way to help female lecturers and students of the university avail themselves with the MAMOCARE facility at Korle-Bu for periodic tests against breast-cancer.

She stressed the need for the university to have a Voluntary Counselling and Testing Facility (VCT) at the university to encourage members of the university community to check their HIV/AIDS status. Ms Zabrina said besides various health programmes initiated by the Commission, including HIV/AIDS, to keep students abreast with vital health issues, the commission had already arranged with the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG), to assist the commission establish a group at the university to facilitate sexual/reproductive health activities at the university as was being done in University of Cape Coast and Legon.

In an address read on his behalf, Professor Sakyi Awuku-Amoah, HIV/AIDS Commissioner, called on student-teachers to be advocates of the HIV/AIDS pandemic to ensure effective education on the disease. Rev. Father Bobby Benson commended organisers of the seminar and asked student-teachers throughout the country to take up the challenge to educate the people wherever they may be to reduce the spread of the disease. 14 April 05