Regional News of Saturday, 31 December 2005

Source: GNA

Strategise to curb HIV/AIDS - Director

Manso-Atwere (Ash), Dec 31, GNA - Mrs Beatrice Boakye-Ansah Prempeh, Amansie West District Director of Education, has expressed concern about the alarming rate of HIV/AIDS infection in the district. She has therefore called for a new approach to curb the spread of the disease in the district, suggesting that teachers should include HIV/AIDS in their lessons. Mrs Prempeh was speaking at the end of a two-week training workshop for 400 Junior Secondary School teachers in the district at Manso-Atwere on the theme: "Teachers - Agent of Dissemination and Change". The workshop was aimed at providing efficient knowledge and skills that would help teachers to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in the school.

The Ministry of Education and Sports, the Ghana Education Service and Ghana AIDS Commission, in collaboration with the United Nations Children Fund and the World Bank jointly organized it. Mrs Prempeh noted that even though the issue of HIV/AIDS had been "tackled from all angles", and that the knowledge about the disease was also widespread, the attitude of people towards sex, the main mode of transmission had not change. She therefore urged the teachers to impart the knowledge acquired at the workshop to help reduce the incidence of the disease among the youth.