It is another football season and Ghana has missed out on a great opportunity to sell HIV preventive messages to its teaming youth who will be watching the game from different devices and on various platforms.
It appears the country no more wants to “protect the goal” – a UNAIDS initiative that harnesses the power of football and culture to raise awareness of HIV and mobilize young people to commit to HIV prevention.
The reality is that Ghanaian youths 21 years and below have little to no appreciation of the debilitating nature of the virus and the devastation it has caused the world. And yet they live in Sub-Sahara Africa, a region that has faced the harshest brunt of HIV.
“When was the last time you saw an HIV advert or billboard in the streets?” quizzed Rev. John Azumah, an HIV role model who has been living with the condition for the past 22 years. Rev. Azumah is deeply concerned over what he describes as the neglect of HIV by the government.
As the country reneges on its commitment to HIV the results are revealing. In the first half of this year alone more than twenty-three thousand people have tested positive for HIV.
An assessment of HIV prevalence for the past four decades shows that Ghana has the slowest decreasing rate among its four neighbors.
New infections among young Ghanaian women are particularly scary because four out of five infections among young people are young women. Compared with its neighbors, young women in Ghana have the slowest rate of decline in HIV.
The Challenge
There is a consensus among various stakeholders that the decline in preventive and strategic media campaigns is the major reason for Ghana’s slow pace, especially in the past decade.
“Most people who heard about HIV did so 10 to 20 years ago,” notes a professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health, University of Ghana, Ernest Kenu, “and that is why the infection rate among young people is very high.”
The adage goes that prevention is always better than cure, but Dr Kenu observes that the government is prioritizing curative measures over preventive methods. For someone living with HIV, Rev. Azumah’s preference for preventive measures over curative measures seems quite selfless, but he has an analogy that makes total sense.
“HIV is like a tro-tro,” he intimated, adding that “the tro-tro is full and we don’t want any more passengers on board.” As more new cases are detected more people living with HIV/AIDS would have to scramble for a limited medication supply. Rev. Azumah’s fears are supported by the data.
Ghana’s current incidence of 0.57 means that for every 100,000 uninfected people in Ghana there are 57 infected people compared to, say, Burkina Faso which has 8 infected persons per every 100,000 uninfected persons.
Funding
Development partners have historically fully funded HIV through a three-year funding cycle. But the current funding regime, the New Funding Model (NFM) expects local governments to contribute at least 20% towards HIV.
The historically lower burden of HIV compared with other sub-Saharan countries and the declaration of Ghana as a lower middle-income country in 2007 significantly dwindles Ghana’s global funding.
The country’s case has been worsened by the government’s declaration of “Ghana Beyond Aid” in 2017.
For instance, the National AIDS Spending Assessment (NASA) report shows that Cote D’Ivoire has been consistent in raising more money than Ghana for HIV. Francophone countries may get more resources from the French Initiative due to their ties with Paris.
To address this funding gap the National HIV and AIDS Fund was established. But the fund is yet to be set into motion. Last year, President Akufo Addo assured that the government plans to increase domestic resources through the Fund. But he was short of announcing a seed capital to kick it started.
Targets and gains
Despite the slow-paced progress, Ghana has made significant gains in some areas. Dr Stephen Ayisi Addo, program manager of the National STIs and HIV/AIDS Control Program, tells me that the country has been able to reduce prevalence among pregnant women from as high as 4.6 to 2.0 percent with a target of 1.0 percent in the next 4 years.
Another area that has seen tremendous gains is among female sex workers who as of last year had a prevalence of 4.6 percent from a rate as high as 11.0 percent. With the president launching a 5-year HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan Ghana seems poised to reduce HIV rates.
The plan has a goal of reducing new infections by 85 percent and achieving a 95-95-95 fast-track testing and treatment by 2025.
Ghana has already missed the UNAIDS target of 90-90-90 which required nations to achieve the following by 2020:
- 90 percent of all persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWA) must be diagnosed;
- 90 percent of the people diagnosed must be placed on anti-retroviral treatment (ART); and
- 90 percent of people on ART must reach viral suppression (i.e., levels where the viral load is so small that it cannot be transmitted)
Currently, Ghana stands at 71-99-79. To compare, Togo stands at 80-96-89 while Cote D’Ivoire is at 80-96-84. Dr Ayisi Addo observes that complacency seems to have slipped into the Ghanaian attitude towards HIV mainly because the availability of antiretroviral medication means that people are no more seen to be stark HIV sick. “Every now and then I go round, people say we think that the disease is not there again”, he said.
An estimated 350,000 people are living with HIV. Whether that number will increase or decrease in the coming years depends on how we approach preventive measures. Media campaigns should be a continuous effort to achieve results.
Periods of slaking and complacency only go to derail years of hard work. Advancement in research and the multiplicity of media platforms has offered the opportunity to create tailored, targeted, and culturally sensitive messages to reach the youth. We missed the opportunity to do that during this football season.
Kwaku Botwe is a health communication specialist.
Email: krufibotwe@gmail.com
