Women Living With HIV Pleads With Pharmacists To Go Back To Work

Women Living with HIV in the Brong-Ahafo Region have made a passionate appeal to the members of the Ghana Hospital Pharmacists Association to temper justice with mercy and go back to work to enable them have access to their life saving wire - anti-retroviral therapy (ART).

According to her, the strike by the pharmacists is threaten their survival because the depend much on the anti-retroviral therapy which is they put it 'their life saving wire'

The Women made the appeal at a Capacity Building and Sensitization Workshop for Women Living with Living HIV and AIDS and their Service Providers at Abesim near Sunyani.

The International Federation of Women Lawyer (FIDA Ghana) with financial backing from UNWomen under its project organized the day's event: 'Increasing Access to Property and Inheritance Right of Women Living With HIV and AIDS in Ghana'.

The main goal of the project is to address the structural inequalities that make difficult for HIV positive women to access their property and inheritance rights after the death of their husbands.

The women also appealed to government, Fair Wages and Salary Commission to address the concerns of the pharmacists to enable them to go back to work as soon as possible.

The Women Living With HIV were unhappy about the attitude of some health and community based workers towards them and Doctors and Nurses who provide services to them.

They therefore stressed the need for intensive sensitization for health and community based workers on HIV related stigma to help minimize stigmatization of people living with HIV as well as reduced stigma against health workers providing HIV services.

They further called for sensitization among policy makers, traditional, opinion and religious leaders on HIV related stigma to enable them join the stigma reduction campaign.

In her presentation on the topic: 'Property Rights of Women in Relation to Succession', the Executive Director of FIDA Ghana, Jane Quaye, said many women and their children were deprived of properties which they had labored and toiled with their deceased husbands.

According to her, to added salt to injury, they were made to undergo widowhood rite and ritual servitude upon the death of their husbands. This inhumane act, she noted is unacceptable and called for abrupt stop to such barbaric act.

The Executive Director , who is a Lawyer by profession called of parliament to amend a section of the Children's Act, 1998 (ACT 560) that stated that property of a deceased husband that is less than ten million old Ghana cedis must go to the spouse and children, adding 'this is too small'.

Touching on challenges facing the implementation of the Interstate Succession Law, she pointed out that it application has been problematic, however she was quick to added that it is still a good standard after all the years in operation.