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04.04.2004 General News

NGO disagrees that enough awareness on HIV/AIDS has been created

04.04.2004 LISTEN
By GNA

Kumasi, April.4, GNA - The African Volunteers Foundation, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), which seeks to reach out to the rural communities with awareness about the HIV/AIDS menace, has disagreed with the notion that enough education about the disease has not been carried out in the country.

Mr Gerald Osei Berhene, President of the Foundation, said education on the disease has been concentrated mainly in the cities and urban centres and has not trickled down properly to the rural areas where majority of Ghanaians live.

Mr Berhene was speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Kumasi on Saturday, on the need to intensify campaigns that would trickle down to every nook and crany about the danger posed by AIDS.

He said awareness creation is a process, and that once babies continue to be born, and many people in the remote parts of the country are yet to be reached with the message, the education should continue. Mr Berhene said even if the message on the menace reaches out to everybody in the country, there was still the need for NGOS to continue hammering on the message until attitudinal change was brought to bear on all sections of society.

He said as part of its educational programme the foundation has therefore embarked on a scheme, under which talks on the dangers of the disease were delivered to some selected schools.

"We have started with schools in Kumasi, but would soon be extending it to other schools in the metropolis", he added.

Mr Berhene said the foundation has identified unemployment as one of the major causes of the youth going astray by taking to immoral acts that eventually make them victims of HIV/AIDS.

To offset the unemployment problem, he disclosed that, the Foundation was in the process of setting up an industrial centre at Bonwire in the Ejhisu/Juaben District, where the unemployed could be trained in kente weaving and tie and dye, as well as batik making.

He said land for establishment of the Industrial Centre had already been released by Nana Kwaku Berhene at Bonwire.

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