PPAG requests for disposable shavers for inmates

Kumasi, Oct 10, GNA - The Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG) has appealed to benevolent organisations and philanthropists to include disposable shavers in items that they would donate to prison inmates.

Mrs Christiana Acquaah, Zonal Programmes Co-ordinator of the PPAG, who made the appeal, this would help avoid the situation whereby many of them would have to depend possibly on one shaving blade.

She said: "This will also be a positive contribution of such benevolent organisations and philanthropists towards curbing the incidence of the HIV/AIDS whether within the confines of the prisons or outside it".

Mrs Acquaah was speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Kumasi at the weekend on programmes being pursued by the PPAG to provide information about HIV/AIDS to prison inmates.

She said as part of measures to make information on HIV/AIDS accessible to inmates, the PPAG had started a project on "Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs)/HIV/AIDS Prevention" at the Kumasi Central Prisons to sensitise inmates and staff about the disease.

Mrs Acquaah said under the project, inmates would be education on what STIs including HIV/AIDS are, their mode of transmission and ways by which people could avoid being victims of the disease.

She said its inception early this year, the project had sensitised 1,400 inmates and about 45 prison officers about the disease.

Mrs Acquaah said that the PPAG would in collaboration with the Ghana Health Service train prison infirmary attendants in the management of STIs as well as providing voluntary counselling and testing for HIV. She said it is also part of their scheme to supply drugs on regular basis to the prison infirmary and to also arrange for medical personnel to visit the infirmary once every week to address the health needs of the inmates.