It appears the country is currently headed towards danger as the Ghana Aids Commission has indicated that it is currently broke and has begun rationing antiviral drugs.
People suffering from HIV are placed on drugs to ensure they sustain the complicating that comes with the infection.
The Ghana AIDS Commission is supported by the government and other international organizations to provide the drugs for the patients but it appears the situation is getting worse now.
Dr Kyeremeh Atuahene, the Director-General of the Ghana AIDS Commission has indicated in an interview with Citinews that they are currently facing serious challenges.
According to him, government has refused to provide the needed funding and as such the regulars distributing of drugs to patient has largely been affected.
“We have a huge funding gap, if we run short of medicine, it’s like people who are on oxygen and the obvious end is death when oxygen is taken off. Currently, there’s no specific budgetary allocation for HIV programs. Once in a while, we get something from National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). The funding gap is 66%. We need Ghanaians to support us by dialing USSD *989# to donate to support the AIDS fund”. He indicated.
A total of 16,574 new cases of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infections was recorded in Ghana in 2022. The new figure is against a total of 18,036 infections recorded in 2021. This was contained in a release issued by the Ghana AIDS Commission in Accra on Tuesday.
The 16,574 new HIV infections cut across all ages. For people who were 15 years and above, infections recorded were 13,706; children from zero to 14 years were 2,180; adolescents from 10 to 19 years were 645 and young people between the ages of 15 and 24 years were 739.