350 HIV Affected Children to Get Anti-Retroviral Drugs

A CHARITABLE organisation, Woyome Foundation for Africa (WOFA) has embarked on a campaign dubbed "One for One Campaign" geared towards generating funds to provide and support vulnerable children living with endemic HIV/AIDS with the needed health care services in order to improve the living standards of children in the country.

The campaign is targeted to sustain the provision of a year's supply of Anti-retroviral, boosters and nutritional support among others for at least 350 infected children by the end of the campaign period as well as help with a better integration of All other Vulnerables (OVCs) in society.

The Project Consultant for WOFA, Mrs. Stella Afriyie Ankrah emphasised this at the launch of the OVC Campaign in Accra to put in place various systems to provide domestic support, educational scholarships and other recreational facilities for orphans of AIDS and to offer young people with job opportunities.

She further emphasized that, "One for One OVC Campaign is intended to raise funds primarily from the working class Ghanaian and other nationals residing in Ghana to procure anti-retroviral drugs and boosters for children infected with HIV/AIDS in the country".

She expressed confidence in WOFA's team and their commitment to support the intensification of public education aimed at attitudinal change towards the menace and the stig matization of People Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and OVCs among others.

According to her, more than twenty five million adults and children have died from the disease worldwide in the past two decades and suggested that if the anti-retroviral drugs had been available to these people most of them would have been alive today.

"Anti-retroviral drugs work by blocking the HIV from replicating and functioning in the body and while the medicines are not a cure for AIDS they have brought extraordinary hope to people, especially children infected with HIV and have transformed AIDS into a chronic but manageable disease", she said.

On his part, the Deputy Minster of Women and Children Affairs (MOWAC), Mr Daniel C Dugan added that it was thoughtful of WOFA to have taken this decision to help address the myriad of problems facing children and said an initiative like this would supplement the efforts of government to provide a sustainable source of funds for the treatment and care of children.

Recounting their challenges, the Deputy Minister said "we lack resources to provide treatment to prolong the lives of HIV/AIDS parents and children orphaned by the disease. They face a very gloomy future when they should be the base of our human resources for development".

In this direction, he expressed the hope that the organization would grow to be a sustainable source of supplementary funds to government's commitment to fight the endemic HIV/AIDS.

allAfrica.com: Ghana: 350 HIV Affected Children to Get Anti-Retroviral Drugs (Page 1 of 1)