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Premiums of HIV/AIDS patients to be
paid under NHIS
Wa, Feb. 18, GNA - The Upper West Regional Coordinating
Council has directed all Municipal and District Focal
Persons for HIV/AIDS to use part of funds from the Ghana
AIDS Commission to pay the premiums of People Living with
HIV/AIDS to enable them to access drugs from health
facilities under the National Health Insurance Scheme.
"It has become necessary to pay the premiums of these
patients because some of them are so poor that they are
finding it extremely difficult to mobilize 72,000 cedis as
the basic requirement for joining their District Mutual
Health Insurance Schemes.
Alhaji Zaid Tamimu, Regional Focal Person for HIV/AIDS, said
this at a regional HIV/AIDS sensitisation forum, which was
organized as part of the performance review workshop of the
health sector in the Region at Wa on Friday.
He announced that all anti-HIV/AIDS clubs that were already
existing in some second cycle schools in the Region would be
revived to play lead role as one of the strategies for
preventing the spread of the disease.
Last year the Region received 560 million cedis from the
Ghana AIDS Commission to fight the disease and give care and
support to patients, while DANIDA also supported the three
new districts of Wa East, Wa West and Sissala West, with 60
million cedis to build their capacity to fight the pandemic.
Dr Daniel Yayemain, Deputy Regional Director of Health
Services, said 28 people died from AIDS in the Region last
year out of 298 reported cases as against 22 people who died
from the disease from 348 reported cases in 2005.
He announced that the Region has started giving
Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) at the Regional Hospital in Wa
to be followed by the Jirapa Hospital, while the Nandom
Hospital would get that status by the end of the year.
Dr Boamah Boateng of the Wa Regional Hospital said 84
victims of the disease had so far registered with the ART
Centre with 33 of them put on treatment while 8 were
referred from other hospitals.
The major goal of the ART, he noted was not to cure patients
but rather to reduce the rate at which people living with
the disease were dying through the improvement of their
immune system for a better quality of life.
He urged all people living with disease to use condoms in
order to prevent re-infection as that allowed the virus to
develop resistance to anti-retroviral drugs.
GNA
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