According to Dr. Stephen Ayisi-Addo, Program Manager of the National AIDS/STI Control Program, HIV is one of the diseases that claim the lives of children, thus it is important to pay attention to it.
According to Dr. Ayisi-Addo, of the estimated 350,000 HIV-positive persons living in Ghana, 7% were children, with an estimated 3,700 new infections and 3,000 HIV-related deaths among children under the age of 15 each year.
He stated that as the nation's future, emphasis must be paid to HIV in youngsters.
He was addressing at the 14th edition of the Ghana News Agency's Tema Regional Office's Stakeholders Engagement and Worker's Appreciation Day Seminar.
The GNA Tema Stakeholder Engagement is a forum established for state and non-state actors to discuss national issues. It also acts as a mechanism for motivating journalists to recognise their editorial contributions to both the general development of the nation and the expansion and promotion of the GNA as the leading source of business news.
According to Dr. Ayisi-Addo, AIDS, the last stage of the HIV infection, typically takes an adult infected with the virus around 15 years to manifest. However, because children have a lower immune system than adults, AIDS can manifest in youngsters as early as five years.
Children die more quickly because they lack the amount of immunity that adults possess, he claimed. Dr. Ayisi-Addo stated that since most children under the age of 15 do not engage in sexual activity, one of the ways the virus might spread, youngsters get the disease through their mothers.
"Mother-to-child transmission takes 15% of all the ways that a youngster might catch HIV," he stated.
Adding that HIV was not genetically transmitted, he pointed out that a kid might get the virus while in the mother's womb, during labour, delivery, and breast-feeding.
In order to prevent the unborn kid from catching the virus, he encouraged pregnant women to take their prenatal and postnatal care carefully and make it a point to take their meds as prescribed.
"I am glad to say that most kids who are delivered by HIV-positive moms' are negative," he stated. "This is due of the service being offered."
For women who are HIV positive and have children to prosper and escape social stigma, he claimed that spouses and family members must provide immeasurable support.
Dr. Ayisi-Addo asked Ghanaians to encourage HIV-positive patients to follow their meds rather than stigmatise or discriminate against them so that Ghana will soon be rid of the HIV infection.