AIDS patients says NGOs are cheating them

Tema, April 12, GNA - The Bread of Life and Deliverance Association (BLDA), made up of people living with AIDS in Tema, on Thursday called on the Ghana AIDS Commission to investigate the background of the NGOs managing AIDS patients and monitor them to ensure that funds meant for AIDS patients are used judiciously.
The members complained that these NGOs do not look after them as expected and that people hide behind these NGOs to collect funds meant for them for their own personal gains.
"We only get monthly supply of one "Olonka of rice, a beer bottle of cooking oil, some beans, tom brown and our drugs with little counselling and that is all we get from them".
The patients, numbering about 43 including couples who spoke in turns, declined to mention those NGOs involved and said they felt reluctant going to them "because it is rather costly, waste of time and energy".
They said on their normal hospital visits to the Tema Polyclinic, they heard of a Congolese, Prophet Matel Cracia, in-charge of the Apostolic Mission International (AMI), who caters for AIDS patients free of charge.
"Ever since we came into contact with the prophet we have been extra healthy because he takes care of us and settles our bills for the drugs together with effective counselling that has sustained us until now".
They said due to stigmatisation they do not inform people when doctors break the news of their status to them.
A man said he got the virus from his wife but they have separated and she has gone for another man who has made her pregnant.
Another male victim believes that abstinence is most appropriate to prevent contracting the virus since condom could fail.
The patients appealed to the government to consider their plight and release some funds to them to start businesses for a living as they cannot continue to depend on the benevolence of the prophet.
Prophet Cracia said he went into the practice about six years ago supporting the needy, poor and deprived people in the community and spent much time on counselling to encourage the victims go about with their normal lives.
He said he has 43 people living with AIDS whom he is supporting as well as some pupils in schools at Tema Communities Two and Four.
Asked how he gets money he said, "the Lord is in control and I will continue until the last breadth of my life".
Prophet Cracia said he has acquired land in Tema where he could operate and appealed to well meaning people for support to make his dream become a reality.
He said the authorities of the Tema Polyclinic have declared their intention to take over the temporal office he is occupying.
GNA
FY/DK
12 April 07

Don't express your love for husbands with NGOs credit facilities – Chief tells women

Damongo, Jan.27, GNA-A traditional ruler in the Northern Region has
advised women who have been given NGOs credit facilities to expand
their businesses and not to give such monies to their husbands as
gifts to express their love.The Damongo-Wura, (Chief) Lemu Jakpah said
instead of given out such monies as gifts to woo their husbands, they
should rather give them out as loans and compel their husbands to
payback.

He said government and NGOs interventions to reduce poverty,
especially among rural women over the years had not yielded the
desired impact because of the Ghanaian woman's love and desire to get
their husbands and their desire for material wants.Chief Jakpah gave
the advice at the official launch of a 56 million cedi micro-credit
project for rural women at Damongo in the West Gonja District on
Friday.The Damongo-Wura said women and their families would continue
to live in abject poverty, hunger and deprivation if they did not
change their attitude towards wining love from their husbands.

The Women Service Foundation (WSF), an NGO with sponsorship from SLO
Foundation in Holland is providing the assistance to improve the lives
of women and their household members. Sixty women would benefit from
the first phase of the project.Mr. Sulemana Abdul-Samed, Executive
Director of WSF said the NGO's overall aim was to have an
endemic-poverty free society through the provision of education, good
health, women empowerment and gender equality.He said the assistance
the NGO was providing for the women would help them to control the
development of their lives and their families for a healthy and
wealthy succession of generations in their communities.

"Reducing poverty conditions and increased wealth, well-being and
participation of women in good governance, peace building and conflict
transformation is our goal", he said.