The Ghanaian Minaret

Accra – Maamobi, a suburb of Accra, located in the Ayawaso North Municipal Assembly of the Greater Accra region has been identified as a hot spot for HIV prevalence in the latest surveillance report of the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP).

The 2019 HIV Sentinel Surveillance report which was released on Thursday, showed that the Zongo community record a prevalence rate of 4.2 per cent, making it the urban site in the country with the highest HIV prevalence.

It was also featured as second highest behind Fanteakwa, the highest-ranked rural site that had a rate of 4.8 per cent in the overall rankings of 57 sites across 16 regions of the country.

Meanwhile, Adibo, a rural site recorded the lowest prevalence rate of 0.0 per cent while Nalerigu was the urban site with the lowest prevalence rate as it recorded 0.6 per cent.

The study which targeted pregnant women attending antenatal clinics and patients seeking treatment for Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) analyzed 25,925 samples from 55 antenatal clinics and two STI Clinic sites across the country.

Samples were collected between the period of September 23 and December 13 of last year where persons between the ages of 15 and 49 years were targeted.

Speaking at the report launch, the Programmes Manager of NACP, Dr. Stephen Ayisi Addo disclosed that a 10-year analysis of previous prevalence data had shown that prevalence is increasing in the country and for that reason “things needed to be done differently”.

With the exception of the central region and the eastern region which recorded a prevalence rate of 1.5 per cent and 2.6 per cent respectively in 2019, all other regions in a linear trend analysis he said have either maintained a stable trend or moved upwards.

The Data manager of NACP, Ekow Wiah for his part explained that for a site to qualify for inclusion in the study, the antenatal site should be capable of providing 251 samples at each ANC site while a minimum of 101 samples was required for an STI site.