First lady donates to Women's groups

Wa, Nov 07, GNA - Mrs. Theresa Kufuor, the First Lady, on Monday presented a shea-butter extraction machine and weaving looms to two women's groups in the Upper West Region at a durbar organized for her at Wa. The beneficiary groups are the Sombo Women's Group, which was given the shea butter equipment, while the weaving implements went to the Christian Mothers Association.

The First Lady, who is accompanied by Hajia Ramatu Mahama, wife of the Vice President on a tour of northern Ghana, called on women to acquire skills that would generate income for them. She said it had been observed that the final product from the traditional method of extracting shea butter was often contaminated with lead.

The machine she had presented to them was made with stainless steel to offset that problem.

During the tour she would interact with women's groups and visit orphanages and address forums on HIV/AIDS issues. Mrs Kufuor spoke to the women about HIV/AIDS and urged them to educate one another on what they know about the virus and avoid all forms of stigmatisation to enable victims live longer. "Everywhere we have gone to make donations to women, we talked about HIV/AIDS because 65 per cent of all cases of the disease are women between the ages of 15 and 49 years".

Hajia Mahama advised victims of the virus not to hide their condition and die when they could be supported with anti-retroviral drugs to prolong their lives.

Mr Ambrose Dery, the Upper West Regional Minister, said the HIV prevalence rate in the region dropped from 3.2 per cent in 2004 to 2.6 percent last year. 07 Nov 06