With Bicycles, Fighting AIDS in Africa

Posted: 01 Feb 2004

Related to: Healthcare Logistics in Africa, Bridging Distances: Healthcare & Transport, Ghana
Contributed by: Aimee Gauthier, ITDP

In commemoration of World AIDS Day on December 1, the Ghana AIDS Commission, in cooperation with UNAIDS, ITDP and the Republic of Ghana's Ministry of Health, launched a campaign to raise public awareness about AIDS through bicycle rides.

Two rides, one through all of Ghana’s 11 regions and one through Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and Ghana, culminated in a December 1 ceremony publicizing this year’s theme, “Live and Let Live: Reducing Stigmatization & Discrimination against People Living with HIV/AIDS.”

At the ceremony, Ghana Vice President H. E. Alhaji Aliu Mahama, distributed bicycles to ten HIV/AIDS workers, which were donated by ITDP supporters through the Access Africa donor program. With bicycles, health care workers are reaching double or triple the number of patients than they could without bicycles.

Photo: Joseph Omufu leading a procession on World Aids Day, Dec. 1, 2003, Takoradi, Ghana

ITDP is also working with local hospices, government ministries of health and AIDS care networks to help health workers access affordable bicycles in Ghana, Senegal and South Africa.

“I am equally delighted at the gesture of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy of the United States for the gift of bicycles to the Ghana AIDS Commission to provide easy mobility in implementation of HIV/AIDS activities in the communities,” the Vice President said.