Ghana would host a global summit on HIV/AIDS, traditional medicine and indigenous knowledge to facilitate the identification and testing of potentially beneficial low-cost naturally derived medicinal products for the prevention and management of HIV/AIDS.

Ghana News Agency reported on Tuesday that the conference would facilitate mutual awareness, respect and training in diagnostic and therapeutic best practices, share indigenous knowledge of plants of medicinal value for the future and the production of herbal products.

The conference, slated from March 14 to 18, 2006 in Accra, would be organized by Africa First, a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in the United States, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization, Ghana AIDS Commission, UNAIDS, among others.

Briefing the press on the conference, Patrick Twumasi, chairman of the Local Steering Committee for the conference, said systems of reciprocity must be generated among knowledge providers and resource users, particularly those with commercial goals through the medium of intellectual property regimes to secure and promote the interest and education for the future generations.

Sakyi Awuku Amoa, director general of the Ghana AIDS Commission, said the bone of contention had always been the fear of practitioners having their knowledge being stolen by research scientists, but it would be in their own interest to work with the research institutions and not individual research scientists.

Source: Xinhua