The Ghana Chapter of the Society For Women Against AIDS In Africa (SWAA) on Thursday said it had began a lobbying process directed at making policymakers and parliamentarians adopt a model law on HIV/AIDS to address challenges associated with the pandemic.

Ghana News Agency quoted Kate Adoo-Adeku, a member of SWAA as saying that although laws existed in various countries, the peculiar nature of the AIDS epidemic and the violations of the rights of infected people warranted the enactment of specific legal interventions to deal with the impact of HIV/AIDS.

She said there was the need for a specific legal framework to serve as a tool to legislate on various aspects of the epidemic such as stigmatization.

Adoo-Adeku was speaking at a day's workshop organized by SWAA to throw more light on a model HIV/AIDS law drafted for west and central African countries.

The model law, which deals with the legal aspects of the epidemic, is the outcome of a project initiated and funded by USAID in collaboration with various organizations including the Forum of African and Arab Parliamentarians for Population and Development and the Economic Community of West African States Parliament.

The development of the law is aimed at providing countries in the west and central African Regions with an opportunity to enact laws that reflect a strong commitment by political decision makers to participate fully in the campaign against the epidemic.

Cecilia Senoo, a member of SWAA, called for the improvement of the legal and regulatory environment for an effective response to the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice and the Attorney-General's Office have initiated a process to incorporate into the Criminal Code of the country, a law that would deal with people, who willfully infected others with the HIV.

Source: Xinhua