Feature Story

The UNAIDS Country Office for Ghana is supporting the Millennium Promise Alliance, the Network of People Living with HIV and the Young Health Advocates Ghana in a partnership to strengthen community engagement in the COVID-19 response.

Aimed at reducing the community spread of COVID-19 and minimizing its effects on reaching the national HIV targets, the Partnership for Accelerated COVID-19 Testing (PACT) in Ghana will encourage the adoption of COVID-19 preventive behaviours, such as physical distancing, wearing face coverings and hand hygiene, reduce COVID-19-related stigma, promote vaccine uptake and strengthen the capacities of communities.

The PACT initiative in Ghana targets the two regions with the heaviest COVID-19 burden: the Ashanti and Greater Accra regions. Launching the project, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Patrick Aboagye, commended the initiative and highlighted the urgent need for an all-hands-on-deck approach to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

The UNAIDS Country Director for Ghana, Angela Trenton-Mbonde, emphasized the importance of galvanizing HIV civil society to strengthen community engagement in the fight against COVID-19. “PACT will generate evidence for advocacy from communities, including people living with HIV, women’s groups and other vulnerable populations, to identify and inform health authorities of any disruption of essential health services, particularly HIV-related services at the community level, and will mobilize for greater uptake of those services,” she said.

The PACT initiative, launched by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in April 2020, aims to conduct 10 million COVID-19 tests on the African continent. PACT has three pillars: test, trace and treat, which cover the procurement and distribution of COVID-19 test kits, the deployment and training of one million community health-care workers to support contact tracing and monitoring, and COVID-19 sensitization measures.