Wearing waist beads can prevent HIV - Kumasi residents

According to them, although HIV infections are on the increase, with no less than 23,495 people in Ghana testing positive between January and June, they will continue to live life without fear.

Some of the residents who spoke in an interview with Kumasi-based Luv FM’s Bright Emmanuel Quaicoe gave various bizarre reasons why they are unphased by the increasing infection rate of HIV.

One of the people interviewed said that they have lived in Kumasi for ages, but hardly suffer from even malaria, let alone HIV/AIDS. In his view, prayer to God can cause immunity.

“It is a spiritual disease. It is not everybody who’ll contract it. Because as for AIDS, we’ve been in this township for long. But even malaria finds it difficult to attack us.

“If you pray and worship God well, you will be immune. Because when a man sleeps with a woman, it makes God happy. God then sees the benefits of his creations,” the man said with confidence.

As if his opinion was not weird enough, another resident said in the same interview that the disease is a spiritual one and having sex with a woman who wears waist beads can prevent the virus.

“I’m actually worried. But as for AIDS, I think that if you sleep with a girl who wears beads, you won’t be infected. So I think we should treat is as a normal disease. Every woman should wear beads to reduce the rate of infections,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Director General of the Ghana AIDS Commission, Dr Kyeremeh Atuahene, has urged people with the virus to take advantage of the availability of drugs at various health facilities across the country.