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President John Dramani Mahama has expressed the conviction that Ghana will become the hub for the production of antiretroviral drugs (ARTs) in West Africa in the near future. As part of a strategy to achieve the target, he said, the Export Development Agriculture Fund had made money available to some pharmaceuticals companies, the bulk of which would be used to improve prophylaxis and develop ARTs. The President expressed the optimism when he received the Director of UNAIDS, Mr Michel Sidibe, at the Flagstaff House yesterday. Mr Sidibe was at the Presidency to hold discussions with President Mahama on how to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa. Five-year plan President Mahama said a five-year strategic plan, which Ghana was implementing, had resulted in some significant progress in the fight against the disease. One of the targets was to achieve a zero mother-to-child infection and the rate has dropped from 31 per cent to nine per cent, with strong prospects to push it to under five per cent and probably to zero. President Mahama said there was also the plan to increase the number of patients on ARTs (which currently stood at 60 per cent) to 90 per cent. There has also been a reduction in new infections from about 12,000 to about 7,000, while the number of deaths has dropped to about 30 per cent. The prevalence rate is now 1.3. "We are committed to putting in our own resources in a bid to further scale it down," the President said. He expressed appreciation to UNAIDS and the global community for the support given to Ghana in its struggle to overcome HIV/AIDS. Ebola On Ebola, President Mahama said ECOWAS would call a meeting of the committee of experts under the auspices of the West Africa Health Organisation on August 26 and 27 in Accra, which would be attended by representatives of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Centre for Disease Control. After that there would be the health ministers� meeting to be followed by an emergency meeting of the heads of state, to agree on the measures to be taken to eliminate Ebola. Presently, he said, a lot of the responses to the outbreak were ad hoc and outside the WHO guidelines for the control of the virus. "We need to streamline the screening and quarantine procedures, among other measures," he stressed. Sidibe Mr Sidibe expressed the hope that Ghana would be a model for the fight against HIV/AIDS, adding that "Ghana is showing that the world could really control the epidemic". "We have seen a decline in new infections and decline in mortality. We have also seen that by 2015, there is the possibility that there would be no children born with HIV in Ghana and that could be a huge breakthrough for all of us as that would be the first time that we can have a generation free of HIV," he said. He commended President Mahama for his strong commitment to the fight against HIV and AIDS and stressed the need for ECOWAS to support Ghana to become the centre for the local production of ARTs.