Since HIV and AIDS was discovered in Ghana in the late 1980�s, the fear and stigma attached to it has not reduced because of the perception that one could only acquire the disease through promiscuity and the fear that once infected one would eventually die because there is no cure for it.
Many persons infected with the virus over the years have had to live with it ignorantly whiles those who had gone through the counseling and testing processes either voluntarily or because of the frequent ailment have had to keep their status as a secret or suffer rejection, discrimination and stigma from the society.
Society including families, workplaces and even the church has failed to accept people living with HIV and AIDS.
Many people who rather needed care and support in their critical moments in life have been left to suffer alone eventually leading to death whiles their children and spouses particularly wives have suffered highest and varied forms of dejection, pain and stigma.
Many children have been orphaned through AIDS and as a result have had their lives crumbled at earliest ages because nobody wants to associate with children and persons whose immediate relations have been infected by the HIV or worst of all died from the AIDS.
In 2002 a Catholic Priest, who studied Clinical and Pastoral Education (CPE) in the US, retuned to Ghana and was touched by the suffering of people infected with the virus when working as the Chaplain of the St Dominic Hospital at Akwatia in the Eastern Region.
He decided to set up a Centre to provide care, counseling and support services to such persons and their families.
Monsignor Bobby Benson then opened the Matthew 25 House in Koforidua where people infected with HIV and AIDS and had been rejected by their families are provided with shelter, food, medical care and support for their children through education and skill training to ensure a livelihood for them to reduce their dependency on the House and charity.
Supported with three other staff, Monsignor Benson ensures that all those who come to the House are put on the Anti Retroviral drug (ART), given medical care, fed, clothed, sheltered and provided with educational needs and counseling.
People who came to the House very sick and emaciated because of lack of ART and medical care to manage the other opportunistic infections like tuberculosis, skin rashes, diarrhea and others, in no time recovered to normal and were able to go about their duties except that they could not divulge the secret to their families.
Ten years down the line the House is currently providing service to 54 patients, 50 females and four males, and catering for 74 Orphaned and Vulnerable Children (OVC) who are mostly children of present or past deceased clients of the House and only five of these children have been tested to have the HIV.
The House has been able to sponsor three of these children from the primary level to complete their first degrees from the universities, two with Higher National Diploma (HND) from the polytechnics, four with Vocational and Technical Certificates whiles one is at the university, two at the polytechnics, three at vocational institutes and 55 at the Senior and Junior High School levels.
The House in furtherance of its objective established the Clinical and Pastoral Education (CPE) as a subsidiary of the House in Koforidua to train seminarians and other lay persons in handling the sick, especially to know more about HIV and AIDS and how to care for them to reduce stigma in the society.
It also organizes a �soup kitchen� every Christmas for PLWA�s groups across the region and fetes other vulnerable in the society such as those in hospitals and prison cells.
The House has also instituted a pre-valentine program to educate house helps and trade apprentices to create awareness of the HIV and AIDS and the several modes of transmission and the need to stay clear of attracting the virus.
According to Monsignor Benson, as part of his training in the US, he visited sick persons including those with HIV at a hospital ward and as usual out of fear, he just waved at one person who was infected but out of pain the sick person shouted �come closer to me.�
He said he held his hand for over 30 minutes praying and listening to him and that experience changed his perception that �people with HIV and AIDS must be treated like any other sick person because the disease is not contagious�.
He said people who had been diagnosed with the disease go through a lot of trauma which even killed them earlier than the disease itself due to the stigma and fear of rejection from their families and the society in general and that HIV and AIDS was part and parcel of humans and so must be seen as any other disease.
Monsignor Benson is planning to build a 20- bed hospice, the first of its kind in West Africa, to care for other persons living with terminal diseases to enable them die in dignity because he is of the view that the end of life is equally important like the beginning of life and so people must die in dignity and in peace.
He is grateful to the Catholic Church, particularly the Koforidua Diocese, and all its Bishops who had allowed him to run the House and its program in the diocese and all those who over the years had supported the House to achieve its purpose guided by the Gospel of Mathew 25:35-40 where Jesus said �when I was hungry you gave me food, naked you clothed me, in prison you visited me and when sick you cared for me, what you did for one of my least ones you did it for me.�
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