Tema-Ghana, May 11, CDA Consult – Dr Stephen Ayisi Addo, Programme Manager for the National AIDS/STI Control Programme, has warned companies “We should not impose HIV screening as a condition for employment, even though as a programme we are interested in many people knowing their status, but not as a condition for certain important things in life like employment and marriage”.
Dr. Ayisi Addo, addressing at the Ghana News Agency-Tema Regional Office’s stakeholder engagement event, stated that management of organizations should not even consider mandating such screening and then using it as a requirement.
Speaking on the topic “Who enforces HIV/AIDS workplace policies? Dr. Ayisi Addo emphasized that the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention and the Ghana Aids Commission Act explicitly specify that no one should be refused employment because of their HIV status.
The GNA-Tema stakeholder engagement platform was a progressive media caucus platform that was created to allow both state and non-state stakeholders to interact with journalists and address national issues while deepening working relationships with stakeholders to ensure that both the media and the corporate world work together towards national development.
“A workplace is a place for interaction, social intercourse, and in the process, there is physical contact, so communicable diseases, like COVID-19 and HIV, can occur, HIV is created in the workplace, and it must therefore be managed in the workplace,”.
He emphasized that they should “help the person with medical care, change his work schedule, but not fire them because they tested positive.”
He stated that HIV was a workplace concern because it affected people who came to work and one could contract it there; thus, every organization must develop an HIV Workplace Policy on how to effectively manage positive personnel without compromising their outputs.
He stated that HIV and tuberculosis issues must be treated in a non-discriminatory manner, citing stigma and discrimination as major hurdles to HIV prevention.
Dr. Ayisi Addo defined stigmatization as the labelling of something or someone that causes people to react negatively to it. “So, the moment I tag something and people start shying away, I’ve stigmatized the person, which we do sometimes carelessly.”
He warns against using potential employees’ HIV and AIDS status as a prerequisite for employment, as this violates Ghana’s Health Laws and the Workplace HIV/TB Policy.
He revealed that the programme was working with the military to review its mandatory testing policy for recruitment, explaining that “they do it mandatory because they need people of a certain performance rate to be able to thrive effectively in a stressful environment, so it is for that purpose.”
Dr. Ayisi Addo stated that one of the reasons managements may be aware of a person’s status was to place that individual in a position that would not jeopardize his or her immunity, rather than to discriminate against that person.
