Hours after self-acclaimed HIV/AIDS patient Joyce Dzidzor Mensah, who had been at the forefront as an ambassador of a national campaign on HIV/AIDS in Ghana, confessed that she lied about her status for her own selfish gains, there has been raging debates in homes and offices on her action, which have raised questions begging answers of authorities at the Ghana AIDS Commission who engaged her services.
Ms Dzidzor is a known face of people living with HIV/AIDS in Ghana and is also a leading member of the �Heart to Heart� campaign with four others. The campaign is aimed at ending stigmatisation of persons living with the disease, with the ambassadors acting as living examples of persons with the disease living healthy lifestyles.
She has touching tales of how she contracted the disease and the attendant stigmatisation she suffered. But all of that turned out to be false claims.
For unexplained reasons, Ms Dzidzor has made a turnaround about her HIV status. According to her, she had never been an HIV patient as she made the world to believe.
Her confession has raised questions about whether the Ghana AIDS Commission did due diligence of its ambassadors before landing them their contracts.
In response to Ms Dzidzor�s confession, the Ghana AIDS Commission in a statement claims Ms Dzidzor tested positive in 2007, a key requirement for a �Heart to Heart� ambassador duty.
�The evidence of their HIV status was documented at the various health centres they accessed treatment. Additionally, they were all registered members of NAP+ Ghana, the Network of Persons Living with HIV.
These individuals were extensively engaged by legal, psycho-social and communication consultants prior to their going public.
According to the Commission, Miss Joyce Dzidzor Mensah was recruited as one of the ambassadors at the start of the campaign.
She was recruited, specifically, to promote HIV messages in the area of Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV.
She subsequently signed a contract with the Commission in August 2011 as an ambassador.
The Commission further noted that on November 12, 2012, the Ghana AIDS Commission formally terminated the contract with Joyce Dzidzor Mensah on account of breach of her terms of contract.
The Commission explained that on a number of occasions, Joyce had failed to honour her duties related to the �Heart to Heart� campaign after agreeing to honour those programmes. She failed to appear without prior notice to her colleagues or the co-ordinators of the campaign; she rather chose to use the time to pursue her personal interests, such as a musical project, within the first two years of the campaign, which was in breach of her contract.
The Commission has, however, said it will invite Ms Joyce Dzidzor Mensah to further investigate and clarify her claims in order to inform any subsequent interventions. All efforts to reach the Commission to clarify some begging questions on the matter proved futile as all the numbers provided by the Commission as contact lines in their statement were not working.
The story she peddled for years
I contracted the disease in 2007, through a member of my church. I was to spend a night with him in his house.
When he removed his clothes, I saw some kind of rashes all over his body.
I was terrified, as I innocently asked him why he was like that. He covered up, saying it was a minor skin infection and that it was nothing serious.
But when he wanted to make love to me, I insisted that he must use condom. He told me that he didn�t like using condom.
However, when I insisted, he agreed but he never used it. He removed it while entering into me.
We did it several times that night. After few weeks, I became pregnant for him.
When I told him I was pregnant, he advised me to abort the baby. But I refused, insisting on keeping the baby.
He later warned me that if insisted, I would have myself to blame in future. I never knew what he meant until I was diagnosed HIV positive.
He also infected other ladies in the church before he died.
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