HIV stigma is still our greatest virus

The Ghana AIDS Commission has cautioned that no Ghanaian should be denied a job, place in school, or care at a health facility because of their HIV status.

The Governing Board Chairperson of the commission, Kakra Essamuah, who gave the caution, has therefore warned companies and organisations that insist on prospective employees undergoing HIV tests that they risk facing the full rigours of the law, as the country’s laws do not permit such a practice.

Forty years after Ghana recorded its first cases of HIV, the message from Mr Essamuah should make every Ghanaian pause and examine their conscience.

No Ghanaian should be denied a job, a place in school, or care at a health facility because of their HIV status.

For that to be said in 2026, after 40 years of public education, millions of cedis spent on billboards, radio jingles, condom distribution and countless workshops for chiefs, pastors, imams and teachers, is both shameful and revealing.

We have made progress in fighting the virus, but we have failed to kill the stigma that sustains it.

Mr Essamuah’s warning to companies and organisations that insist on prospective employees undergoing mandatory HIV testing is timely and must be enforced.

Such organisations risk facing the full rigours of the law.

We must go further to say: they must face the full rigours of the law.

Let us be clear about what Ghana’s laws say.

The Ghana AIDS Commission Act, 2002 (Act 613) as amended, and the broader protections under Article 12, 17 and 21 of the 1992 Constitution, guarantee non-discrimination.

The Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651) prohibits discrimination in employment.

Most explicitly, Ghana’s Guidelines for the Implementation of the National Workplace HIV and AIDS Policy state that HIV screening shall not be required for job applicants or persons in employment, and that no employer shall terminate one’s employment on the basis of his or her HIV status.

Mandatory testing for employment is illegal.

Denying a pupil admission because he or she is HIV positive is illegal.

Turning away a woman in labour because she is HIV positive is not only illegal; it is inhumane and a violation of the Hippocratic Oath.

Yet it happens. It happens in the quiet of human resource offices in Accra and Tema, where a young graduate is told to go for a “full medical” that includes an HIV test without pre-test counselling or informed consent, and is then told the vacancy has been filled.

It happens in private schools where parents demand that teachers be tested.

It happens in health facilities where nurses put on three gloves and whisper, and where people living with HIV are made to wait last, a public shaming that deters others from seeking treatment.

HIV is not a disability that prevents people from working in any environment.

This is not the 1980s when fear was fuelled by ignorance.

The science is settled. With effective antiretroviral therapy, a person living with HIV can have an undetectable viral load, which means untransmittable.

Stigma does not protect workplaces and schools; it endangers them.

It drives the epidemic underground, exactly what we do not want after 40 years of response.

But we are still far from the 95-95-95 targets: 95 per cent of people living with HIV knowing their status, 95 per cent of those diagnosed on sustained treatment, and 95 per cent of those on treatment achieving viral suppression.

The Ghana Employers Association, Association of Ghana Industries, and the Trades Union Congress must be brought into a national compact.

Many employers who demand HIV tests do so out of ignorance, not malice.

They think they are protecting their workforce.

They need to be told that the best way to protect a workforce is through voluntary testing, education, and a non-discriminatory workplace policy that encourages treatment adherence.

No one should lose a job, education, or health care because of a virus they did not choose and which modern medicine has rendered manageable.