Participants in a day’s HIV and AIDs sentitisation meeting in Ho wept intermittently as a number of women living with HIV recounted how their relations stigmatized and discriminated against them. According to a Ghana News Agency (GNA) report, the hall became qiet as some participants removed their clothes to wipe their tears, while others buried their heads in their palms and sobbed as the stories were told by the women who pleaded anonymity. A middle-aged single-parent and mother of two, living with HIV, who limped into the seminar room, told the gathering that due to her condition, her younger brother attempted killing her to enable him to claim her four-room residential apartment at Kpetoe. She claimed her brother who had moved in to live with her described her as “sick and melly” and could not be a member of the family. The woman said on March 6, her brother forcibly entered her room, pulled her by the neck into a nearby bush saying he was going to kill her but she was rescued by neighbors. She said just as her rescuers left, her brother emerged from the bush to hit her from behind. The woman said she fell into a gutter, and her brother, thinking she was dead, left her to her fate but she was saved by a pastor, who took her to hospital. The woman said she later reported the issue to the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) and Legal Aid Board who are working on the case. She said even as the case progressed in court, her brother continued to assault her verbally and physically. Another woman living with HIV said her husband who infected her with the disease died just after she gave birth to a set of twins. She said after the burial of her husband, she is taking care of the children by herself. The woman said on few occasions when she visited her husband’s sister to seek financial support, she was chased out of the house. Some other women living with HIV recounted how their husbands and families had neglected them and are wishing them dead. Pastor Innocent Atsamegah Ahiador of the End-Time Message Church, Ho, described the stories as “very pathetic and touching” and promised to accommodate and feed the woman facing death threat from her brother until the determination of the case in court. The seminar, under the auspices of FIDA and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women, was aimed at increasing access to the property and inheritance rights of women living with HIV and AIDS. Ms Benedicta Oboshie-Laryea, Programme Co-ordinator, visibly holding back her tears, said there were many cases of men shirking their responsibilities to their wives and children living with HIV and AIDS. She said the delay in court processes was discouraging women from seeking justice in court. The participants were taken through the Intestate Succession Law and the property rights of women in relation to the law. In another development, the Policy Manager of the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC), Madam Mary Asante, has observed that sexual subordination in marriages or in relationships increases a woman’s risk of contracting HIV, writes Joseph Kyei-Boateng, Ejisu. She said situations where women were often ignorant about sexual practices and passive in sexual interactions made it difficult if not impossible for them to negotiate condom use for safer sex. She also said violence against women and girls, whether by family members or close acquaintances, partners or strangers, have been shown to increase women’s risk of becoming infected with HIV. Madam Asante was speaking at the opening of a three-day gender mainstreaming training workshop for some 90 members from civil society organisations (CSOs) at Ejisu in the Ejisu-Juaben Municipality of the Ashanti Region. The policy manager stressed that women were biologically more at risk of HIV infection than men and are twice as likely to contract the virus through unprotected sex, and pointed out that violence or fear of violence prevented many women from negotiating safer sex, getting tested for HIV, disclosing their HIV status and seeking treatment and support. The GAC manager lauded the United Nations (UN) for the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Violence Against Women, of which Ghana is a signatory. She said economic and social dependency on men by women diminished their bargaining power for safe sex and might also prevent women from seeking HIV testing and counseling and adhering to anti-retroviral treatment. She also said the burden of HIV and AIDS on women and girls was compounded by poverty and urged the participants to ensure that HIV programmes were implemented in order to achieve zero HIV infection or zero HIV-related death. Available data showed that the national prevalence rate of HIV and AIDS had reduced after peaking at 3.6 per cent in 2003 to 2.2 per cent in 2008 and 2.9 per cent in 2009; this is according to 2008 HIV Sentinel Survey Report by the Ministry of Health. However, HIV prevalence among pregnant women increased from 1.9 per cent in 2008 to 2.6 per cent in 2009, 2.0 per cent in 2010 and 2.1 per cent in 2011.