Former HIV/AIDS Ambassador Joyce Dzidzor Mensah has accused the Ghana AIDS Commission of failing to check her HIV status before signing her on as an Ambassador.
Speaking in an exclusive interview on Adom FM’s Dwaso Nsem morning show on Tuesday December 16, 2014; she said despite being used as one of the three faces for the Heart to Heart campaign embarked on by the Commission for over a year, “nobody tested me; I was never tested.”
“Dr. Angela El-Adas (Director General of the Ghana AIDS Commission) is a doctor. I met her at the Ghana AIDS Commission. Dr. Amenya is a doctor. I met him at the Ghana AIDS Commission. None of them has ever tested me for HIV or AIDS” she insisted on the show, hosted by Captain Smart.
Ms. Mensah shockingly revealed on Monday that she had never tested positive for AIDS but took on the tag of being a carrier in order to survive.
The admission of her long-running deceit has sparked a huge debate, with some of her supporters claiming she had done no wrong while others like lawyer Maurice Ampaw, have called for her to be prosecuted.
Addressing a wide range of questions on the events that led to her being characterized as an AIDS carrier, and eventually selected as an Ambassador for AIDS, she explained that she slept with a man over seven years ago who eventually died of complications suspected to be HIV/AIDS.
She insists after the death of her boyfriend, she was forced out of her rented apartment, beaten up and eventually driven out of the community by persons who suspected she was a carrier.
Eventually, she added, she took on the tag of being an AIDS carrier in order to survive.
With the help of a contact, she was linked up with the AIDS Commission, who signed her up “without checking my status,” she insisted.
The Ghana AIDS Commission however insists they have “evidence to support her initial claim of being HIV positive since 2007 and she has been benefitting from antiretroviral therapy from health facilities in Accra,” but “by the National HIV and AIDS Policy and the ethics that govern the health profession, details of Joyce’s health status cannot be shared with the public.”
