Aron Theising, USC

Greetings from Ghana! This past weekend, we traveled to the Volta region in the East. After nearly a full day of shared-van rides, we arrived to our hotel around midnight and were greeted by an older German woman who was a bit furious with us for not calling to inform her of our late arrival – a humorous beginning to our amazing weekend. After getting some rest, we woke up early on Saturday and decided to explore the waterfalls in the area. We made the grueling but beautiful two-hour hike to the upper falls – it was a difficult walk, but when we saw the waterfall, we agreed that the trip was worth our effort. We hung out there for a few hours, swimming in the water and climbing on the rocks surrounding the waterfall. Now we’re in a trotro headed back to Cape Coast so we can resume researching tomorrow.

My research project began as an attempt to analyze the economic effects of HIV in Ghana. My first realization upon arriving in Ghana was that contacting the HIV positive population would be nearly impossible without access to the proper channels, as most Ghanaians keep their status private. This is due to a social stigma geared toward individuals who have been diagnosed with HIV – an individual with HIV will 1) lose his job 2) be socially outcasted and 3) be rejected by his family if he chooses to publicly acknowledge his status. A fun statistic – only around 15% of Ghanaians have accepting attitudes toward those who are HIV positive. Since its initial inception, my project has expanded due to this reality. My study is now including an analysis of what the stigma is rooted in.

On Monday, I will be surveying HIV positive patients to assess income, unemployment, education level, and several other factors to help formulate an understanding of how HIV-related costs affect the consumption and savings levels of sick individuals who are already living on subsistence wages. On Tuesday, I will be surveying a random population of individuals to assess whether stigma in Ghana is rooted in personal fear, or a social construct.

I made an unexpected discovery when I was reading through the 2010 regional HIV statistics. The published percentage of HIV prevalence in the Central region is around 7%. However, upon looking at the raw numbers, I realized that 7% is too low. In 9 of the 17 districts (including Cape Coast, the largest), prevalence rates are higher than 10%. Rather than taking a population-weighted average of the prevalence rates in each district to calculate the regional prevalence rate, the government simply takes the average of the district prevalence rates. I won’t get into the mechanics of it, but the reported regional rate is probably around 3% lower than it should be, and when dealing with HIV, 3% of a population is definitely significant.

That’s about all I have for now – until next blog post.