An inquiry into the Availability, Use and Impact of HIV Policy at Workplaces in Contemporary Ghana

Abstract

The workplace is significant for the implementation of HIV prevention programs. For this reason, the Ghana AIDS Commission and the National Tripartite Committee have so far formulated two workplace HIV policies, one in 2005 and another in 2012 with the aim of ensuring that institutions adopt the policy and implement same for their staff. This study sought to investigate the availability, utilization and impact of workplace HIV policy in Ghana. The study employed a mixed method cross sectional design, drawing samples from the security services, MMDAs and senior high schools. In this study only 6.06% of the 330 participants (representing their institutions) had a policy and these were practically all senior high schools. The main reason cited for the absence of a policy was the lack of awareness which accounted for 65.76% of the reasons. Other reasons included that some participants felt it was unnecessary (19.09%) to have a stand-alone policy on HIV at the workplace; others did not know how to get the policy in place (11.52%) and the perception that policies are expensive to formulate and implement was the least reason given (3.64%). Availability of workplace HIV policy marginally affected the presence of HIV related stigma and discrimination, staff retrenchment and AIDS related deaths at the workplaces studied. While no report of these problems were found among the 6.06% of institutions that had a policy, almost 5% of the remaining 93.04% of the institutions without a policy experienced these challenges at the workplace, and this obviously affected staff wellbeing and productivity. GAC as the coordinator of the national HIV response should advocate strongly for public sector institutions to adopt and implement the policy to help reduce new infections, to protect the rights of workers and promote national development. Legislation of the policy is recommended,