Ghana AIDS Commission Director-General Kharmacelle Prosper Akanbong said on 9 September that about 1,300 applicants could not join Ghana’s security services because of their HIV status, two months after the Commission cautioned that HIV status alone should not be used to deny employment.
The new statement sharpens an unresolved issue from the recent recruitment exercise.
In July, Interior Minister Muntaka Mohammed-Mubarak told Parliament’s Committee on Assurances that about 1,300 applicants had returned reactive HIV results during medical screening for agencies including the Police, Immigration, Fire and Prisons services. He said unsuccessful applicants were given a contact through which they could learn why they had been disqualified.
The Ghana AIDS Commission responded at the time that a single reactive result is preliminary and does not amount to a confirmed HIV diagnosis. It said confirmatory testing under the national three-test algorithm was required before a person’s HIV status could be established.
The Commission also said HIV status alone should not be grounds for denying employment and that fitness for specific occupations should be assessed against established medical and occupational standards.
Act 938, which governs the Commission and protects the rights of people living with HIV, states that HIV status cannot on its own be a reason to refuse employment, unless an employer can prove that the job requires a particular state of health or medical or clinical condition. The Act also says an employment applicant shall not be tested to ascertain HIV status for the purpose of recruitment.
The available public record does not establish whether the approximately 1,300 applicants completed confirmatory testing, whether every applicant was excluded solely because of HIV, or what occupational-health standard the security services applied.
Those facts are necessary before the recruitment decisions can be assessed against the protections in Act 938. The Commission’s September statement describes HIV status as the reason the applicants could not join, while its July guidance said the initial results were not confirmed diagnoses and that HIV status alone should not deny employment.