The Ghana AIDS Commission has cautioned that rejecting job applicants solely because they are living with HIV could violate the Ghana AIDS Commission Act, 2016 (Act 938).
Speaking on Joy FM’s Midday News on Wednesday, the Commission’s Director of Policy Planning, John Eliasu Mahama, said Section 32 of the law protects people living with HIV from discrimination in employment unless an employer can prove that a specific health condition is essential for the role.
“The HIV status of a person shall not constitute a reason to refuse employment to that person, except where an employer can show that the employment in question requires that the employee must be in a particular state of health or medical or clinical condition,” he said.
His comments follow Interior Minister Mohammed-Mubarak Muntaka’s disclosure that about 1,300 applicants in the recent security services recruitment exercise tested positive for HIV during mandatory medical screening.
The minister explained that the government chose not to send individual medical results directly to unsuccessful applicants. Instead, affected individuals were provided with contact details to voluntarily seek counselling, confirmatory testing and further guidance in line with international health standards.
Mahama said advances in antiretroviral therapy have significantly changed HIV treatment and should be reflected in recruitment policies, including those of the security services.
He noted that many employment restrictions were introduced before effective treatment became widely available and pointed to the “Undetectable Equals Untransmittable (U=U)” principle, which shows that people living with HIV who maintain an undetectable viral load through treatment cannot sexually transmit the virus.
According to him, several countries have already updated their recruitment policies to align with current medical evidence instead of outdated assumptions about HIV.
He also emphasised that a reactive HIV test is not a confirmed diagnosis, explaining that applicants must undergo confirmatory testing, receive counselling and be linked to appropriate care before any conclusions are reached.
