The impact of the activities of Ghana AIDS Commission on new HIV infections in Ghana: An intervention time series analysis

The study examines the impact of Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC) activities on new HIV infections. Secondary data from 1 January 1996 to 31 December 2007 were obtained from the Ghana National AIDS Control Programme and Biostatistics Department of the Health Ministry. Intervention time series analysis was applied separately to the data from the northern and southern sectors due to data collection mechanism and location of two tertiary teaching hospitals. The impact of GAC activities is measured by the statistical significance of the coefficients of the intervention variable. The intervention variable is coded as zero (0) for the period before and one (1), the period after the GAC activities commenced. It was shown that the HIV incidence in the northern follows an integrated moving average model, whilst in the southern sectors an autoregressive integrated moving average model was the appropriate model. No significant impact of GAC activities was observed in the northern sector. In contrast the GAC activities in the southern sector were associated with a reduction in new HIV infections (male = −0.20 ± 0.13, p < 0.05; female = 0.14 ± 0.10, p < 0.05), corresponding to a 15% and 18% reduction in male and female new HIV infections respectively in the sector. It can therefore be concluded that the GAC activities were a success. However, greater focus of GAC efforts in the northern sector is required to ensure that its activities have an impact on the incidence there.