A counsellor of Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG), Mrs Joyce Kusi has called on parents to train their children to be more assertive.

Mrs Kusi deplored the fear parents put in their children and said that it had made them more vulnerable to serious dangers.

Speaking at a workshop for journalists in Accra last week, she said as a result of the way parents socialised with their children, most of their children preferred to remain quiet over serious crimes such as rape.

The workshop organised by the Society for Women against AIDS in Africa (SWAA) and Hope for the African Children Initiative (HACI) was to sensitise the 30 journalists present to form a partnership to advocate the plight of orphans and vulnerable children.

Mrs Kusi urged parents not to shout at their daughters when they reported bad deeds of adults but rather to urge them on. "Because a child who becomes a victim of rape feels she will be chided by his or her parents he or she tends to be silent about it. "This attitude has contributed to the increase in HIV/AIDS."

She said instead of "questioning the child" parents "should train them to scream and fight when they are being raped."

The PPAG counsellor advised women to be wary of false prophets who paraded around as AIDS curers because they didn't have anything good to offer. "Let us read our Bibles and educate ourselves, for, there is nowhere in the Bible where a woman went to a Man of God and her sex organ was anointed," she said.

Mrs Kusi condemned the aspect of our culture which made room for men to marry the wives of their late brothers. She said such a practice as well as the Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has a tendency of increasing the rate of HIV/AIDS. She said parents should ensure that they provided the needs of their children in order not to force them into child labour which "exposes the child to casual sex and prostitution."

Mrs Kusi said in order to get people to champion the course of women on the national level "we need a lot of women in the political class to fight on behalf of us."

The Acting Director of the African Institute of Journalism and Communication (AIJC), Mr Ato Amoani and the President of the Health Communicators Institute (HCI), Eunice Menka, urged journalists to be mindful of their language when reporting on people living with HIV/AIDS.

They said the media should show compassion in their reports in order not to compound the stigma attached to the ailment.

Mrs Kate Sagoe said an UNAIDS report has projected that by the year 2010 HIV/AIDS would cause about 25 million orphans. She said the report indicated that 80% of it would be coming from Sub-Saharan Africa.

The disease, she explained had a tendency of deepening poverty, mental stress and causing children to be dropouts.