The National Organizing Committee of the 7th Africa Conference on Sexual Health & Rights is pleased to announce that the First Lady of the Republic of Ghana and the current President of the Organization of African First Ladies Against HIV and AIDS (OAFLA) Her Excellency Lordina Mahama will be the Official Conference Patron.
Biography
Her Excellency, Nana Lordina Dramani Mahama, First Lady of the Republic of Ghana is an internationally respected advocate for empowering women and helping the poor and marginalized. She is the current President of the Organization of African First Ladies Against HIV and AIDS (OAFLA). She is also the national president of the Lordina Foundation, a nongovernmental organization that works with partner companies and agencies to make health care more accessible in Ghana and to expand educational opportunities. In addition to working on behalf of the disadvantaged, she strives to advance the cause of educating women and girls as a way to improve communities worldwide.
Her Excellency’s work embraces many pressing public health and educational issues. The Lordina Foundation has provided medical supplies to hospitals and health facilities in Ghana, worked to prevent breast and cervical cancer and HIV infection in Africa, and helped provide shelter and vocational training for women accused of witchcraft who were shunned by their communities.
Among her many advocacy efforts, Her Excellency helped secure the Ghanaian government’s approval of a World Bank program to provide secondary school scholarships to 10,400 Ghanaian children – half of them girls – who come from deprived communities.
As Premier Ambassador of the UNAIDS Global Plan on the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission, Her Excellency has fervently embarked on high level advocacy on the UNAIDS Global Plan towards elimination of new HIV infections among children and keeping their mothers alive; and is actively engaged in reducing stigma and discrimination against persons living with HIV. Through her campaign, she advocates male involvement and community ownership for successful prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV. She is devoted to ensuring that no child is born HIV positive or is orphaned as a result of HIV. Her Excellency is also ardent promoter of women’s reproductive health especially the prevention and early detection of cervical and breast cancers.
Her Excellency is the recipient of numerous awards. She was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Fordham University, New York, USA in May. She has also been honored with a Global Inspiration Leadership Award and inducted into the Global Women Leaders Hall of Fame at the second Africa-Middle East-Asia Women Summit. Among her other honors, she was awarded the key to the city by the City of Newark, New Jersey, and given awards for her anti-cervical cancer advocacy in Namibia and Mozambique.
Her Excellency was born and educated in Ghana, earning a bachelor’s degree in hospitality management and a master’s in governance and leadership from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration. She became First Lady of Ghana in July 2012.