- FileBoys need to learn their responsibilities in life. Among them is that they have a part to play in preventing AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Rickey Singh, Contributor
CAUGHT BETWEEN the expanding illicit drug trade and the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the Caribbean region presents a most unflattering, deeply disturbing social profile.
When the connection between drug abuse and the transmission, in many cases, of the killer disease AIDS is considered, one can easily become overwhelmed by the harsh realisation of this region's unenviable ratings. Both, that is, as a major transit route for narco-trafficking to Europe and North America and in being the most heavily affected area with HIV/AIDS in the world, outside of sub-Saharan Africa.
Last week, the grim focus of an internationally-supported Caribbean Conference on HIV/AIDS in Barbados was of a region in a crisis zone heading for a disaster in the wastage of lives and with enormous social and economic consequences for the affected societies. Here was a common appeal that emerged variously in the presentations of politicians, technocrats, top officials of regional and international institutions, including the World Bank, PAHO/WHO, UNAIDS, Caribbean Comm-unity Secretariat and CAREC (Caribbean Epidemiology Centre).
It was the plea to end "the silence, the shame and the denial" about a killer disease that has already infected some 360,000 people in the region and more correctly estimated to be half a million.
Working groups during the two-day conference, Septem-ber 11-12, in coming to grips with the enormity of the HIV/AIDS pandemic that poses the greatest threat to the 15-44 adult age group, were making stirring and controversial pleas for some urgent action.
Controversial calls
Their calls included legalising and regulating the world's oldest profession - prostitution - and also providing condom machines in prisons and public places, including shopping malls.
These, of course, are not measures that will be easily accepted, if at all, by social groups that are among vehement opponents of the legalising of prostitution as they remain opposed to legalising marijuana. Or, in taking sex education to schools and condoms to prisoners, arguing, as they do, that such initiatives only encourage promiscuity and homosexuality.
But non-controversial pleas have also pointed to national/regional education programmes and activities that should be designed to involve popular entertainers, sports and cultural personalities in a concerted battle to win the war against HIV/AIDS.
Warning
Chairman of the conference, Senator Phillip Goddard, had a strong warning at the opening session. He is the Health Minister of Barbados, a country with an unflattering reputation for homosexuals, where the silence about people dying from AIDS is most defeaning, and where there is a current controversy about placing condom machines in the prison. He told the delegates: "It is time to put an end to the paranoid, persecutory and intolerant societies that we live in that are afflicted by homophobia and the perceptions of HIV/AIDS that defeat the fight against this disease. HIV/AIDS is very much a heterosexual disease and certainly affects the whole society..."
In May 1996, Barbados had the privilege of hosting the first-ever international conference to map out a common drug control strategy. That event resulted in what is known as the "Barbados Plan of Action on Drug Control". Now, amid the rising incidence of drug-related crimes and drug addiction, the World Bank, donor nations like the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands and France, and agencies of the United Nations were involved in the HIV/AIDS conference with pledges of financial and technical assistance to help the region's Governments to be better equipped to wage the war against the epidemic.
As part of a proposed US$1 billion anti-HIV/AIDS package to fight the disease globally, the World Bank announced US$100 million for the Caribbean region in concessionary loans.
Mitchell's reminder
The Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, James Mitchell, current chairman of CARICOM, welcomed the offer but was not excited about it. Preferring grants to loans for a poor sub-region fighting narco-trafficking and HIV/AIDS, while having to concentrate on poverty reduction, Mr. Mitchell had a poignant reminder for aid donors: "I haven't heard the interest rate on the (offered) loan, the terms or conditions of the loan. I want to let the World Bank know that the dying can't pay interest."
It was probably Mr. Mitchell's way also of reminding donor nations and the internatioal financial institutions about the difficulties poor and small states have in honouring international debt payments - a burden that already creates severe social and economic problems for a number of CARICOM states.
To what extent this proposed World Bank aid will boost the already circulated "Regional Strategic Plan of Action for HIV/AIDS" prepared by the Caribbean Task Force, under the chairmaship of Dr. Barrington Wint of the CARICOM Secretariat, may be better known following next year's CARICOM Summit and the details of the assistance package.
But host Prime Minister of the conference, Owen Arthur, whose Government came in for much praise for its role in helping to oganise it, left no doubt about the strength and urgency of his message when he focused n the human dimensions of the epidemic.
"Let me make starkly clear: HIV/AIDS is not just a serious health problem; it is at the same time a social problem, an economic problem, an educational problem, a cultural problem, a moral and attitudinal problem which, together and unchecked, will usher in a developmental catastrophe...," said Mr. Arthur.
"This (catastrophe) could dismantle the social and economic gains of the past half century, and put the promise of the 21st century Caribbean sustainable development entirely beyond our reach."
Ending, therefore, the "silence, the shame and the denial" about HIV/AIDS in the coming intensified, coordinated and sustained battle of the disease, may help to avoid the alarming projection that by the end of the first decade of the 21st century, HIV/AIDS can account for a decline of between four per cent and six per cent of the Caribbean region's gross domestic product. A sobering prospect indeed.
Rickey Singh is a journalist based in Barbados.
