Dr. Tamu Davidson-Sadler makes her presentation at a Poverty/HIV/AIDS workshop held at the SOS Children's Village in Barrett Town, St. James, yesterday.
-Patrick Campbell photo
Roy Sanford, Staff Reporter
WESTERN BUREAU:
THERE HAS been a reduction in the rate of HIV/AIDS cases in Jamaica within the last year, but the deadly disease continues to threaten the nation in 'epidemic' proportions, an STI/HIV co-ordinator for the Western Regional Health Authority, has said.
Speaking at a workshop on Poverty, HIV/AIDS and the Effect on the Family yesterday, Dr. Tamu Davidson-Sadler said potential new cases of the disease had been averted because of programmes initiated by the Ministry of Health but she warned that the nation cannot be complacent.
"I think we have slowed the spread of the disease and we are moving towards trying to control it but there is a lot of work that needs to be done because we are at epidemic proportions," she said.
She credits the National HIV/STI Programme in the Ministry of Health for the decrease in the disease's rate on the island. She said because of the programme there is an increased awareness of the disease among the populace, an increase use of condoms and a safe supply of blood islandwide.
However, she noted that there has been an increase in cases of the disease in the parishes of St. Elizabeth and Manchester, which traditionally have had a low rate of infection. "Based on our data we expect to see an increased rate in these parishes but we cannot compare them to the rest of the island," she said.
The history of the disease, where many persons are infected but show no symptoms, was a cause for the increase in these parishes, she said.
Dr. Davidson-Sadler also said that a programme that will offer public access to antiretroviral therapy is expected to slow down the rate of the disease transmission but noted that it is not a cure for the disease.
"This year we are going to be offering antiretroviral treatment and developing specialist sites for victims of the disease," she said. "We are looking forward to that because it will address a lot of the issues in terms of the high case fatalities rates."
She said global funding for the antiretroviral programme has already been approved and it is expected to come on line before the end of this year.
She also noted that despite the successes of the HIV prevention programme, many challenges remain in fighting the disease. Some of them include poverty and ignorance, discrimination, stigmatisation, prostitution, sex tourism, gender imbalance, among others.
PREVENTION
She said one of the areas the nation needs to focus on is prevention. "We probably need to start at the primary school level to socialise our children to the effects of the disease. We have the knowledge of the disease but what we need to do is translate that knowledge into behaviour."
According to statistics from the Ministry of Health there are approximately 22,000 persons living with HIV/AIDS in Jamaica as of June 2003. From January to June 2003, 516 cases of the disease were reported. Although there has been a 45 per cent reduction in the number of cases in children over the same period, the disease remains the second leading cause of death in children aged one to four years.
Adolescent females in the age group 10-14 years and 15-19 years had twice and three times higher risk of HIV infection respectively than boys of the same age group. This is as a result of young girls having sexual relations with HIV- infected older men.
