Melis­sa Doughty

Even though the re­gion has made strides in its fight against HIV/Aids, St Kitts-Nevis Prime Min­is­ter Dr Den­zil Dou­glas, says the new­ly-in­stalled Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency's (Carpha) first course of ac­tion will be to ex­am­ine "ar­cha­ic laws" which crim­i­nalise cer­tain ac­tiv­i­ties.Dou­glas is the Cari­com leader with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for hu­man re­sources, health and HIV/Aids.He made the com­ment af­ter the of­fi­cial launch of the agency, which is com­posed of five for­mer Caribbean agen­cies, among them Carec, at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Port-of-Spain, on Tues­day.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Dou­glas said: "I think there are some miles we still have to cov­er. "One of the ar­eas is the con­tin­u­ing stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion that we have against per­sons who are liv­ing with or as­so­ci­at­ed with HIV/Aids. We be­lieve this has been el­e­vat­ed as a hu­man rights is­sue and to a large ex­tent it comes from peo­ple's own sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and the ac­cep­tance and non-ac­cep­tance of Caribbean peo­ple to the rights that peo­ple have."Dou­glas said one of the first steps tak­en would be to ex­am­ine the laws with­in var­i­ous ter­ri­to­ries."One of the im­por­tant ini­tia­tives we shall be pur­su­ing is to look at those ar­cha­ic laws which, still to a large ex­tent, crim­i­nalise cer­tain ac­tiv­i­ties, which we be­lieve are caus­ing those who have HIV/Aids to be dri­ven un­der­ground and not com­ing for­ward for test­ing and the ap­pro­pri­ate man­age­ment and care that they de­serve," he added.

The is­sue, he said, need­ed to be ad­dressed from a po­lit­i­cal front but should al­so be dis­cussed with stake­hold­ers and pop­u­la­tions.He said: "As a re­sult of that, there is the po­ten­tial for the spread of the virus. This has to be tack­led up front and from the po­lit­i­cal front and that is why the lead­er­ship of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty, in par­tic­u­lar, is now look­ing at this se­ri­ous­ly as to how we can make ap­pro­pri­ate changes."But be­fore you can make changes you must bring the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers and your pop­u­la­tions to dis­cuss the is­sue and so the time has come for the con­ver­sa­tion to start in our var­i­ous ter­ri­to­ries."Carpha's ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Dr James Hospedales, said dur­ing his ad­dress that the re­gion had made "tremen­dous progress" with HIV/Aids.He said from a tech­ni­cal point of view the agency could aim to re­duce pre­ma­ture deaths from non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs), HIV/Aids and in­juries and vi­o­lence by 25 per cent by 2025. This, he said, would be a part of the Caribbean's post-2015 de­vel­op­ment in­di­ca­tors.