Former director of the disbanded National Aids Coordinating Committee (NACC) Dr Amery Browne said HIV/Aids trends are more complicated than what were being portrayed.
He was responding to statements made by Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh who had said that until 2012 there was a downward trend in the number of HIV/Aids cases in this country but when the programme was removed from the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) and placed under the Health Ministry there seemed to be an increase in the number of cases.
Deyalsingh, who spoke at the opening ceremony of the third meeting of the National Aids Programme Managers and Key Partners, hosted by Caricom through the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and Aids (PANCAP) at Hyatt Regency on Wednesday had said: "If you look at the figures there was a downward trend up until 2012 and coincidentally...I am not saying that was cause but when the programme was taken away from the Office of the Prime Minister and then brought under the Ministry of Health where there was no strategic direction...I am not saying this is cause and effect, I am saying one started to notice an increase in the numbers."
But Browne in an interview yesterday, said while he understood the temptation to attribute the trends in incidents and other observations to some of the political decisions that were made, in reality HIV trends were a lot more complex than that.
"For example the persons who are testing positive in any given year...many of them would have not acquired the virus during that same year. Many may have acquired it years in advance so it is a bit difficult to attribute a rise in incidents from one year to the next to any programmatic decision that may have been made. So it's a bit of a stretch to make that kind of causality or connection. More data would be needed. But I agree with the general concerns that the right decisions must be made for the term mitigation of this virus," Browne, a former Diego Martin Central MP added.
On whether he has been approached to head the programme he said he had attended a few meetings and gave his recommendations but there has been nothing formal.