Denyse Renne

Un­der­stand­ing HIV pt3

As up­set­ting and con­fus­ing as it is to bring up the sub­ject of HIV with young chil­dren, it is al­so es­sen­tial to do so. In a high­ly glob­alised in­dus­try, one can­not ig­nore the var­i­ous medi­ums of in­for­ma­tion which sur­round us on a dai­ly ba­sis. Tele­vi­sion shows, the In­ter­net and even so­cial me­dia plat­forms are be­ing used as ve­hi­cles of in­for­ma­tion. Some­times, in­for­ma­tion dis­sem­i­nat­ed from these fo­rums tend to be skewed, ex­ag­ger­at­ed or even in­ac­cu­rate.

Bury­ing our heads in the sand like the prover­bial os­trich, or pre­tend­ing HIV does not ex­ist, or keep­ing it as a taboo sub­ject, will in no way as­sist in prop­er­ly ed­u­cat­ing both adults and chil­dren alike on the im­por­tant is­sue.No longer can par­ents pass the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of lec­tur­ing to their chil­dren about HIV and sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­eases to teach­ers, the In­ter­net, their peers or tele­vi­sion.In var­i­ous coun­tries world­wide, sex ed­u­ca­tion, or sex ed as its nor­mal­ly called, is em­bed­ded in the school syl­labus and a va­ri­ety of top­ics are taught from kinder­garten to high school lev­els.

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan, in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, agrees that more needs to be done to en­sure that so­ci­ety is prop­er­ly ed­u­cat­ed when it comes to HIV. He said al­though T&T had come a long way since first hear­ing about HIV, stig­ma, dis­crim­i­na­tion and vic­tim­i­sa­tion still ex­ist­ed.Khan said be­cause the prop­er leg­isla­tive frame­work had not yet be­ing im­ple­ment­ed (the Na­tion­al Gen­der Pol­i­cy), noth­ing could be done about tack­ling dis­crim­i­na­tion and vic­tim­i­sa­tion in the work­place.

But the min­is­ter agrees that teach­ing chil­dren from an ear­ly age about the dan­gers of en­gag­ing in sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty needs to take place."Chil­dren need to know from ear­ly what is a bad touch. We need to ed­u­cate from ear­ly. Par­ents need to start tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and speak­ing with their chil­dren about the ef­fects of en­gag­ing in sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty," Khan said.

Not want­i­ng to rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of such a plan be­ing im­ple­ment­ed in schools, Khan said to some the la­belling of sex ed­u­ca­tion gave the im­pres­sion "that we want to teach chil­dren how to have sex.

"This is not the case and I be­lieve we need to coin a dif­fer­ent name for such top­ics when deal­ing with schools," he added.He said he would soon be seek­ing an au­di­ence with Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Tim Goopeesingh to dis­cuss the in­tro­duc­tion of prop­er and age-ap­pro­pri­ate ed­u­ca­tion deal­ing with sex, sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­eases and poor choic­es af­fil­i­at­ed with sex-re­lat­ed de­ci­sions.The re­al­i­ty, Khan said, re­mained that stu­dents from pri­ma­ry schools were sex­u­al­ly ac­tive and some­thing need­ed to be done.

Part­ner­ing in fight against HIV

Khan said his min­istry part­nered with sev­er­al non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties, the Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in an ef­fort to sen­si­tise the pop­u­la­tion and rid the pub­lic of any mis­con­cep­tions re­gard­ing HIV."Al­low­ing the pub­lic to know life isn't over once a loved one tests pos­i­tive for HIV and let­ting the in­di­vid­ual know that there are fa­cil­i­ties which are free of charge to re­ceive treat­ment, are just some of the things we high­light dur­ing our ed­u­ca­tion­al dri­ve," he said.

Ad­mit­ting that the great­est chal­lenge comes from per­suad­ing peo­ple to get test­ed, Khan said based on sta­tis­tics there had been a sharp de­cline in men get­ting test­ed for HIV and a lot of the scep­ti­cism had to do with mis­in­for­ma­tion.

"On an av­er­age, treat­ing an HIV in­fect­ed per­son is $14,000 a year," Khan said, not­ing such treat­ment is ac­tu­al­ly free to the in­fect­ed per­son.The min­is­ter added that treat­ment cen­tres were lo­cat­ed in both Trinidad and To­ba­go (see box), while plans were afoot to es­tab­lish an HIV treat­ment cen­tre in Ma­yaro. He said that would be­come a re­al­i­ty once the re­ac­tion to HIV had been de­sen­si­tised and that would oc­cur through rig­or­ous ed­u­ca­tion­al dri­ves and con­sul­ta­tions.

Cas­es in T&T on de­cline

Pro­gramme di­rec­tor of the HIV and Aids Co-or­di­nat­ing Unit at the Min­istry of Health Dr Bri­an Ar­mour, in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, says there has been a de­crease in HIV in the coun­try.Ar­mour said that was be­cause a lot of per­sons, name­ly women, were get­ting test­ed dur­ing preg­nan­cy."There are mech­a­nisms in place to en­sure that an HIV-pos­i­tive moth­er doesn't give birth to an HIV ba­by. There are treat­ments avail­able," he said­He said from 2007-2011, there were 1,429; 1,448; 1,390; 1,154 and 1,077 new HIV cas­es, re­spec­tive­ly.

Asked whether such a de­cline could be at­trib­uted to peo­ple not get­ting test­ed as well, Ar­mour said that had been the ar­gu­ment brought for­ward by many, but in his opin­ion was prob­a­bly not an ac­cu­rate as­sess­ment of the re­al­i­ty.Peo­ple, Ar­mour said, were be­com­ing more aware and re­spon­si­ble about their lifestyles. He point­ed out that oth­er Caribbean coun­tries have al­so seen a de­cline in their HIV pos­i­tive cas­es.He said trac­ing back to 1985 when the first cas­es of HIV among fe­males and chil­dren were re­port­ed, sta­tis­tics have shown that since 2004, HIV had been high­er among fe­males than males in all age groups, with young per­sons in the age brack­et 25-34 be­ing the most af­fect­ed.

To­mor­row: An in­ter­view with Dr Amery Browne and his in­volve­ment with HIV

HIV Treat­ment Cen­tres

�2 East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty

�2 San­gre Grande Treat­ment Clin­ic, Ojoe Road

Pae­di­atric sites

�2 Pae­di­atric Out­pa­tient Clin­ic

�2 Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex

�2 Cyril Ross Nurs­ery, 1 El Do­ra­do Road, Tu­na­puna

To­ba­go Health Pro­mo­tion Clin­ic

�2 Calder Hall, Scar­bor­ough

�2 Scar­bor­ough Re­gion­al Hos­pi­tal, Fort King George, Scar­bor­ough

Med­ical Re­search Foun­da­tion

�2 7 Queen's Park East, Port-of-Spain

�2 South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal