De­lores Robin­son’s days are usu­al­ly busy. She heads GROOTS Trinidad and To­ba­go, a civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tion that pro­vides psy­choso­cial care for peo­ple liv­ing with HIV and man­ages a tran­si­tion house.

But since the first COVID-19 case was con­firmed, Ms Robin­son’s work­days have be­come a whirl­wind. Con­tain­ment mea­sures have thrust the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple fur­ther in­to the mar­gins.

GROOTS Trinidad and To­ba­go is an ex­am­ple of how civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions can move quick­ly to iden­ti­fy and re­spond to the needs of the voice­less. Ms Robin­son, a Ja­maican, has lived in T&T for the past 34 years. Dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, she al­ter­nat­ed be­tween wide, open smiles and a fur­rowed brow. These days there’s lots to wor­ry about.

Every day she pre­pares meals for 30 fam­i­lies. She then per­son­al­ly de­liv­ers them. There is no struc­tured fund­ing for this ef­fort—just mon­ey and oth­er con­tri­bu­tions from HIV re­sponse stake­hold­ers.

There is a unique sto­ry at each drop-off point. One day she ma­noeu­vred through the nar­row roads of Sea Lots, a low-in­come com­mu­ni­ty in the shad­ow of the cap­i­tal city, Port-of-Spain. The men on the block recog­nised her car. One of­fered to de­liv­er her par­cel. She laughed. Ms Robin­son had come to the sev­en chil­dren of a sin­gle moth­er liv­ing with HIV.

The Gov­ern­ment has pro­vid­ed a range of COVID-19 re­lief op­tions. These in­clude salary re­lief, rental as­sis­tance grants and nu­tri­tion sup­port. Some­times Ms Robin­son’s role is to help clients nav­i­gate gov­ern­ment sys­tems. For ex­am­ple, one il­lit­er­ate HIV pos­i­tive moth­er lost her food card and needs help get­ting it re­placed dur­ing COVID-19.

“The forms are com­pli­cat­ed for many peo­ple plus they don’t have in­ter­net ser­vice,” Ms Robin­son ex­plained.

“Now that we are all be­ing en­cour­aged to con­duct busi­ness on­line, many have no ac­cess.”

Since the stay-home or­ders went in­to ef­fect, she has been asked by the po­lice to ac­com­mo­date women and chil­dren at the tran­si­tion­al home. The com­bi­na­tion of in­come loss and con­stant con­tact has ex­ac­er­bat­ed abu­sive sit­u­a­tions, lead­ing to a spike in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­ports.

Ms Robin­son re­port­ed that her clients liv­ing with HIV have so far had no prob­lem ac­cess­ing their treat­ment. Be­fore COVID-19 it was stan­dard prac­tice for T&T clin­ics to dis­pense two to three months of HIV med­i­cines at a time. HIV treat­ment fa­cil­i­ties and STI clin­ics re­main open, though with al­tered hours.

“They have their meds,” she said. “What they need most now is nu­tri­tion­al sup­port to be able to stay healthy and take their treat­ment.” And they need masks.

UN­AIDS Caribbean is ad­vo­cat­ing for gov­ern­ments in the re­gion to en­sure that com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions like GROOTS are in­clud­ed in de­ci­sion-mak­ing and plan­ning around meet­ing the needs of vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis. They are an es­sen­tial ser­vice, en­sur­ing peo­ple’s most ba­sic needs are met. They be­lieve these or­gan­i­sa­tions should be in­clud­ed in con­tin­gency plans for con­nect­ing peo­ple liv­ing with HIV to ser­vices. And they should be re­sourced.

“We think we’re all in this to­geth­er but there are many peo­ple who don’t have the things we take for grant­ed—a safe home, healthy food and the abil­i­ty to speak out. It’s tir­ing work but it’s need­ed now more than ever,” Ms Robin­son added.

(UN­AIDS Caribbean)