Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, says the or­gan­i­sa­tion may have to cur­tail its ser­vice used by Venezue­lan mi­grants, in­clud­ing sur­vivors of sex­u­al as­sault, over cuts in in­ter­na­tion­al fund­ing.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the FPATT opened the doors to its brand-new fa­cil­i­ty on Bertrand Street, San Fer­nan­do, to ex­pand ac­cess to low-cost health­care, An­toine re­vealed that the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR) no longer funds med­ical treat­ment for mi­grants at FPATT clin­ics.

She said ad­di­tion­al fund­ing from US­AID and FPATT’s par­ent body, the In­ter­na­tion­al Planned Par­ent­hood Fed­er­a­tion, has al­so de­clined, leav­ing gaps in ser­vice de­liv­ery, es­pe­cial­ly in the area of sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health.

“I do not think we can con­tin­ue a spe­cial ser­vice for mi­grants, for sure, be­cause that was be­ing fund­ed specif­i­cal­ly. But I did ask my ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor what is hap­pen­ing with them? She said they are still com­ing to us. They are pay­ing to come be­cause they got used to us, they are hap­py with what we pro­vid­ed,” An­toine said

In Feb­ru­ary this year, the Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion an­nounced that the Unit­ed States would be cut­ting for­eign aid spend­ing.

Now that fund­ing has dried up, An­toine said FPATT can­not af­ford to pro­vide free care, as the or­gan­i­sa­tion must cov­er the cost of med­ical prod­ucts and equip­ment used in its clin­ics.

But she said the mi­grant pop­u­la­tion was not on­ly seek­ing rou­tine ser­vices like pap smears and con­tra­cep­tives—many were vic­tims of sex­u­al vi­o­lence.

“What we were al­so see­ing, apart from the sort of rou­tine sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health rights ser­vices, was that many of the peo­ple who were com­ing to us had been sex­u­al­ly abused—Venezue­lan women—and you know what was hap­pen­ing,” she said.

An­toine said while many cit­i­zens re­spect and ad­mire Venezue­lans, there is a seg­ment of so­ci­ety that does not.

“That is not some­thing we are proud of, but it was hap­pen­ing—and even chil­dren. We were see­ing chil­dren. So, al­though we do not serve chil­dren gen­er­al­ly, we did not turn away those chil­dren.”

As a vol­un­teer-based or­gan­i­sa­tion, she said FPATT had to re­ly on its doc­tors to as­sist those mi­nors.

While An­toine ac­knowl­edged that cit­i­zens should take pri­or­i­ty for na­tion­al ser­vices, she said it was “fool­ish” and “in­hu­mane” to ig­nore a size­able pop­u­la­tion that can­not ac­cess es­sen­tial care.

She said she was al­so con­cerned about the fu­ture of FPATT’s youth ser­vices and its work around com­pre­hen­sive sex ed­u­ca­tion—a sub­ject of­ten mis­un­der­stood, she said.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion’s HIV pro­gramme is al­so at risk.

“It comes with a cost,” she said. “Peo­ple may not speak much about HIV any­more, but it is still around.”

With the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca re­assess­ing some of its in­ter­na­tion­al aid pro­grammes, FPATT was hope­ful that fund­ing would re­turn. In the mean­time, An­toine said the or­gan­i­sa­tion was work­ing to be­come more self-sus­tain­ing, of­fer­ing its ser­vices at be­low-mar­ket rates.

To gen­er­ate more in­come, FPATT plans to ex­pand its cor­po­rate of­fer­ings, in­clud­ing em­ploy­ee screen­ing pack­ages for busi­ness­es.