This coun­try has made “very lit­tle progress in re­duc­ing HIV and AIDS through ed­u­ca­tion, re­sources and nec­es­sary sup­port in the con­text of glob­al trends,” ac­cord­ing to Nikoli Ed­wards, ex­ec­u­tive chair­per­son T&T Youth.

Since 2016, Ed­wards said he had been able to wit­ness the op­er­a­tions of HIV or STD/STI clin­ics in more de­vel­oped coun­tries around the world and there was ab­solute­ly no rea­son why T&T had not raised its stan­dard.

“This was es­pe­cial­ly con­cern­ing for a coun­try with such a small pop­u­la­tion, but one that ex­ists in one of the most at-risk re­gions,” he said.

Ed­wards, who at­tend­ed var­i­ous fo­rums since then—that dealt with Com­pre­hen­sive Sex­u­al­i­ty Ed­u­ca­tion and Ado­les­cent and Youth Sex­u­al and Re­pro­duc­tive Health­Care in places such as Nor­way and more re­cent­ly in Wash­ing­ton, USA as well as lo­cal­ly, said T&T has a long way to go based on the in­for­ma­tion be­ing shared on the world stage.

He was speak­ing ahead of De­cem­ber 1, when T&T will join the world in com­mem­o­rat­ing World Aids Day, un­der the theme for the ob­ser­vance is “Know your sta­tus.”

Fe­males be­tween 15-24

fastest HIV risk group

UN­AIDS has es­ti­mat­ed that at the end of 2017, there were 11,000 adults and chil­dren liv­ing with HIV in T&T.

Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Prof Dex­ter Voisin in his jour­nal, Psy­cho­cul­tur­al Fac­tors As­so­ci­at­ed with HIV In­fec­tion Among T&T Ado­les­cents, said, the Caribbean re­gion ranked high­est in terms of re­port­ed HIV in­ci­dence in the Amer­i­c­as and was sec­ond in the world.

He said T&T was dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect­ed by HIV com­pared with the rest of the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean and the fastest grow­ing HIV risk group was ado­les­cents ages 15 to 24, among which fe­males were es­pe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble.

One of the events planned for that day is the Walk­er Lela Foun­da­tion screen­ing of Part 1 of the Pos­i­tive Film Se­ries Pos­i­tive and Preg­nant di­rect­ed by Can­dice Lela Rol­ing­son, at Nalis, at 10 am and 1 pm, on No­vem­ber 29.

Cast­ing call for Part 2 of the Pos­i­tive Film Se­ries The male per­spec­tive is on De­cem­ber 1 at Nalis.

There is an es­ti­mat­ed 2.1 mil­lion peo­ple were liv­ing with HIV in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean in 2017 (1.8 mil­lion in Latin Amer­i­ca and 310,000 in the Caribbean), ac­cord­ing to glob­al sta­tis­tics.

And there are 100,000 new in­fec­tions in Latin Amer­i­ca and 15,000 in the Caribbean, an­nu­al­ly.

Some 47,000 peo­ple died from AIDS-re­lat­ed ill­ness­es (37,000 in Latin Amer­i­ca and 10,000 in the Caribbean), last year.

In 2017, 73 per cent of peo­ple liv­ing with HIV in the Caribbean were aware of their HIV sta­tus, an in­crease from 66 per cent in 2016. About 181,000 peo­ple were ac­cess­ing an­ti-retro­vi­ral drugs, equiv­a­lent to 57 per cent of peo­ple liv­ing with HIV.

De­spite its small pop­u­la­tion size, the Caribbean has a high HIV preva­lence glob­al­ly at 1.2 per cent (West and Cen­tral Africa stands at 1.9 per cent and the high­est preva­lence glob­al is in East and South­ern Africa at 6.8 per cent.

There are many bar­ri­ers to HIV test­ing and UN­AIDS es­ti­mates that more than 9.4 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing with HIV still do not know their sta­tus.

Stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion de­ter peo­ple from tak­ing an HIV test. Ac­cess to con­fi­den­tial HIV test­ing re­mains an is­sue of con­cern.

Many peo­ple get test­ed on­ly af­ter be­com­ing ill and symp­to­matic. This leads to HIV treat­ment be­ing ini­ti­at­ed late, un­der­min­ing its many ben­e­fits for both treat­ment and pre­ven­tion.

At the same time, there are many new op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­pand ac­cess to HIV test­ing. Self-test­ing, com­mu­ni­ty-based test­ing ser­vices, and mul­ti-dis­ease test­ing are help­ing peo­ple to know their HIV sta­tus.

HIV test­ing pro­grammes must be ex­pand­ed. For this, po­lit­i­cal will and in­vest­ment are need­ed, as well as nov­el and in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach­es to HIV test­ing that are ful­ly lever­aged and tak­en to scale.

Free test­ing avail­able —Deyals­ingh

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh at­trib­uted six ma­jor pol­i­cy in­ter­ven­tions in mit­i­gat­ing the dis­ease in T&T.

They are the Na­tion­al Aids Co­or­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee (NACC) was moved from the Min­istry of Health to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, giv­ing a greater pri­or­i­ty and ac­cess to re­sources, in No­vem­ber 2015.

In May 2016, the coun­try signed on to a UN­Aids agree­ment to elim­i­nate the spread of the virus by 2030.

A $7 mil­lion in­vest­ment in Cell­ma, a health in­dus­try soft­ware for mon­i­tor­ing pa­tient da­ta.

Ne­go­ti­at­ing with the US Em­bassy for ac­cess to funds from the Pres­i­dent’s Emer­gency Plan for AIDS Re­lief (PEP­FAR), to the amount of US$250,000, grant­ed to the Med­ical Re­search Foun­da­tion of TT (MRF) for their Aids clin­ics.

Chang­ing the sup­pli­er of an­ti-retro­vi­ral drugs from a cen­tral ten­der to the PA­HO strate­gic fund, re­sult­ing in an an­nu­al sav­ings of $70 mil­lion.

Nine mil­lion dol­lars al­lo­cat­ed every year for five years, ap­proved by Cab­i­net, for vi­ral load test­ing ma­chines.

He said the Gov­ern­ment pro­vides free clin­ics, coun­selling and most im­por­tant­ly free an­ti-retro­vi­ral drugs to any­one di­ag­nosed with the dis­ease.

Deyals­ingh said as part of the UN­Aids pact, T&T had al­so agreed to a 90-90-90 goal, where by 2020, 90 per cent of those in­fect­ed should know their sta­tus, 90 per cent of that num­ber should be put on an­ti-retro­vi­ral drugs and 90 per cent of that should have their vi­ral loads sup­pressed.