The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) says ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,100 peo­ple die an­nu­al­ly in the Caribbean from HIV-re­lat­ed caus­es and that one-third of the HIV cas­es are iden­ti­fied in an ad­vanced stage.

The Guyana-based Pan Caribbean Part­ner­ship against HIV and AIDS (PAN­CAP) Wednes­day said these facts formed crit­i­cal ar­eas for dis­cus­sion at the re­gion­al work­shop: “Unit­ing Sci­ence and Com­mu­ni­ties to Ac­cel­er­ate HIV Re­sponse in the Caribbean,” held in Trinidad and To­ba­go ear­li­er this month.

The event in Port-of-Spain was or­gan­ised by PAN­CAP, the In­ter­na­tion­al AIDS So­ci­ety (IAS),  The Glob­al Fund,  PA­HO and Platafor­ma LAC.

PAN­CAP Di­rec­tor, Dr Wendy Tel­gt-Emanuel­son, spoke of the unique chal­lenges and ur­gent needs the Caribbean faces in deal­ing with the sit­u­a­tion.

PA­HO’s ad­vi­sor for HIV/STI/TB and Vi­ral He­pati­tis, Caribbean Sub-re­gion­al Of­fice, San­dra Jones, said while the Caribbean has pro­gressed with HIV pre­ven­tion and treat­ment ser­vices and in­no­va­tions in HIV ser­vice de­liv­ery, the re­gion did not achieve the 90-90-90 tar­gets.

Da­ta from the 2024 UANIDS re­port in­di­cate that the Caribbean is not poised to achieve the 95-95-95 tar­gets in 2025 and Jones said this may af­fect the ul­ti­mate goal of end­ing AIDs as a pub­lic health threat in 2030.

“De­spite 40 years of the epi­dem­ic, one-third of the HIV cas­es are iden­ti­fied in an ad­vanced stage. The re­gion needs to scale up HIV pre­ven­tion with ef­fec­tive link­age in­to care ear­ly through the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the “treat all pol­i­cy” to re­duce late di­ag­no­sis while pro­vid­ing dif­fer­ent in­no­va­tions and in­ter­ven­tions aimed at re­duc­ing HIV mor­tal­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly for those with ad­vanced HIV,” she said.

The PA­HO/WHO ad­vi­sor on HIV care and treat­ment, Dr Omar Sued, said there are tools to elim­i­nate HIV.

“There are ac­ces­si­ble HIV tests, ef­fec­tive an­ti­retro­vi­ral treat­ments, and ro­bust pre­ven­tive strate­gies, in­clud­ing pre-ex­po­sure pro­phy­lax­is (PrEP),” he said, re­fer­ring to the da­ta re­gard­ing the num­ber of per­sons who die each year from HIV-re­lat­ed caus­es in the Caribbean.

He said the fo­cus must be on crit­i­cal strate­gies to end HIV as a pub­lic health prob­lem. This in­cludes nor­mal­is­ing and in­creas­ing the vol­ume of HIV test­ing, re­duc­ing stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion in the health­care sec­tor, and ex­pand­ing the care pack­age for ad­vanced HIV.

“We be­lieve strate­gic in­vest­ments in these tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions can sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce pre­ventable deaths. This is not on­ly the right thing to do – it is al­so the smart thing,” he added.

PAN­CAP, which pro­vides a struc­tured and uni­fied ap­proach to the Caribbean’s re­sponse to the HIV epi­dem­ic and co­or­di­nates the re­sponse through the Caribbean Re­gion­al Strate­gic Frame­work on HIV and AIDS, said the Trinidad meet­ing was piv­otal to sus­tain­ing the re­gion’s HIV re­sponse and ad­vanc­ing dis­cus­sions on in­vest­ing in health­care in­fra­struc­ture.

It was al­so in­tend­ed to cre­ate a more sus­tain­able fu­ture where the eco­nom­ic ef­fects of HIV are min­imised, al­low­ing the Caribbean peo­ple to lead health­i­er, more pro­duc­tive lives.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Nov 13, CMC

CMC/gt/ir/2024