Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

UN­AIDS Mul­ti-coun­try Di­rec­tor Dr Richard Amenyah wants lo­cal phar­ma­cies to in­vest in an­ti­retro­vi­ral ther­a­py drug treat­ment to pre­vent the spread of HIV.

He made the com­ment at a me­dia con­fer­ence host­ed by the Na­tion­al Aids Co­or­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee at Queen’s Hall, Port-of-Spain, on Mon­day, where ad­dressed strate­gies to de­crease AIDS as a pub­lic health threat by 2030.

Dr Amenyah re­vealed that there were up to 100,000 peo­ple in the Caribbean who were in­fect­ed with HIV, with 5,000 from T&T.

He al­so spoke about a drug treat­ment that would de­crease the spread of HIV and help with achiev­ing the goal of end­ing Aids as a pub­lic health threat.

“Now, we have heard that you can ac­tu­al­ly take two shots and you will be pro­tect­ed 100 per cent from HIV. This drug cur­rent­ly costs over $40,000 in the US, North Amer­i­ca, and Eu­rope,” he said.

“Forty thou­sand dol­lars per pa­tient per year, so UN­AIDS is ad­vo­cat­ing to the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies that you need to make this drug avail­able to where the prob­lem is. We want to see them re­duc­ing the price, with UN­AIDS say­ing ex­pert analy­sis shows that it would be just $40 per pa­tient per year, in­stead of the $40,000,” he added.

Al­so in at­ten­dance was Min­is­ter of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy, who not­ed that the com­mit­tee was work­ing to de­vel­op a Na­tion­al Aids Pol­i­cy, which she ex­pect­ed to be ap­proved by Jan­u­ary 2025.

She al­so spoke on the im­por­tance of pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and what it could do to de­crease the spread of the dis­ease.

“We need all hands on deck, and a pow­er­ful part of all hands on deck is pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and sen­si­ti­sa­tion, help­ing us to cre­ate a cul­ture of tol­er­ance, not just per­tain­ing to HIV and Aids, but tol­er­ance when it comes to all so­cial is­sues. We have a prob­lem, and the prob­lem is that we are not car­ing enough,” she said.

HIV (Hu­man Im­mun­od­e­fi­cien­cy Virus) is a virus that at­tacks the body’s im­mune sys­tem, specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing and de­stroy­ing CD4 cells, a type of white blood cell that helps fight in­fec­tions. If left un­treat­ed, HIV can weak­en the im­mune sys­tem to the point where it can no longer ef­fec­tive­ly de­fend against dis­eases, lead­ing to Aids (Ac­quired Im­mun­od­e­fi­cien­cy Syn­drome). While there is no cure for HIV, it can be man­aged with an­ti­retro­vi­ral ther­a­py (ART), en­abling in­di­vid­u­als to live longer lives.

In T&T, the first di­ag­no­sis of HIV was in 1983, mak­ing it 41 years that the virus has been in cir­cu­la­tion.