We need AIDS-sex education in schools

THE EDITOR: Every year when December 1 comes around — World Aids Day — you hear all kinds of beautiful speeches. This year has proven no exception. The new Minister of Health Mr John Rahael has now joined the chorus line: a postage stamp to commemorate World Aids Day, a complaints bureau and a hotline to assist people living with HIV/AIDS to get redress for stigmatisation and discrimination. Sir, on Saturday October 27, 2001, Trinidad and Tobago hosted the 10th International Conference of People Living With HIV/AIDS. The then Minister of Health Mr Rafeeq spoke of plans prohibiting discrimination against patients living with HIV/AIDS. Now we are hearing the same words. Is this a joke? The Ministry of Health is responsible for bringing these policies into reality.

Mr Rahael spoke about a complaints bureau and hotline to deal with discrimination. Was he not aware that the organisation Community Action Resource (CARE) highlighted the discrimination, neglect and mismanagement by doctors, nurses, health care workers in the various hospitals and at the Queen’s Park Counselling Centre (QPCC) and Clinic; that letters have been sent to the media and to the Ministry of Health but nothing was ever done about it? When I was part of the nursing staff at QPCC, I stood up against the discrimination shown to the clients who attended the clinic there. Because of the stand I took, I have been accused of threats against a doctor’s life on Friday April 19, 2002. The said doctor refused to work in the building when I was there. Since then I have asked for a tribunal hearing to have my name cleared. would you believe up to this present time I have not gotten my hearing?

The proposed bureau and hotline would come to nought because very few persons would do what I have done and stand up against discrimination, for doctors would not go against doctors or nurses against nurses.
Examples of HIV/AIDS discrimination and mismanagement:
(1) An 80-year-old woman leaving Arima on mornings to tidy son in Port-of-Spain General Hospital.
(2) A 40-year-old man helpless in bed at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital cannot feed himself food. Food taken up half an hour later, not touched.
(3) A 26-year-old woman given HIV positive results at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital. Four months later another test was done showing her to be negative.
On another note, the Minister of Education and Ministry must take their head out of the sand and place HIV/AIDS/SEX education in primary and secondary schools. We in Trinidad and Tobago have already created a stolen generation and are in the process of creating a lost generation. There is a programme called Focus on Youths which is an adolescent HIV/STDS Risk prevention programme which has been proven quite effective in reduction in HIV/STDS in young people in some Caribbean countries and needs to be implemented in our schools urgently.
Many people were trained in this programme and a pilot project was done in Trinidad and Tobago but up to this day it is still waiting to be implemented.
While HIV reaps its harvest among the people of our nation, those responsible are in Wonderland.

I FRANCIS
Barataria