Aids undermining growth

A recent report has demonstrated that unless the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus is checked it can undermine this country’s economic growth as many of our best minds, entrepreneurs and persons with vocational skills can become needless casualties. The virus which for the most part in Trinidad and Tobago is the child of casual sex, is said to have the capacity to undermine the economic growth of any country through its negative effect on human, physical and social capital. Not only does it affect productivity in the work place, but in the classroom as well and many young people with the potential to make valid contributions to the country’s growth become statistics of the dreaded HIV/AIDS virus.

Overall productivity is adversely affected when all too many of the nation’s young are not able to make a normally to be expected contribution, because they are hospitalised, have been dismissed from their jobs or are wasting away at home or what have you. Meanwhile, as a direct result of this HIV/AIDS induced drop in productivity it has been estimated that by 2005 the total value of goods and services produced in TT, along with income earned overseas, will be some 4.2 percent lower than it would have been in the absence of HIV/AIDS. But there is not only the question of a 4.2 percent drop in the Gross National Product with which TT has to contend, but under a Five-Year Strategic Plan — 2004 - 2008 — the country proposes to spend US$90.33 million to “avert some 3,864 new HIV/AIDS infections.”

The irony is that these and other potential new HIV/AIDS cases could be averted simply through Trinbagonians deciding on single partner relationships and the abstaining from sex outside of marriage. A greater irony is that there is ample evidence of the dangers of casual or reckless sex and the dollar and social costs attached to it. Admittedly, the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus is not limited to this country, but is a worldwide problem, and the report published recently shows that upward of 50 percent of the young people hit by new infections were likely to be between 15 and 24 years, while 70 percent of all cases would be between 15 and 44 years.

Casual sex is a game of Russian Roulette, with the difference being that not only people, whether between 15 and 44 or otherwise, will be casualties, but needed economic growth of their countries as well, along with productivity, the Gross National Product, revenues, hospital services, the manufacturing and agricultural sectors and their own future. There is a cost and a needless one at that to the recklessness. Yet, TT clearly will be required to set aside needed revenue to encourage safe lifestyles among its young people, and in so many cases, the not so young, so that HIV/AIDS can be avoided. In the age of globalisation and its front runner, the World Trade Organisation, any drop in productivity and even a two percent fall off in GNP are things with which the country can do without.