REGION BATTLES AIDS

The 13 Caribbean countries, which are listed to receive international funding shortly to help in their battle against HIV/AIDS, should seriously consider placing substantial emphasis on the preventive aspect rather than simply on the curative. Admittedly, the spending of a considerable portion of the money on curative treatment, designed to prolong the lives of HIV/AIDS victims, has an emotive appeal, which the Region’s politicians cannot ignore. Nonetheless, a determined Public Relations assault encouraging the changing of lifestyles, which contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS, would have more beneficial medium and long-term results. Already, statistics demonstrate that an estimated 2.4 percent of the population of the Caribbean excluding Cuba — some 500,000 persons — are infected with the HIV virus. The reality is that an education campaign has to be worked out and put into train if the health problem is to be contained and eventually reversed.

Young people, who form the burden of those most susceptible to contracting HIV, because of sexually carefree lifestyles, have to be the principal targets of a structured PR campaign, which would urge on them, and others as well, the need for single partner relationships, if HIV/AIDS is to be arrested. It must be driven home to them that the need to adopt moral and spiritual values is not merely a catch phrase, empty rhetoric, but a viable and meaningful alternative to the spread of the disease. To put it bluntly, the free sex of casual lifestyles is suicidal. And when it is remembered that there have been examples of persons who knowingly having HIV/AIDS have sought to pass it on to others, whatever the motive, the need for sensible lifestyles is increasingly necessary. There is no known cure for HIV/AIDS. At best the transition from HIV to full blown AIDS can be delayed for several years in many cases where the victims have the financial resources to acquire the needed medication. But once that transition is made, then death, as a result of the assault on and the consequent weakening of the body systems through AIDS, is inevitable.

Yet despite all the available statistics on HIV/AIDS, and its spread through indifferent lifestyles, there are still persons who naively believe that they can beat the odds. The figures, however, show that 500,000 persons in the Caribbean, many of them in what should have been their productive years, did not beat the odds! Nothing that has been written earlier should be construed to mean that a cynical, uncaring attitude should be adopted toward those afflicted with AIDS. Indeed, a not insubstantial portion of the money allocated by the global AIDS fund should be employed to slow down the spread of AIDS in victims, many of whom will, because of the advance of medical science, be able to continue for some time in their regular jobs. But it is the guiding of the young, and in all too many cases the not so young, away from mindless multi-partner relationships that in the final analysis will curb the spread of the most vicious disease in the history of mankind.