STEMMING HIV/AIDS

Last Thursday’s warning by UNDP Representative, Dr Inyang Ebong-Harstrup, that US$10 billion would be needed by 2005 to check the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Region should act as a wake up call to Caribbean people of the need to change their lifestyles.

Dr Ebong-Harstrup has provided statistics which show that the annual cost per patient of the least expensive anti-AIDS brand name drug, recommended by the World Health Organisation, was US$675, while the least expensive generic drugs combination was under US$300. But whether brand name drugs or generic drugs are used to combat HIV/AIDS, the cost must be considered formidable in the Caribbean, where many people live below the poverty line. In turn, financial aid for the drugs, whether wholly or in part by international agencies, to help combat the disease, will not minimise the need for Caribbean people to call a halt to mindless sexual behaviour. Behaviour which we should not need to remind is suicidal. But the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Caribbean, and indeed worldwide, will not be solved merely by the provision of money by international agencies for the purchase of anti-AIDS drugs, brand name or generic, but by the recognition by individuals and/or groups that the answer lies with them.

Unless people, particularly the young and, sadly, in all too many cases the not so young, are prepared to accept that they can effect a halt to the rise in HIV/AIDS statistics, and with it a reversal, through single-partner relationships and abstinence from sex before and out of marriage, the HIV/AIDS spiral will continue. And because there is evidence to demonstrate that there are still many who will not reach this conclusion by themselves, there is a need to develop programmes aimed at educating young people as to the dangers and recklessness of free sex. At the same time, the positives of single partnerships et cetera referred to in the preceding paragraph should be emphasised.

There are several social and economic repercussions to the gathering storm of HIV/AIDS as the UNDP representative has pointed out. There are costs to individual States of the Region which should not be quantified simply in terms of brand name and/or generic drugs or medical care generally, but additionally in the context of lost productivity, where workers are affected, along with the loss of the potential contributions of young people. The containing of HIV/AIDS and its reversal, in terms of the number of victims, should not be viewed as the concern strictly of individuals who are intent on multiple sex partners, but of the society as a whole. The loss of man hours, skilled workers, cane cutters, transport personnel, professionals and vendors, particularly persons in their productive prime, represents a loss to the entire nation.  However, for the Region to effectively reverse the trend care should be taken in any education programme to emphasise not only the negatives that can and do flow from multiple partners, but the positives to the Caribbean from single partner relationships and abstinence from sex before and out of marriage. The estimated US$10 billion could be put to more productive use.