DEALING WITH HIV/AIDS

While yesterday’s observance of World AIDS Day generated a heightened level of awareness with respect to a disease that has claimed the lives of millions since it was first identified in 1981, nonetheless the seriousness of the HIV/AIDS threat demands that people be on guard the year round. Awareness of Aids is not a one-day event. The seriousness of the work of relevant Government Ministries and the critical support roles of churches, mosques, temples and mandirs and the several NGOs in seeking to sensitise people to the dangers posed by HIV/AIDS are being undone by the stubborn refusal of many people, both young and mature, to accept that casual sex places them at risk. Despite this, the organising of seminars, radio and television talk shows, addresses, sex education sessions, posters and films on HIV/AIDS and the delivering of sermons on the dangers of casual sex and its riding partners, HIV/AIDS, must continue.

It has long been accepted that AIDS first surfaced in the homosexual community, before spreading to bisexuals and from there making the inevitable crossover to the heterosexual community. No one, no age, social or religious group, no country, whatever its ideology is immune from the threat of HIV/AIDS. The spread of HIV/AIDS is governed today, not by the lifestyles of persons of one sex as was the case two decades ago, but by a continued insistence on multi-partner and casual sex relationships by persons of both sexes. Ironically, although the scourge of HIV/AIDS had its genesis in the homosexual community, as noted earlier, the latest available statistics show that half of the new infections are occurring in females and that 74 percent of persons in the 15-24 age group contracting the virus are females.

Meanwhile, because the burden of HIV cases (ultimately moving into full blown AIDS) are as a result of sexual contact, it appears safe to assume that many of these young females have been the victims of AIDS-infected male predators, who move from one unsuspecting young woman to another. The teenaged and 20-24-year-old females, who for whatever the reason appear not to have absorbed the signals and messages of the anti-HIV/AIDS campaigns, should accept a fair share of the blame. However, it is the males, who prey on them, often intentionally exploiting the troubling economic circumstances of many of the young women, who must accept the bulk of the responsibility for the spread of HIV/AIDS. Unfaithful men and women who pass on the virus to their unsuspecting spouses bear even more condemnation than teenage girls who are lured, particularly at Christmas time by men dangling the promise of gifts.

We put forward the above to demonstrate that much more remains to be done by the relevant organisations and concerned people in general if their efforts to contain the spread of HIV/AIDS are to be successful. There is need to expand the campaign in Trinidad and Tobago, while at the same time working out new strategies, not in isolation, but in conjunction with other countries of the Region, and perhaps other areas of the Third World. The planned coming together in Trinidad in March of next year of more than 150 secondary school students from several Caribbean countries to debate the “Right of Universal Access to Anti-Retroviral Therapy for all living with HIV/AIDS” at a Model United Nations Assembly being hosted by the Rotary Club of Central Port-of-Spain is a critical step. It is a chance for the Caribbean secondary school students, who will take part as “delegates,” and the hundreds more as observers to show not only the Region, but the world, of their concern and anti-retroviral therapy apart, the buck stops with them and their generation.