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CCNTV6
  • 1 year ago
Outside of Africa, The Caribbean has the highest prevalence of HIV.
Minister of Gender Ayana Webster-Roy promises a national policy by January of next year.
Transcript
00:00Much more needs to be done when it comes to ending the stigma. It's the message of
00:06Yolanda Simon who heralded the contribution of one of the founders of
00:10the National AIDS Coordinating Committee, Azwik Padmore. He died in curious
00:15circumstances one day prior on World AIDS Day. Only to say to the media that
00:21you need to take a closer look at what's happening in our institutions, our
00:27medical institutions, because word on the street is that we've gone back. We've
00:34gone back 20 years when health care providers refused to treat people with
00:39HIV. That has happened. And also to compound the situation, when community
00:46members have gone to assist, they have denied community members access to the
00:53patients. Minister Ayanna Webster-Roy responded to her remarks when it was
00:58her turn at the podium. I'm almost positive there's no established
01:02government policy that says because someone is HIV positive they're not
01:06supposed to get the right medication, the right treatment, the right care. I'm
01:10positive that is not a government policy. That's simply people using their own
01:17prejudice to influence the way they should do their work. And I can share my
01:21personal experiences. I could talk about, and I want to call out the media before I go
01:25ahead. Instead of taking the information and putting it out to create positive
01:30change, let's use it sometime to create back now. The real solution, she says, is a
01:35change in mindset and attitude of the population, as she recounts the case of a
01:41parent who contacted her. Trying to get the child in school, but because a bully
01:46in the community knows of her status and goes to the school, I don't want the
01:51child to enroll here because my child come in school here. And if anything
01:56happened to the child in school, something would happen to my child. Now
02:01all is going on, they don't know the child's status. But based on the parent's
02:05status, she's already being denied the opportunity. The minister promises a
02:10national AIDS policy by January 2025. But Diane Weeks of the Trinidad and
02:16Tobago Community for Positive Women say HIV is not so much a medical issue as it
02:22is a social one. Cultural norms, she says, stigmatize women while excusing men for
02:29the same behaviors, making women more challenged. Programs, she says, are just
02:34not geared for women. Which ministry in Trinidad and Tobago has babysitting
02:41services for the women? Let me talk progressive behavior. All we tell them
02:50take your medication, you know, while they're fighting to keep the sons and
02:56their daughters out of the gangs, to keep a roof over their head and food in the
03:01cupboard, and to be able to send the children to school. Because remember, in
03:04Trinidad and Tobago, your child will go to school, miss a certain time, you could
03:09The situation is more dire than we think. Every 25 seconds, someone is
03:14infected with HIV across the world. And every minute someone dies of AIDS. What
03:20is the point in having antiretroviral drugs, in having HIV test kits available,
03:27health workers trained with government resources to treat people, and then we
03:32still hear such stories on this podium.
03:37We have work to do as a people. Some people are more vulnerable than others,
03:42like men who have sex with men, sex workers, people who engage in
03:46transactional sex, migrants and drug users. In Latin America, infections are
03:53increasing. If there is a strong relationship between Caribbean people
03:57and Latin America, that's the problem. Either it's from migration or whether
04:03it's from social networking and all that. We have a problem. And so our
04:08government need to be very strategic in terms of what, how they address the
04:14issue. Outside of Africa, the Caribbean has the highest prevalence of HIV, with
04:19340,000 people living with HIV. Ravishi Tiwari, Ruben Ryan, TV6 News.
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