“We have been trained, know the facts; we know that we can throw our [arms] around them. We know these things yet some of us still stigmatise those living with HIV,” Minister of Health, Dr Leslie Ramsammy said at a graduation ceremony for 24 nurses at the Project Dawn building, Liliendaal yesterday.
The minister was at the time delivering the feature address to the nurses who graduated from a ‘HIV Basics for Nurses’ training programme hosted by the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
Ramsammy urged the graduates to be agents of change by educating those who are not privy to information. “We as health care workers can make a difference and eliminate HIV as a public health problem,” he said. The goal is for every health care worker to be knowledgeable about HIV/AIDS.
The minister said while he was proud that there has been a reduction in the number of deaths caused by AIDS, he was concerned about the role of stigma in the transmission of HIV. However, he said the ministry was addressing this problem through its education programme. “Education and awareness will be able to reduce stigma,” he added.
Further, he said that this stigma was not limited to the public but extended into the health care system where the major impediment was the stigma that came from health care workers.
“The reason why people hesitate to get tested is the stigma that they suffer from health care workers and the persons living with HIV skip their appointments because they don’t want to experience stigma,” the health minister said.
While admitting that the stigma committed by health care workers is much less than it used to be, Ramsammy said that there should be “zero stigma.”
The health ministry expects to eliminate stigma as a problem and by 2015, it aims to eliminate mother to child transmission. Commenting on the HIV infections, the minister said “we have succeeded in reducing the problem and we believe that we can eliminate it.”
A graduate of the course Dianna Sutton said it was very educational and she learnt a lot. Additionally, she said that it went in-depth on issues relating to HIV/AIDS and she is looking forward to implementing what she learnt. Among the areas covered was the management of patients with HIV, preparing patients to receive medication and the impact of counselling on the life of a person diagnosed with HIV.
The programme was funded by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and facilitated by the GPHC. This was the third batch of nurses to be trained under the programme which was held from June 14 – July 26
