Prevention of HIV/AIDS has taken a back seat to treatment

—Dr Ruben del Prado
Head of the UNAIDS office in Guyana, Dr Ruben del Prado yesterday said that it was “scandalous” that the access-to-medicine campaign worldwide was not matched by an access-to-prevention campaign and in the last few years the latter had been marginalised while treatment had dominated.

And for prevention campaigns to be effective, Dr del Prado said, all countries needed to develop “context-specific, national preventive strategies; not off-the-shelf slogans dreamt up by donors, religious fundamentalists, moralists and wishful thinkers who craft prevention policies based on the assumptions that adolescents are not sexually active, and if they are, that they can be persuaded to practise abstinence without failure until marriage, and that marriage is a protective factor against HIV infections.”
Dr del Prado, speaking at the Ministry of Health’s launch of the World Aids Day campaign, said that the imbalance between treatment and prevention is largely “responsible for the fact that around 2.5 million people become newly infected with HIV each year.”

“When one looks at the politics of this pandemic, one immediately discovers a litany of declarations and commitments, leaders’ forums and high-level consultations,” Dr del Prado said, yet there was “still the appalling toll that HIV wreaks.”

He told the large audience, which included many young people at the International Convention Centre, Lilendaal, that the HIV pandemic would never be defeated without effective prevention. “And to be precise: no single prevention strategy will be sufficient! We need combined prevention [and] we need to rethink our approach to evaluating prevention and honestly address what works and what does not work.”

He commended Guyana for the leadership shown in the fight against HIV and AIDS but said while the management of programmes had been strong, “implementation of HIV prevention strategies had been uneven. He said that as was the case with many other countries, there was no effective, reliable, and comprehensive monitoring or evaluation of the effectiveness of HIV-prevention programmes in Guyana. And according to Dr del Prado prevention did not only mean action to eliminate the causes of the infection, but it also meant preventing the adverse human consequences of HIV on children and families affected by the pandemic.

He said that recent assessments done in Guyana showed that HIV-related stigma and discrimination were alive and well, fuelled by intolerance and hypocrisy. “This is unacceptable and must be stopped by all means,” he said.

Meanwhile, Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy said that Guyana needed to send a message to its HIV infected citizens that being infected was not the end of the world. He said that the country was not prepared to succumb to HIV and was not only working to control the virus but to eliminate it. He called on leaders in Guyana to stand up and be counted in the fight while revealing that they had set a target of 10,000 to be tested on the national day of testing to be convened in November. He challenged his colleagues in the National Assembly to come out on that day and not only mobilize their communities to be tested but be tested themselves. Business leaders and faith-based leaders were also called upon, while those who preached and taught in religious places were asked to include in their messages that they could not save souls if they did not save lives.

And Dr Ramsammy said that tuberculosis (TB) had become the number one killer in persons living with HIV since up to 30% of HIV related deaths were caused by the disease. He said in the 1970s Guyana like many other countries thought they had got rid of TB, but since then it had “returned with a vengeance and formed itself as a twin killer with HIV.” He called on Guyanese to stop stigmatizing and discriminating against persons living with the virus.

The launching of the World AIDS Day campaign also coincided with the screening of a movie directed by Gem Madhoo-Naciemento, titled ‘Shattered dreams and hopes,’ which centred on a young woman who was very promising in her community studying to be a doctor but was pressured into have sex with a young man who infected her with HIV. Youths working with the National AIDS Programme Secretariat (NAPS) also gave the audience a glimpse of what was going to be seen at the youth village to be held at the National Park during Carifesta. The World AIDS day campaign would also include an art competition for primary and secondary schools, national round-table discussions for the media and members of parliament, a cycle race and the annual health workers’ award.

Also speaking at the opening were Minister of Youth, Sport and Culture Dr Frank Anthony and head of NAPS Dr Shanti Singh.