HIV/AIDS driven by stigma and discrimination – CFPA head

Aug 30, 2008 News

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Stigma and discrimination were regarded yesterday as the driving force behind the spread of HIV/AIDS, and therefore they are aspects that must be addressed with immense urgency.
This disclosure was made by Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Caribbean Family Planning Affiliation (CFPA) Limited, Dr Tirbani Jagdeo, during a media briefing at the office of Dr Frederick Cox of the Guyana Responsible Parenthood Association (GRPA) on Quamina Street.
According to Dr Jagdeo, it was the arrival of the anti-retroviral (ARV) therapy in the world that has, in fact, created a new phase of the epidemic.
“With ARV, more and more people will be surviving HIV. In the past, the case fatality ratio was about seven out of 10 people. But with ARV therapy, that is changing rapidly,” he added.
As a result, he said, a significant amount of people are living longer, and living well in countries where there is an effective public health system.
But even though the situation could be considered a public health success, Dr Jagdeo said, it has been fuelling the problem of stigma and discrimination.
Through gossiping and other disclosures of persons’ status, there is a high potential of the problem deteriorating, instead of improving.
Dr Jagdeo pointed out that it has been deduced that, because of stigma and discrimination, persons are not availing themselves to be tested and treated, thus having the potential of increasing the spread of the virus.
Yesterday, at the media briefing, Dr Jagdeo related the outcome of a recent three-day workshop which addressed stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA), which concluded on Thursday at the Regency Suite/Hotel.
The workshop, which was hosted by the GRPA, was held in conjunction with the CFPA.
The venture was funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) under a grant given to the CFPA to fight AIDS through training and education in 12 Caribbean countries, including Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Jamaica and Guyana.
According to Dr Jagdeo, who is a leading social scientist, the local workshop, which was made up of 25 PLHIV and five facilitators, adopted a plan of action urging the Government, international and regional organisations and civil society to integrate the concerns raised in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
The workshop, he disclosed, had representatives from seven organisations, namely the GRPA, Youth Challenge Guyana, Volunteer Youth Corp, Love and Faith, Life Line Counselling Services and Artistes in Direct Support.
The named organisations, he said, are the primary non-governmental organisations that are already aiding the fight against HIV/AIDS.
And, according to him, each representative has since committed to taking a proposed statement of action directly to their organisations, in order to move in the direction suggested during the workshop.
Among the factors highlighted at the workshop was that strategies to reach out to PLHIVs explicitly recognise that these people are an internally diverse population with respect to age, gender, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, life styles and the degree of high risk behaviour that expose them to the virus.
It was also noted that programme and policy sensitivity to the internal diversity is critical to the relevance of PLHIV and lend to the effectiveness in reducing the spread of HIV.
Further, it was emphasised that infected persons are more than just people living with HIV, since, according to the participants, “Our HIV status does not define us. We are men and women with the capacity to contribute productively to all aspects of society, and are entitled to the respect and rights granted to all productive members of society.”
And among the rights pointed out are: the right to work, access education, training and health care; freedom from insults, physical abuse, any form of discrimination issuing from the HIV status; and the rights of women based on the principles of gender equity and equality.
In fact, the outcome of the workshop was such a success that Dr Jagdeo said that plans are already in place for corrective action to be streamlined.
“At the end of the meeting, Dr Cox convened a group of seven people who will meet with UNAIDS very shortly to begin the process of transforming this statement of action into a plan of action which can be funded to promote the ideas suggested in the workshop.
This, according to Dr Cox, is evidence of concrete and almost immediate result from the three-day investment.
The workshop, Dr Jagdeo said, came about based on the recognition of the evolution of the HIV/AIDS epidemic across the world.
“We find that it has been a rapidly changing epidemic with regards to who gets infected by the virus and the mode of transmission. In the early days, the virus was associated with homosexual behaviour, but that very rapidly transformed from being a homosexual phenomenon to being a heterosexual phenomenon,” Dr Jagdeo asserted.
He also noted that the ratio, in the mid 80s, of the number of men who were affected compared to women was about three to one.  However, he pointed out that the trend soon changed about 12 years later, reflecting a situation where more and more women were becoming infected.
“Today, in most Caribbean countries, the ratio between male and female infected with HIV is about one to one.”
In essence, Dr Jagdeo related, women were caught up in an area in which they did not want to be considered equal. He added that a lot of women became infected by their partners, who had not been faithful.
There has also been a noticeable change in the age range being affected with the virus, he pointed out, with younger people today accounting for the majority of those infected, particularly women.
He said that the mode of transmission has also been dynamic, with some parts of the world having more infection through drug use and others through sexual behaviour.
According to Dr Cox, the CEO of the CFPA, who is a leading social scientist, he has always been keenly interested in programmes and projects that would help in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and thus was able to secure the necessary funding to address the problem in a number of Caribbean countries.
He disclosed that Dr Jagdeo is playing a leading role in fighting the virus, adding that the just concluded workshop will help Guyana to move in a direction where measures will be put in place to eradicate stigma and discrimination.

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