Health Sector working towards eliminating HIV scourge by 2020 – Minister Ramsammy

Mar 17, 2010 News

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By Sharmain Cornette

It may be considered a too ambitious, if not an impossible task, but Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy, backed by his team of health professionals and ardent supporting organisations, is eyeing the possibility of completely eliminating the public health scourge of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
And according to Minister Ramsammy this ambitious plot should be in place by 2020, an era from whence HIV, he opines, will no longer be a public health scourge.
In addition, he anticipates that by this period persons already infected will be living long healthy lives, no different from people living with other chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes.
But though the latter is already a reality, the Minister envisages persons living even longer, well adjusted lives.
He explained that because of the experience that the health sector has had as it relates to the fight against HIV, “We believe it is possible to eliminate the problem. We no longer accept that HIV cannot be beaten and we no longer accept that when we bring HIV under control and it is no longer a public health scourge that it will be eliminated in somebody else’s lifetime…”
The Minister underscored his expectation that HIV will be eliminated in his lifetime even as he recounted how Guyana has long moved pass an era of struggles in the fight against the dreaded disease. He recalled the days when there was no money, no access to information, the relevant material, and no way to uncover needful biological data.
According to him, the Ministry then did not even have access to drugs, and by extension, the necessary treatment and care. In essence, he highlighted that there was no way of managing an HIV- infected patient.
He recounted that he had inherited the Ministry of Health at a time when almost 1,000 people were being recorded as dying of AIDS, a situation which has since been significantly transformed with the numbers being brought down to 200 on an annual basis.
“It was during my taking over that there was an astounding data of 48 percent of all commercial sex workers testing positive for HIV and it frightened me, and I said to myself, why am I becoming Minister now?  I remember looking at the children born to HIV positive mothers and it was between 35 and 40 percent being born with HIV. It was not the time for anyone to become Minister of Health…”
Ramsammy recalled that he had experienced a great degree of chagrin when the first formal study among pregnant women in Guyana was unveiled which revealed that there was a seven percent prevalence of the disease.
“I said this is not possible. This is not my Guyana…How was this such a big secret? Those of us who were there from the start when we looked at the situation, we did not see hope.”
But according to the Minister, he believes that with the progress that has been made, the local health sector is poised to win the battle against HIV.
He revealed that the sector has come at a time when both biological surveys and programmatic data show that there is now a 1.1 percent prevalence of the disease among pregnant women, proving that local efforts coupled with strategic partnership could effectively tackle the problem.
“From those days of looking at our sisters and brothers and knowing that they will die soon we have come to the time when we can diagnose people quickly and provide them with treatment. And we have come to the days when children in our primary schools know about HIV; about how it is transmitted and how it could be stopped.
Therefore I ask what’s stopping us from stopping HIV today. We know what we have to do.” And enormous assistance has been forthcoming from various quarters of the society, he said, even from the church, which had once denounced PLWHAs as people “who are facing the consequences of their ungodly actions.
We have come from the days of stigma and discrimination which was so palpable that people wouldn’t even attend a meeting for fear of being cast as a person living with HIV to a day when every citizen wants to be part of the fight and where the church is our strong partner.”
According to the Minister, he is proud of the progress that has been made over the years even as he disclosed that “I will be able to sleep well at nights because I know that there is no child at threat for being born with HIV.”
He, however, emphasised the need for persons to understand that being infected with HIV is not synonymous with an extrajudicial death, but rather is a disease that can be controlled if each citizen has the relevant information and is empowered to protect himself or herself.

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