Latest update January 11th, 2025 4:10 AM
Latest News
- Govt, US-Exim Bank sign US$527 million for GTE project
- Rystad Energy issues misleading analysis on Guyana’s share from ExxonMobil contract
- Deaths from Israeli attacks in Gaza undercounted by 41 percent, study finds
- PNC calls for doubling of minimum wage, tax free threshold to be increased to $400,000 monthly
- Pensioner dies at CJIA while waiting to board flight to New York
HIV/Aids eating away at region’s labour, productivity – UWI economist
Caribbean governments need to take ownership of HIV/Aids and non-communicable diseases epidemics which are doing serious harm to the region’s human resources and productivity, and allocate one per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) to counter their spread, says UWI economist Prof Karl Theodore.
With regard to the HIV/Aids epidemic, in order to build on the success of a 14 per cent decline in new cases over the last nine years, Theodore, head of the Health Economics Unit of UWI, St Augustine, told the 2011 Caribbean Conference on HIV in the Bahamas last Sunday, that the annual projected spending on HIV/Aids needs to be increased to US$180 million, up from the US$165 million average over the last few years.
This will amount to just 0.3 per cent of the GDP of the economies of the region, Theodore told an audience of experts working in the field, non-governmental organisations and persons living with HIV/Aids(PLWHA) at the conference centre at the Atlantis Hotel on Paradise Island. He urged them to join their efforts to that of those working in non-communicable diseases “to clamour for the resources from governments.”
“It is to be a matter of the political will for the region to take full ownership of the epidemic and the will to mobilise a miniscule fraction of income to confront a survival threat,” Theodore said.
In analysing expenditure patterns by three different countries on HIV/Aids, one country which was not identified spent a total of US$50 million on combating the disease (2002-2009), amounting to 0.5 per cent out of a total income of US$135 billion. For another country, the expenditure over the same period was 0.2 per cent, and 0.4 per cent of total income by the third country.
AT RISK: LOSING DONOR FUNDS
Analysing the difficult world economic and financial climate, Theodore says the region should assume that it will lose 50 per cent of donor funds from agencies such as the Global Fund. The fund has graduated the Caribbean into a middle-income region with high per capita income and a declining HIV/Aids epidemic, Haiti and Guyana being the possible exceptions of the graduated status.
UWI economist Prof Karl Theodore
The recommended expenditure Theodore said should be considered the taking out of an insurance policy on human and financial loss.
“We are insuring against sickness and death of workers and citizens; the epidemic is causing us to spend money on treatment, care and prevention, money which could have been spent on education to build our countries,” Theodore told the Business Guardian.
He likened the economy to an entity standing on the pillars of labour supplies, savings and capital and HIV is “cutting away at both of them.” Studies conducted by the UWI Health Economics Unit have shown that HIV is causing loss of income amounting to between four and six per cent.
“If we stand to lose four to six per cent of GDP and to save that, you are called upon to spend just one per cent, it would seem to make sense,” Theodore said. To create the fiscal space to fund the programme, the economist suggests reform of the tax base and to bring greater efficiencies to the system.
“I am not going to call names, but there are countries in this region where the per capita income is US$20,000 (an average of annual earnings of individuals) while the governments have serious fiscal deficits; that is ridiculous it means that governments have decided not to go out and collect monies,” Theodore said.
HIV/AIDS AND HIGH-RISK GROUPS
While governments will maintain responsibility for their health systems, there will be areas for implementation of a regional programme. He cited programmes to counter the spread of the epidemic amongst such high-risk groups as men who have sex with men and commercial sex workers, which need to take on a regional nature “as people from these groups are travelling all over the region.”
Purchasing anti-retroviral drugs from international pharmaceutical companies to keep PLWHA in good quality health and prolong their lives is another area for a regional effort through the Pan-Caribbean HIV Partnership (PANCAP) identified by Theodore.
Similar Articles
THE BLUNT OF THE DAY
Sports
Features/Columnists
Dem signs need calibrating
Dem Boys Seh… Kaieteur News- Dem boys bin pass one of dem fancy speed meter signs wah de guvament put up fuh tell drivers... more
Forget Begging Rich Nations: Caribbean Countries Should Act to Save Themselves
By Sir Ronald Sanders Kaieteur News- It has long been evident that the world’s richest nations, especially those responsible... more
Weekend Cartoon
