CMO stresses need for increased collaboration to widen HIV awareness

Apr 12, 2014 News

The only way to effectively address all health challenges, particularly HIV, is to have an integrated approach across all sectors. This concept was amplified by Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Shamdeo Persaud, during a recent HIV stakeholders meeting venued at the Hadfield Street, Georgetown, Regency Suites/Hotel. Dr. Persaud, at that forum, informed that Guyana has long been working towards embracing an integrated strategy in this regard.

Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Shamdeo Persaud

In fact, he disclosed that at a recent Global Conference on Health Promotion held in Finland, which was attended by 187 countries, there was consensus that addressing health challenges requires this very integrated approach. “So you will hear commonly now, buzz words like ‘health in all policies’, you will hear also ‘addressing social determinants of health’, you will also hear ‘all of society’, ‘all of Government’; those are new terminologies,” saidthe CMO. These, he said, speak to collaborating in order to ensure that health care is provided.
According to him though, the fight against HIV/AIDS is one of the crucial areas that “we have to put (more) hands together to fight.” It is the view of Dr. Persaud, that increased collaborations are essential in light of the fact that there are yet many issues related to the access to care in this regard. “We may be providing treatment at a lot more sites; we may have integrated treatment services into regular health services but there is still probably some work to be done,” underscored Dr. Persaud.
He went on to explain that while there are key populations that should be receiving information, particularly in the advocacy arena, this requirement may very well still be peripheral in terms of ongoing efforts. Moreover, he noted that “this whole social revolution, as it were, in terms of moving people to a healthy state, regardless of where they are, is extremely important.”
He alluded to those engaged in various activities in mining communities, for instance, as particularly crucial targets. “Not everybody in a mining community digs for gold; there are a large proportion of people, who have nothing to do with the actual precious metal, but are engaged in other services and they might, at some point, become involved sexually. That is always a risk…there are the teachers and even the health workers who are part of national systems out there,” observed Dr. Persaud, as he amplified the need for the right information to reach them too.
As such, the CMO stressed the need for efforts to be made to fully embrace an innovative project of the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP) which directs much focus to mobile populations across the Caribbean. He disclosed that it was not so long ago that Guyana and Suriname were included in that project to examine the movement of such populations. And according to Dr. Persaud, “when you look at just the transportation service between Georgetown and Paramaribo, and if you ask persons simple questions about HIV they are at a lost… I mean they know all the music they have to play in their vehicles, they know the exchange rate by the minute but they don’t know about HIV.”
However, the CMO is confident that these very persons are in fact in a strategic place to help raise awareness about the disease. “I think they might very well have the influences to help raise awareness when it comes to this particular epidemic of HIV,” said Dr. Persaud.
Moreover, he underscored that “we have to reach these people; so I think that the challenge is still out there for our Non-Governmental Organisations and our national system to get more involved, to get their acts together, and address this need for increased awareness.”