InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 22 October 1997.
Wesley Gibbings

His sister, a well-known national personality, who requested anonymity, says it was "the most terrible thing I have ever seen." Her brother was covered in sores, was reduced to half his body weight and said he wanted to die the first day the nurses fitted him with an adult diaper.

Prem's homosexual partner died three years ago. His family feared for his own health though he continued playing cricket and frequenting the gymnasium. In Trinidad and Tobago, public education programmes have helped de-stigmatise the disease, but when Prem died, his sister's friends were told he had fallen ill "suddenly" and had died.

Less than a month before her brother died, Haffiz, the son of a colleague was buried quickly to avoid the inevitable questions. He, too (a father of two young children), had gone the hard way.

"I talked to Imshah (the boy's father) and he told me that his son had died ... he didn't say from what ... but I knew, because I was going through the same thing," she told IPS.

Now, she plans to talk to her 12 year old son about the disease before it is too late for him. "Nobody should ever have to suffer so," she said.

In the region, the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre (CAREC), a division of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), is also concerned about the impact of HIV/AIDS on the region's young population.

"CAREC has begun to discuss with ministries of health in its member countries, strategies for encouraging politicians, businessmen, trade unionists and other opinion leaders the repercussions of HIV/AIDS," a statement from the Centre says.

The institution has every reason to be concerned. As of the end of 1996, the region had verified 10,000 full-blown AIDS cases since first reporting of the disease in 1982. It is estimated that by the year 2020, the figure could rise to 30,000. Researchers are, however, quick to point out that the official figures represent "reported cases" only and do not, as well, include HIV infections.

Of that number, six percent of such cases involved young children and adolescents. Worldwide, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS reported 400,000 cases of HIV-infected children under the age of 15 last year. Another 350,000 died of AIDS.

The United States Bureau of the Census estimates that by the year 2010, if the spread of HIV is not contained, AIDS may increase infant mortality by as much as 75 percent and mortality in children under five by 100 percent in regions most affected by the disease.

Haffiz's estranged wife, Esther, has taken their two children for test after test since he was first diagnosed about five years ago. She still fears for her own health and life. She had thrown him out after his diagnosis and confession that he had had a long-standing relationship with another woman.

The children's tests have come back negative, but Esther is taking no chances. CAREC says it isn't either. It says it is placing special emphasis on the issue of child sufferers on the observation of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1.

"The World AIDS Day theme -- Children Living in a World with AIDS -- is particularly pertinent to the Caribbean scenario," CAREC says. "Figures show that males are more affected by the disease than females in all age groups with the exception of those between 15 and 19 years of age.

"This suggests that female teenagers are more likely than any other group to be exposed to HIV infection," the Centre says.

Since the beginning of the epidemic, well over two million HIV positive children have been born to infected mothers, while hundreds of thousands of children have acquired the virus from blood transfusion or through sex.

"The persistent upward spiral of HIV/AIDS among children in the Caribbean is matched by the increasing incidence of the disease occurring in women," CAREC says. "Mother to child transmission has become a major concern in the region because of the potential of this trend to compromise major achievements made in maternal and child health in recent decades."

PAHO has, for example, eradicated polio as a threat in the Americas and important gains have been made in a number of childhood diseases including measles.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has defined a child as every human being under the age of 15. "In the context of this definition," CAREC says, "current and projected rates of HIV/AIDS among children could place them in the category of the most endangered on the population groups affected by the disease."

Health workers at two of Trinidad and Tobago's major public hospitals know the problem all too well. At the Port of Spain and San Fernando General Hospitals, HIV-infected newborn often stare from their incubators at beds vacated by mothers too afraid to confront the reality of a growing tragedy.

The CAREC campaign aims at minimising the number of these little ones who are left behind. (end/ips/pr-hr/wg/cb/97)

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IP971007

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