Inter Press Service - June 3, 1999
Peter Richards

Officials from the Nursery will not disclose the names of the children or the schools where they will be placed as they fear a protest action by some parents, teachers and school administrators since the two children in question are carrying the virus which causes the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Steve Solomon, the Nursery's director says parents and teachers have protested in the past about children with AIDS attending public schools and this only underscores the need for education on the disease.

"It points to a lack of understanding," he says.

RAPPORT, a Youth Information Centre, which is a project of the National AIDS Programme here, says the issue of HIV-infected students being accepted in public schools dominate their presentations made throughout the country.

"We get it a lot at Parent Teachers Association meetings," says Beverly King, Manager of RAPPORT. She says some parents openly indicate that the affected children should be placed "on an island or somewhere".

"It's so sad," she says, recalling RAPPORT's attempt last year to get HIV-infected children into primary schools here. "We failed, we did not get through."

"Parents do not want to accept AIDS, I think we need to focus on education," she told IPS.

Jessica Joseph, a resident of Port of Spain, in a letter to a local newspaper also condemned the attitude of parents and teachers who are not in favour of HIV- infected children being placed in public schools.

She reminded them that it is much easier for their children to catch the 'flu, hepatitis, chicken pox, measles and even cholera than "it would to get AIDS from mere social contact, such as playing, drinking the same water etc".

"How many of you worried parents have more than one sexual partner and never use protection? How many of you parents know for sure that you aren't HIV positive," she wrote.

But one mother who made it clear that she was not in favour of HIV- infected children attending public schools reminded parents that children in schools "fight, scratch each other and they bleed".

"I totally disagree with children with HIV being in schools with our children," the mother from the central village of Caroni said on a television talk show Wednesday.

Another caller from Trinidad's sister island of Tobago called on the authorities to "build a school for those children".

"Once other children in the school know this child has AIDS, they will be discriminated against," the caller said.

But Dr. Dalali Camara head of the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre (CAREC), special programme on Sexually Transmitted Diseases, who also appeared on the television programme disagreed.

"A child with HIV has the right to go to school. HIV people are everywhere," he said.

Moreover, said Camara, if government were to build a special school for children, "teachers would be willing to teach there" because of the stigmatisation that would be attached to a school catering only to HIV students.

"We know how HIV is transmitted, a child sitting next to another child cannot get HIV," he said.

Two years ago Caribbean Education Ministers endorsed a Health and Family Life Education programme as part of the school curriculum to help teachers and students deal with various health issues. The programme, Camara said, is working "very well in St. Lucia" and in the other Caribbean islands.

The Ministries of Health and Education here have been discussing the inclusion of AIDS-related matters on the school curriculum with a view to its implementation during this academic year.

Meanwhile, CAREC says the number of HIV-infected children in the region today is directly related to the unsafe sexual practices of their parents.

It is estimated that there are more than 300 cases of HIV infection for every 100,000 persons in Trinidad and Tobago, with those most affected being within the age group 20-44 years.

"That's the most productive group in the country," says economist Roger McClean, noting that the situation is similar in many Caribbean states where there is "an alarming increase" in the HIV virus.

Trinidad's Chief Medical Officer Dr. Rawle Edwards estimates that 35 persons die of AIDS here each month while another 40 contract the virus each week. In 1996, 28 children here were reported to be carrying the virus and 15 others died from AIDS-related complications. Many of these children are orphans.

But Dexter Brereton, a volunteer with the Nursery says the prospect of an early and painful death has not diminished the children's zeal for living.

"In the sounds of their laughter and cries at play, one hears all the music of a happy home," he wrote in an article about the children.

The two children preparing for school have been staying at the Nursery since 1994. It operates a 24-hour facility for children with the HIV/AIDS. It is also home to 24 other children carrying the virus. These children range in age from six months to 10 years.

Originally founded as a Day Nursery providing relief for employed women in need of somewhere to leave their children while they went off to work, it almost went out of business when many of those women lost their jobs as a result of declining economy. It then changed focus and began catering to the needs of the children carrying the HIV virus. (END/IPS/pr/cb/99)

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