Inter Press Service - December 15, 2000
George Alleyne

This move means that the HIV/AIDS budget will increase significantly, from its current 600,000 dollars to over 12 million dollars annually.

Officials are unable to say exactly when the programme will begin, but it is expected to provide some financial relief for those infected with HIV (the Human Immunodeficiency Virus) that causes AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). HIV patients spend 800 dollars a month on AIDS medication. Currently such drugs are available without cost only to pregnant women.

Prime Minister Owen Arthur, who made the announcement recently, spoke of an ambitious drive to cut by half the number of deaths attributed to AIDS, within one year.

According to Dr Roland Knight of the environmental health department of the health ministry, in Barbados there is a short survival rate of 10 to 12 months for persons who have moved from the stage of HIV infection to full blown AIDS.

"There is very little doubt that use of the three-drug cocktail will significantly prolong the life of persons with HIV and AIDS." He did not say by how much longer the drugs will prolong life, but said that it significantly improves the quality of life of those affected.

This Eastern Caribbean island has an infection rate above two percent of the population which means that the disease is no longer restricted to marginalised groups but is now among the general public where experts say it could spread rapidly if unchecked.

The Barbados infection rate of two percent reflects that of the Caribbean where, at the end of last year there was a reported 360,000 people in the region living with HIV. Experts believe, however, that owing to much under-reporting the figure might have been closer to 500,000.

With no hard evidence to go on it is estimated that in Barbados for every five persons testing positive, there is one infected person remaining untested and therefore unreported.

This is another reason Dr Knight welcomes the announcement that anti-retroviral drugs will be free for all.

"When implemented, a number of infected persons who have not presented themselves for treatment will present themselves. It will give us better control of the progress of the disease."

He said that Barbados' current public education programmes on the disease are being done somewhat blindly, and the experience of health authorities in the past has been that when treatment for other ailments, such as diabetes, was made free, more people came forward.

"If there is not treatment for a condition, then there is an unlikelihood of people coming forward to present themselves for treatment. That has been our experience with other treatment."

At the end of 1999 there were 1,800 of Barbados's 265,000 people were living with HIV and AIDS; 130 of them died that same year. Just over 1,200 have died of the disease since the first two cases were reported in 1984.

In 1998 a bio-Statistician at the PAHO/WHO Caribbean Epidemiology Centre, Yvette Holder, projected that half the men between the ages of 25 and 44 will die of AIDS by the year 2020.

Along with the heavy financial injection for the drug treatment, Prime Minister Arthur recently told a Caribbean conference on HIV and AIDS that he plans to move the national AIDS task force office from the health ministry to his office in order to supervise its operations directly.

"We have to stop the numbers of people who are dying and we have to stop the number of people who are affected and thereby staunch the spread of the disease and reduce its incidence in the society and the toll it will be taking," Arthur said.

The region is only now facing up to the fact that it has an infection rate second in the world only to sub-Saharan Africa, which has a rate of eight percent.

In addition, in the tragedy in human lives there is the ballooning cost of health care with the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre reporting 25 percent of hospital beds in many of the region's countries being taken up by AIDS patients.

There is also the likely impact it will have on the workforce as this disease is taking a heavy toll on the young. Health officials here in Barbados are recommending that there be a programme specifically aimed at people below the age of 35.

For the period April to June this year there were 53 reported AIDS cases, and Senior Medical Officer Dr Elizabeth Ferdinand said of that number, 33 of them were 34 years old or younger.

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