GOVERNMENT CONDUCTS SITUATION ANALYSIS RE: AIDS

By the end of August, the government of the BVI should receive a Consultant’s report on the situation as it relates to the deadly Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in the territory.

Consultant Psychologist Claudette Francis left here last Saturday after carrying out research for the study, which is funded by the Caribbean
Epidemiology Centre (CAREC) and the local Ministry of Health. The situation and response analysis for HIV/AIDS is a pre-requisite activity to
strategic planning for National AIDS programmes.

Sometime in June marked 20 years since the first case of AIDS was isolated and identified as AIDS. The United Nations has also recently started an AIDS fund and is trying to get the developed countries to contribute monies to the prevention and control efforts internationally.
During the last week in June, the UN met in General Assembly trying to address the problem of HIV. According to Ms. Francis, the U.N as a security agency tends to look at the world’s well being in terms of the continuity of mankind and to deal with wars ad other such major issues.

This is the first time that a disease was addressed, speaking to the significance of the disease in terms of world security. “Twenty years into this epidemic, every country should at one point stop and look at what have we done, has it worked, has it not worked, why didn’t it work, what do we need to do in the future, what are the factors that are influencing spread, behaviour…making it difficult for people to heed messages and adopt prevention strategies,” she stated.

During this her second visit on this assignment to the BVI, she adopted a qualitative research approach. She met with government officials in Mental
Health, Education and Social Services and other focus groups, including youth groups, the media, residents from the Dominican Republic and other
individuals on Virgin Gorda and St. Thomas at the STD Clinic doing key informant interviews.

Following a meeting with members of the media last Thursday, Ms. Francis pointed out that the media is an agent of social change. “In social change,
we’re really talking about information dissemination, educating people and improving their understanding of the issues and then of course to model
and support behaviours that are best suited for the circumstance,” she explained.

The media therefore is called upon to recognize the social and economic impact of HIV and would be an interested and active player in any prevention
and control programme.

She said underlying all of this, she was getting an appreciation of how the political, social, economic and cultural factors are impacting on the service.
“For instance, a prevention programme for the British Virgin Islands, you put the British there…but the culture is heavily American based,” Ms. Francis noted. “But can you find or identify yourself in an American based prevention programme; does the American based prevention programme reach this country? Probably not!”

She said culturally, therefore, one has to develop local interventions that people here can identify with. She said politically, there are issues around
social mobilization, social change, with the major one centres on the dynamics between Belongers and non-Belongers.

“Whether I belong or don’t belong, we all need the islands to be HIV safe,” the Consultant Psychologist contended. Ms. Francis said she hopes the
government would seriously consider her findings, disseminate the information widely and use it for the purposes for which it is intended, i.e. to move to strategically planning to deal with HIV. “I hope they would move towards an expanded response to HIV and I say an expanded response because in an expanded response, it is not only the government sector that acts, but the community, the business sector, the media, everybody has to act.”

Latest figures indicate that there were up to 17 reported cases of AIDS in the British Virgin Islands up to last year.