The Turks and Caicos Islands has recorded 57 new HIV cases since January of this year, according to the National HIV/AIDS Programme, but this figure may not reflect the true number of persons infected with the deadly disease over the period, since the number was obtained from the public health facilities only, as no numbers was released yet from the private clinics.

The new number was a source for debating at the 11th Annual High Schools Debating competition held at the Gustarvus Lightbourne Complex, on Wednesday, as the students argued about what role the church should play in the way forward to tackling the disease, which has now become a world-wide pandemic.

National AIDS Coordinator for the Turks and Caicos Islands, Aldora Robinson said the true figure could be revealed at the end of the year when the tally from both public health centres and private practices are tallied. According to her, the number could be increased significantly or stay at the current figure since there could be overlapping of data when statistics from the public and private hospitals are put together. “At the end of the year we are going tally up and then look at those that may have gone to the private sector and had an HIV test, and then come to the Government Clinic, to take another one because they don’t believe the results. They leave the Government clinic and go to the private sector.

“So, when we have ironed out all of those, we would have true figures, because sometimes the figures are duplicated. Sometimes they get the same persons accessing private and public hospitals, but at the end of the day when the information comes together you can see that this is the same person, so you scratch that one off – not very many cases, but it does happen. The number can be less when you have duplication sometimes,” Robinson pointed out.

Robinson said a number of persons in the community have realized or are of the view that they might be affected, but afraid to seek medical attention, since they were scared that they would be treated like a modern day leper. As a result, those persons stay underground and would willingly or unwillingly spread the disease. She said those persons would be reached in the coming months under the new thrust by the National HIV/AIDS Programme.

“We have a lot of persons in the community who feel they are HIV positive or know that they are HIV positive and not access treatment because of fear of discrimination, and the fear is that they don’t want Tom, Sue, Mary and Jane to know because of how they would react towards them”.

“So, as we bring the church on board to counteract some of that stigma and discrimination and to build capacity of love and health-centred self, we will also work with the private sector and bringing in all of those corporate bodies on board. We are planning a multi-sectoral approach, not only talking it, but walking it – getting into all those organizations on a regular basis, and also continue our school work,” she said.
Robinson said at the end of the day, the National HIV/AIDS Programme my not even get a true figure of what is the true reported rate of infection, since, for the most part, the private practices do not co-orporate in releasing such information to the authorities.
“This figure that we have is from the public sector, and may say that we are not getting the amount of co-orporation from the private sector that we need. We have some sections of the private sector not reporting (the rate of HIV/AIDS infection). We just need age, sex and nationality,’ Robinson said.

Robinson said steps are being taken by the National HIV/AIDS Programme to bridge cultural, language and social gap in order to lessen the spread of the deadly AIDS disease. According to her, the programme has been working with the Haitian community by training interpreters to reach those who are not too verse with the English Language.
“We are trying to bring on stream Spanish interpreters, and we are actually going into the work environment of different companies to try to address HIV and AIDS. Mostly, you would find contract workers and barmaids, waitresses and so on, not being up-to-date with their work permits, and we know what happens in bars. So those are the areas that we plann to target besides the church,” Robinson said.

“I think we will see a different in behavioral change in the adult population but it is going to be long and hard. But if we continue to work with the younger people we could still change their opinions. This campaign will be launched on World AIDS Day, which she said would be run under the theme: “B True 2 U; Got My Rubbaz.”