HIV/AIDS — The Urgency of the task Ahead from the Perspective of Trinidad and Tobago

Abstract

Permit me to begin by thanking the joint sponsors of this Conference, The University of the West Indies, the Association of Caribbean Universities and Research Institutes (UNICA), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for affording me the opportunity to address this forum. I must tell you that I accepted the invitation most graciously, enthused straight away as I was by the very theme of the Conference: HIV/AIDS: The Power of Education. Additionally, the proposed launch this evening of a related and critically important publication entitled Education and HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean, which was co-sponsored by the International Institute for Economic Planning and UNESCO and co-authored by two outstanding scholars in the field, Professors Michael Kelly and Brendan Bain, further aroused my curiosity and rendered the present engagement the more alluring. To my mind, in a manner of speaking if ever there was a Conference of importance, this one is. HIV/AIDS is the most deleterious and formidable bio-social challenge facing the Caribbean and wider world at this time. For years it hung over our region like a dark, polluted and ominous cloud which, like the rest of the world, we allowed to overshadow us, through neglect and underestimation. With the threatened escalation of the HIV/AIDS virus all over the world by the second decade of this century, the cloud has now burst into a torrential downpour and the only way out of the deadly acid rain is to seek protection and escape. THe only way is through education. If ever there was a worthy agenda, this Conference which seeks to discuss the manner which through education HIV/AIDS can be better understood, and how education in the Caribbean can be made more relevant and appropriate to the challenge set us by this destructive and deadly pandemic, then this Conference is it. In a similar way, If ever there was a text worthy of the effort of it authors, the present publication by Professors Bain and Kelly, designed as it is to equip all in the Caribbean with information and understanding of what HIV/AIDS means and the diverse ways in which education can contribute to managing the disease, this is the text. I wish upfront to commend the organizers of this Conference and also to commend the two Professors on a book that is not only sorely needed but, from what I am already beginning to perceive, has been well researched and well written. Ladies and Gentlemen, the present Conference effort is all the more to be appreciated, given that less than a month ago, I addressed the Caribbean/United States Chiefs of Mission Conference on HIV/AIDS. At that conference, the United Nations Development programmeme in its report on Human Development had complained that all the world over, countries and institutions had not been doing enough to combat the spread of the deadly HIV/AIDS virus. The reasons that have been advanced to explain the tardy attitude of states and institutions are multifarious and complex. However, more and more we are being told of the lack of leadership and vision at the global, regional and national levels, and of the silence and denial by individuals and their families, and about the harmful attitudes and behaviours that negate and discriminate against those whose misfortune it was to find themselves infected by the dreaded disease. We are being told also of the failure of the international community and of national governments to commit financial and other resources towards the fight against HIV/AIDS, and of the inability of states and institutions to design and deliver adequate and appropriate response programmes and measures. We hear of too much focus on quick-fix solutions, stop-gap measures, and the lack of comprehensive policies to deal with HIV/AIDS, and of the focus on the problems of individuals rather than on the implications of HIV/AIDS for social degeneracy, nemesis and vaporization. …