In the wake of the Gov­ern­ment's March clo­sure of the Na­tion­al Aids Co­or­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee (NACC), the coun­try's main mech­a­nism for co­or­di­na­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of re­sources for re­spons­es to HIV since 2004, NGOs wor­ried about how to sus­tain pro­grammes to fight the epi­dem­ic.They were par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned be­cause, un­like in the rest of the re­gion, the epi­dem­ic does not show the same promise of re­lent­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.How­ev­er, good news has come for the coun­try's old­est group serv­ing gay and bi­sex­u­al men, one of the pop­u­la­tion's most vul­ner­a­ble to in­fec­tion by HIV.

An in­ter­na­tion­al foun­da­tion has se­lect­ed Friends for Life among nine Caribbean groups re­ceiv­ing fund­ing from a spe­cial ini­tia­tive. The pro­gramme was set up in 2007 be­cause "the world's in­abil­i­ty to pre­vent wide­spread HIV in­fec­tion among men who have sex with men is one of the great­est pub­lic health fail­ures in the fight against Aids."The fund­ing, from am­fAR: the Foun­da­tion for Aids Re­search, will help Friends for Life strength­en the life skills coun­selling they pro­vide to help their clients main­tain safe prac­tices and cope with the dis­crim­i­na­tion and hurt they face dai­ly.

They will al­so make ed­u­ca­tion­al ma­te­r­i­al and HIV pre­ven­tion de­vices, like con­doms, and lu­bri­cants, avail­able to par­tic­i­pants in the pro­gramme. The group's pres­i­dent is al­so hope­ful about a new part­ner­ship be­ing ironed out with the Min­istry of Health on a for­ward-think­ing ini­tia­tive to tar­get HIV test­ing to hard­er-to-reach groups who are es­pe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to HIV. "This new ini­tia­tive al­lows us to bring test­ing ser­vices to our com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in a non-judge­men­tal car­ing en­vi­ron­ment," said Luke Sin­nette."Too many times gay men and trans per­sons just do not go to get test­ed be­cause of the way they are treat­ed when they go to pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ties." Both projects in­volve part­ner­ships with faith-based groups and with long-stand­ing sex­u­al health or­gan­i­sa­tions. Ser­vices will al­so be of­fered to male sex work­ers.