Private health insurance for people suffering with HIV and Aids will soon be available in the Caribbean. The announcement was made yesterday by the Insurance Association of the Caribbean president, Douglas Camacho, at an insurance and health summit at the Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain. The summit, held by the Pan Caribbean Partnership (PANCAP) against HIV and Aids sought to facilitate dialogue between insurance companies and health care providers in the region to ensure the provision of insurance products for persons living with HIV. Camacho said: "The biggest challenge in providing such products in the past was the availability of data to the insurance sector to enable an active review and pricing mechanism for these products."
Camacho said from yesterday's meeting the insurance sector would be able to put mechanisms in place to bridge the gaps in data so that insurance would be available for HIV positive individuals. "There is no reason why HIV should be treated differently than diabetes and heart diseases," Camacho said. Camacho said once the insurance companies acquired the relevant data, those insurance products may be available in one or two years. "Unfortunately the Caribbean has been usually woefully inadequate in maintaining proper data on something that has been so taboo in the past," Camacho said. He added that the Actuarial Society of South Africa president Peter Doyle also would provide insight on the issue to participants of the summit.
South Africa is the first country in the world to provide private health insurance to HIV-positive individuals. In his address at the summit, Health Minister Dr Fuad Khan, commended the initiative. He said: "We, as a region, must focus on building capacity to care and support persons living with HIV/Aids." Khan also noted that there were 1,400 new HIV infections annually with significant racial and gender disparities. He said under the new National Health Insurance System, health care in T&T would be managed and financed through the pooling of health risks of the population and the financial contributions of enterprises, households and the Government. Khan said the system was part of the current Health Sector Reform Programme by his ministry and would be launched soon. "An important inclusion to the plan is the treatment of mental health conditions and sexually transmitted infections, primarily because these areas are typically excluded from private health insurance," Khan added.
