Bo­bie-lee Dixon

For the first time the T&T Cadet Force will host an HIV/Aids aware­ness walkathon on Sun­day, at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, and again on No­vem­ber 20, in To­ba­go. Its aim is to sen­si­tise the youth about the dead­ly virus.Ma­jor Joseph Bridge­wa­ter and chair­man/co-or­di­nat­ing of­fi­cer Lieu­tenant Paula Pan­tin dis­cussed the event and the im­pe­tus for which the de­ci­sion was tak­en with the T&T Guardian.

"This walkathon is re­al­ly to send a se­ri­ous mes­sage of HIV/Aids aware­ness, from pre­ven­tion to con­tract­ing the ill­ness, to prop­er di­ag­no­sis and test­ing, to treat­ment, are the ar­eas we are fo­cus­ing on," said Pan­tin.She dis­closed that af­ter an ex­pe­ri­ence which in­volved a teen cadet girl re­ceiv­ing wrong in­for­ma­tion from a health cen­tre on her HIV sta­tus, she knew that some­thing had to be done.

"That girl's sto­ry was a re­al eye-open­er for us be­cause what the child re­al­ly had was type 2 di­a­betes and at the time of her test­ing, her health was in ex­treme­ly poor con­di­tion, yet this health cen­tre gave this child a slip say­ing she was HIV pos­i­tive. Can you imag­ine if she did not come to me with the in­for­ma­tion she had, what would have hap­pened?

"She would have gone on be­liev­ing she was HIV pos­i­tive and we can't say how many oth­ers prob­a­bly suf­fered the same fate. So we re­al­ly need­ed to do some­thing about all of this. Test­ing must be done ac­cu­rate­ly and re­spon­si­bly to avoid er­rors as the one de­scribed, Pan­tin quipped.

World Aids Day 2011

In keep­ing with the an­nu­al glob­al recog­ni­tion and fight against HIV/Aids which is cel­e­brat­ed on De­cem­ber 1, the T&T Cadet Force hopes to meet the goals it has set for Sun­day.Ac­cord­ing to Pan­tin, one of its ob­jec­tives in­clude, ac­knowl­edg­ing that pre­ven­tion of HIV in­fec­tion must be the main­stay of the na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al re­sponse to the epi­dem­ic; and that care, sup­port and treat­ment for those in­fect­ed and af­fect­ed by HIV/Aids are giv­en more se­ri­ous at­ten­tion.

She al­so not­ed that pro­vid­ing the right in­for­ma­tion is the first part of car­ry­ing out a com­pre­hen­sive HIV/Aids ed­u­ca­tion.The walkathon is not a one-off thing by the cadet force, but rather the be­gin­ning of many HIV/Aids aware­ness pro­grammes, work­shops, sem­i­nars and ex­er­cis­es to come," ex­plained Pan­tin."We have asked all the youths of T&T to come out on that day and join the T&T Cadet Force in this fight against HIV/Aids."We have al­so in­vit­ed all youth-based or­gan­i­sa­tions, schools and the pub­lic to be a part of the be­gin­ning of a new to­mor­row. And we are tru­ly look­ing for­ward to em­pow­er­ing our youth so that they can make bet­ter choic­es when it comes to sex and sex­u­al­i­ty," she added.

Work­ing to­geth­er

As the say­ing goes, "all hands on deck." Bridge­wa­ter dis­closed even though they would like to re­ceive more as­sis­tance from cor­po­rate T&T to con­tin­ue this ven­ture, they have man­aged to get on board, the Min­istry of Health, Min­istry of Sports, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of T&T, Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, Cadet Force Di­vi­sion/Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and HIV/Aids Di­vi­sion/Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to sup­port the walkathon.

Com­man­der in Chief, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards will al­so lend his sup­port to the force when he joins the walk with the youth on Sun­day."This is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to re­al­ly take stock of our lives. HIV/Aids have tak­en so many loved ones from us and we ac­tu­al­ly have the chance to stop this from hap­pen­ing if we con­tin­ue to cre­ate aware­ness and to keep the ears and the eyes of the pub­lic stayed on pre­ven­tion."T&T's pop­u­la­tion is made up pri­mar­i­ly of young peo­ple and so the T&T Cadet Force as a youth or­gan­i­sa­tion can be used to pro­mote the ed­u­ca­tion process to this mar­ket," said Pan­tin.