Kali­fa Clyne

A new in­sur­ance bill is be­ing draft­ed to treat with dis­crim­i­na­tion by in­sur­ance com­pa­nies against HIV pos­i­tive cit­i­zens. This was re­vealed by Min­is­ter of State in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Rodger Samuel. Samuel made the rev­e­la­tion yes­ter­day dur­ing a break­fast sem­i­nar on HIV in the Work­place host­ed by the Hu­man Re­source As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (HRMATT) at the Crowne Plaza, Port-of-Spain. While re­spond­ing dur­ing a ques­tion and an­swer ses­sion at the sem­i­nar, Samuel said the new in­sur­ance bill would deal with in­sur­ing peo­ple in­fect­ed with HIV as well as en­sur­ing that in­sur­ance com­pa­nies paid out on poli­cies to per­sons who con­tract the virus. A call to three lead­ing health in­sur­ance providers re­vealed that nei­ther health nor life in­sur­ance cov­er­age would be giv­en to HIV pos­i­tive per­sons.

In his ad­dress, Samuel dis­closed to par­tic­i­pants that the eco­nom­ic im­pact of HIV/AIDS as of 2009 was es­ti­mat­ed at $41.25 mil­lion, with the cost of treat­ing one per­son with HIV per year at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $14,000. He said cal­cu­la­tions based on fig­ures pre­sent­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) sug­gest­ed that 19,472 peo­ple with HIV get up and go to work in T&T on a dai­ly ba­sis. Samuel de­scribed the ma­jor eco­nom­ic im­pact of the virus on the coun­try, with Gov­ern­ment pay­ing near­ly $20 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly for an­ti retro­vi­ral treat­ment. Samuel said the ILO had iden­ti­fied AIDS as a work­place is­sue as it im­pact­ed on work­ers, their fam­i­lies and de­pen­dants, en­ter­pris­es and na­tion­al economies. He said T&T had a na­tion­al work­place pol­i­cy on HIV/AIDS but there was an is­sue of im­ple­men­ta­tion and en­force­ment of the guide­lines.

The min­is­ter said aside from the na­tion­al work­place pol­i­cy, Gov­ern­ment had al­so de­vel­oped a work­place pol­i­cy on HIV to ad­dress the pe­cu­liar­i­ties of the health sec­tor. Samuel said a work­place pol­i­cy was nec­es­sary for every com­pa­ny but this alone could not com­bat the stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion of the virus. Samuel said from lec­tur­ing in schools he had de­duced that the av­er­age Form One stu­dent al­ready had three or four sex­u­al part­ners. Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Don­na Da Cos­ta Mar­tinez said em­ploy­ers had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to es­tab­lish work­place poli­cies on HIV/AIDS. She said dis­crim­i­na­tion at the work­place could re­sult in a re­duc­tion of fam­i­ly fi­nances mak­ing the HIV pos­i­tive in­di­vid­ual feel like more of a bur­den to fam­i­ly.