The pres­ence of Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the 2012 In­ter­na­tion­al AIDS Con­fer­ence may not be enough to curb HIV in­fec­tion rates lo­cal­ly. As the bi-an­nu­al con­fer­ence takes place in Wash­ing­ton, DC, un­til Fri­day, some mem­bers of civ­il so­ci­ety and politi­cians are call­ing on cit­i­zens to aban­don dis­crim­i­na­tion and for the Gov­ern­ment to do even more.

Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Dr Amery Browne said Gov­ern­ment need­ed to recom­mit to a na­tion­al Aids pro­gramme. He said: "Whether or not Min­is­ter of State Roger Samuel at­tends this year's con­fer­ence, the big­ger is­sue is re­al­ly the bro­ken promis­es re­gard­ing a com­pre­hen­sive na­tion­al HIV co-or­di­nat­ing mech­a­nism and the abysmal judg­ment that was demon­strat­ed in dis­man­tling what was there pre­vi­ous­ly, in ad­vance of any ad­e­quate re­place­ment."

Browne is the for­mer tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al AIDS Co-or­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee (NACC) which was dis­band­ed in March last year to make way for a statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ty. The au­thor­i­ty will be es­tab­lished by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. Samuel is part of an of­fi­cial del­e­ga­tion to the con­fer­ence that al­so in­cludes Dr Bev­er­ly An­drews; Dona Da Cos­ta Mar­tinez, Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor; Min­istry of Health dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer, Dr Col­in Fur­longe and youth ad­vo­cate Ian Roy­er.

Ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials from the lo­cal Joint Unit­ed Na­tions Pro­gramme on HIV/Aids (UN­AIDS) of­fice, it is un­clear how many civ­il so­ci­ety rep­re­sen­ta­tives at­tend­ed out­side of the of­fi­cial del­e­ga­tion. A state­ment from UN­AIDS on Tues­day said: "The burn­ing ques­tion for the Caribbean at Aids 2012 is whether Gov­ern­ments will re­spond to the re­al­i­ty of their epi­demics." The Min­istry of Health, HIV/Aids Co-or­di­nat­ing Unit is re­spon­si­ble for na­tion­al Aids out­reach in place of the NACC.

Min­is­ter of Health Dr Fuad Khan said test­ing dri­ves were car­ried out every two to three months in con­junc­tion with re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties. He be­lieves one of the main ob­sta­cles to curb­ing HIV in­fec­tion rates are men who refuse to get test­ed. Khan re­ferred the T&T Guardian to Dr Bri­an Amour, di­rec­tor of the min­istry's HIV/Aids Unit. How­ev­er, Amour could not be reached for com­ment.

Re­fer­ring to the loss of the NACC as a "tragedy," Browne said re­spons­es to bat­tling HIV in T&T were not at risk. He added: "Strong pre­ven­tion mes­sages (in­clud­ing those on PTSC bus­es) are now fad­ing in­to the past. Strate­gies to re­duce stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion have be­come much more dis­joint­ed. "Worst of all, Trinidad and To­ba­go cur­rent­ly does not have a Na­tion­al HIV Strate­gic Plan (NSP)."

The last NSP ex­pired in 2010, ac­cord­ing to Browne, who added that 2010 was al­so the first year in many the Gov­ern­ment did not send a del­e­ga­tion to the In­ter­na­tion­al Aids con­fer­ence. Browne said the NACC was key to com­pil­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from con­fer­ence del­e­gates. Dur­ing the decade when the NACC op­er­at­ed, mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty rates de­creased while in­fec­tion rates "plateaued," ac­cord­ing to Browne.

He al­so said the num­ber of peo­ple turn­ing out for test­ing in­creased 100 per cent. He added: "Since 2010 we have had no NACC and a lack of pol­i­cy-mak­ers at­tend­ing such key con­fer­ences. This af­fects our abil­i­ty to learn from the suc­cess­es of oth­er na­tions and lim­its our scope to share our lo­cal ex­pe­ri­ences with the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty."

When for­mer Caribbean Coali­tion of Na­tion­al Aids pro­gramme co-or­di­na­tor (CC­NAPC), Sharon Mot­t­ley, at­tend­ed the con­fer­ence in 2010, her or­gan­i­sa­tion was spon­sored by the Pan Caribbean Part­ner­ship against HIV/AIDS (PAN­CAP).

Mot­t­ley said par­tic­i­pa­tion in these con­fer­ences was im­por­tant for var­i­ous rea­sons.

"You get up­dates on med­ical treat­ments, on trends, you find out what de­vel­op­ing coun­tries need to know and you see mod­els of ef­fec­tive treat­ment and sup­port ser­vices around the world and even hear sto­ries from peo­ple who are liv­ing suc­cess­ful­ly with HIV," she said.