Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Rhe­ma Lewis, HIV/AIDS Co­or­di­nat­ing Unit at the Min­istry of Health re­vealed that 45 per cent of new­ly in­fect­ed adults for HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean re­gion are women.

How­ev­er, T&T is said to be well on its way to be­com­ing one of the first coun­tries to end HIV/AIDS with­in its bor­ders.

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh dis­closed this in his mes­sage on World AIDS Day that was com­mem­o­rat­ed yes­ter­day.

World AIDS Day, des­ig­nat­ed on De­cem­ber 1 every year since 1988, is an in­ter­na­tion­al day ded­i­cat­ed to rais­ing aware­ness of the AIDS pan­dem­ic caused by the spread of HIV in­fec­tion and mourn­ing those who have died of the dis­ease and is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple world­wide to unite to fight HIV.

In 2018, the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed record­ed that the health min­istry spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$70 mil­lion on the pur­chase of an­ti-retro­vi­ral drugs, CD4 reagents and rapid HIV test kits.

Deyals­ingh said the im­ple­men­ta­tion of sev­er­al strate­gic ini­tia­tives has brought T&T clos­er to the elim­i­na­tion of the dis­ease lo­cal­ly.

He fur­ther ex­plained that last year the Min­istry of Health com­menced its en­hanced mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry pro­gramme, “This ini­tia­tive sup­port­ed the im­proved pro­cess­ing of tests, the faster turn­around time for re­sults and re­al-time ac­cess to re­sults and re­ports for clin­i­cians.”

The en­hanced mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry ser­vice equip­ment is al­ready op­er­a­tional at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex and the Med­ical Re­search Foun­da­tion T&T.

“In­di­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, we must all do our part to in­crease aware­ness of HIV/AIDS risk fac­tors and ways to ac­cess di­ag­no­sis, treat­ment and care ser­vices. As we join the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty in ob­ser­vance of World AIDS Day, I en­cour­age every­one to work with the Min­istry of Health and our part­ners to achieve 90-90-90 tar­gets and cre­ate a health­i­er and hap­pi­er T&T,” Deyals­ingh said.