Anguilla Reviews Benefits Of DFID-Funded HIV/AIDS Project

Health, tourism and education personnel, meeting at the Teachers’ Resource Centre in Anguilla on Monday, November 7, reviewed the four year-old HIV/AIDS project funded by the Department for International Development (DFID).

DFID Consultants and Anguillian personnel

The project, entitled “Taking Action Against HIV and AIDS in the UK Overseas Territories”, was aimed at ensuring a low rate of sexual infection transmission and improving the quality of life for those living with HIV infections.

Participants at the meeting

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Social Development, Dr. Bonnie Richardson-Lake, said that in order to achieve that goal, territories were offered technical assistance to strengthen their capacity to lead an integrated national sexual reproduction health response.

“There are a number of outputs for this project here in Anguilla,” the Permanent Secretary said. “These included the Tourism HIV Study; the Policy and Legislative Review which resulted in a series of recommendations; draft legislation to be considered by policy-makers; training for teachers to conduct health and family-life education; and the development of the terms of reference for a multi-sectoral HIV Committee.”

Dr. Richardson-Lake stressed that the issue of HIV required input from all sectors. “It is partially a health matter, but there are many other players that are important in this fight against HIV,” she stated.
She emphasised that it was important to ensure that young people were equipped with the necessary knowledge and information to keep them free of HIV infections. “With young people making up more than half of those living HIV, it is now more important than ever to ensure that our young people are getting a quality education,” Dr. Richardson-Lake continued.

“The training of health and family-life education teachers was an important step in ensuring that HIV prevention messages are reaching our children. Stigma and discrimination continue to fuel the HIV pandemic, and the very laws and policies put in place to protect the public, in many cases, are either blatantly or inadvertently discriminatory against those living with HIV. The policy and legislative review was key to helping us understand how some of these issues are at play here in Anguilla, with a view to making amendments to discriminatory laws and policies that we may have in place. Executive Council has not yet ratified the recommendations coming out of the review, and these recommendations will be presented to Council shortly for consideration.”

Education Officer for Primary School Education, Veda Harrigan, said children were faced with numerous physical and social difficulties, thus increasingly making teaching a challenge. “Given our mandate of ensuring the total development of students, school is the place to address the social and physical issues confronting the students,” she said. “Health and Family life Education had been recognised as the programme and approach to deal with the issues…It has been proven that health and education are intrinsically linked in ensuring a productive community.”

Ms. Harrigan said that the Caricom curriculum for Health and Family Life Education was developed for use by schools in the region. “In Anguilla, which is one of the smaller islands in the Eastern Caribbean, there are six public primary schools, with an approximate population of 1400, and one comprehensive secondary school,” Ms. Harrigan told the meeting. “Issues faced by youth in Anguilla are no different to those faced by youth in the rest of the Caribbean region. In this programme, that forms the foundation of the Anguilla Health and Family Life Education curriculum, we adopted and adapted the regional programme. A customised programme was developed for kindergarten to grade three classes, and our grades four to six will use the Caricom curriculum as is.”

Alfred Thompson, General Manager of Carimar Beach Club, one of the properties which participated in the tourism project, spoke about the workshop for the industry workers. “The underline reasons were to determine the general level and knowledge within our industry of the HIV/AIDS virus and its effects on the tourism industry through the workers,” he explained. “It also involved an understanding of our own lifestyles, social habits and practices which suggested alternatives for implementation as well as highlighted some potential pitfalls and dangers within the workplace and between co-workers.”

Mr. Thompson was of the view that some sound ideas and best practices were learnt over the past few months.

An overview of the DFID project, outcomes, challenges and the emerging best practices was delivered by Ms. Arlene Husbands, DFID’s Technical Advisor, and Mrs. Civilla Kentish, former Coordinator of the National AIDS Programme. Ms. Husbands said that in addition to Anguilla, there were four other UK Overseas Territories which participated in the project. “The idea is to share some of the good practices across the OTs in order that they can see what is happening, and what they may wish to replicate in carrying out this work that has been started,” she stated. “We have to keep up with this epidemic and therefore we have to re-sharpen our tools and put all of our efforts to continue to address this epidemic.”

Other speakers included Ms. Lydia Elliott, the Policy & Legislation Drafting Consultant, who gave a related presentation on the DFID-funded HIV/AIDS project.