The National Aids Commission today launched its national policy and strategic plan for HIV and Aids for the next five years. The documents outline the battle plain to contain and curb the spread of HIV and Aids. It will be used by policy makers, medical professionals and field workers and at this morning's launching we found that it covers many areas, but stays true to one mission.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
In launching its national policy on HIV and Aids and the national strategic plan for 2006 to 2011, the National Aids Commission first had to give a look at the situation of the pandemic as at March of this year.
Dr. Paul Edwards,
"When we talk about the leading causes of death in Belize, HIV/Aids is ranked among the five leading causes of death. We talk about chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease; definitely road traffic accidents is thrown in there. Last year HIV/Aids was ranked number five,within the first five leading causes. However with some underreporting, we know it could very well be also the leading cause of death in this country.
When we look at the number of HIV/Aids infections, and this I say is part of what we call some of where our efforts, some of our minor achievements. We know from when the first case of Aids was diagnosed in 1986 we've seen a continuous increase and that is anticipated. Basically here those individuals when they became ill were diagnosed at that time. When we look at the years from 2000 until 2006, we note here that instead of going from 226 to 330, 431, and 560--we have started to plateau up. Having the information for the first two quarters of this year, approximately 200, then we will anticipate that we will have somewhere around four hundred to four hundred and fifty at the ending of the year 2006. So it is evident then from the information that we have that we are starting to plateau up. However let us not become complacent due to the fact that we are starting to plateau. It will take a couple years more for there to be a descent."
Ambassador Dolores Balderamos-Garcia, NAC
"We are beginning to see the plateauing of the epidemic with about three to four hundred cases more every year and that is not going up to eight hundred and a thousand. But at the same time, three and four hundred cases a year is not good. It is still much much too much and we have to, from the plateau stage now, the time to deliver efforts will have to make sure that it goes down."
Dolores Balderamos Garcia, the chairperson of the National Aids Commission says that it is in this process that the strategic plan and the national policy will come in.
Ambassador Dolores Balderamos-Garcia,
"The National Strategic Plan is a roadmap or a means of us setting out what we hope to accomplish in the next five years. And as a roadmap as such what it does is it sets out our major goal and then our objectives. The major goal is to prevent and control HIV in our country and the specific objectives are prevention, treatment, care, and support. So we have basically three major priorities under the National Strategic Plan: to harmonize our efforts better, which is coordination; to mitigate the impact of HIV, in other words we don't want HIV making our people sicker and sicker and then more people dying; and our other objective is the prevention. If we do not step up the prevention efforts and the achievement of the prevention goals, we will always be having Aids growing. And with forty million people infected worldwide, we have definitely our work cut out for us."
And while the work is monumental, Balderamos says that with the strategic plan and policy, the work would be focused and directed into achieving the ultimate goal of staving off the pandemic.
Ambassador Dolores Balderamos-Garcia,
"The policy gives us the framework of what we believe in and the National Strategic Plan gives us the roadmap. With the National Strategic Plan, the different sectors will be able to sit down using the Strategic Plan and say these are going to be our programs that we are going to put in place based on the document that we have come up with as an entire country.
Never before have we heard so much about Aids in this country and never before have so many sectors come together to really achieve what's happening right now. We have over 90% of pregnant women getting tested. We have a lot of prevention efforts from different organizations for young people, for vulnerable groups. We have close to four hundred persons on medication and that is that many less deaths. So we have accomplished quite a bit but the reason why we are promulgating to the whole public a strategic plan for the next five years is because we have to step up the efforts and despite what we have accomplished, the fight is far from over."
The national policy was approved by government in Eecember of 2005 and will now move into full implementation.
