Article: HIV/AIDS Prevention is Topic of April 20 Meeting in Guyana

08 April 2002

Article: HIV/AIDS Prevention is Topic of April 20 Meeting in Guyana

U.S. government to launch meeting of region's health ministers

By Eric Green
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The U.S. government is organizing a one-day meeting April 20 in Georgetown, Guyana, to determine how the United States can better work with Caribbean health ministers on stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS in the region.

Those scheduled to address the Guyana meeting include Secretary of State Colin Powell and other officials from the State Department, along with representatives from such U.S. agencies as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Organizers say Powell will address the meeting either via video or written text. The meeting was established, organizers said, when HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson attended a special United Nations session on AIDS with a number of Caribbean leaders and made a commitment to organize such a forum.

At that U.N. session, Guyana offered to host the meeting. In all, USAID expects to send seven officials to Georgetown, including Anne Peterson, assistant administrator of the Bureau for Public Health; Adolfo Franco, assistant administrator of the Latin America and Caribbean bureau; and Carol Dabbs, team leader for health in that same bureau.

Thompson will deliver opening remarks in Guyana outlining what various U.S. agencies -- such as USAID, the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, and HHS's National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Health Resources and Services Administration -- are doing to stem the disease domestically and internationally.

For instance, the United States is a strong supporter of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. President Bush's fiscal year 2003 budget includes $100 million from HHS and $100 million from USAID to support this fund. The United States has pledged a total contribution of $500 million to the fund, to be allocated over the next five years.

Overall, the Bush Administration proposes to spend more than $16,000 million in fiscal year 2003 to combat HIV/AIDS at home and abroad. The CDC is working with the Pan American Health Organization's Caribbean Epidemiology Center on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs in the region. CDC is also working directly with public health officials from Brazil, Guyana, and Haiti, where more than 750,000 people are estimated to have HIV/AIDS.

The April 20 meeting in Guyana will immediately follow an April 17-19 gathering of the Caricom (Caribbean Community and Common Market) in Georgetown, which serves as headquarters for Caricom. Organizers decided to hold the HIV/AIDS meeting in that same city for logistical convenience to the many ministers already in Georgetown for Caricom discussions. While Cuba is eligible to participate in the Caricom event, that country's leaders will not be invited to the HIV/AIDS meeting, which is being organized by HHS Secretary Thompson. Organizers say misinformation in the media has confused the HIV/AIDS meeting with the Caricom event. The two are separate affairs, organizers stress.

The HIV/AIDS meeting is being held, organizers say, because the Caribbean now has the second-highest percentage of people infected with HIV/AIDS, right behind sub-Saharan Africa. The Caribbean's problem with HIV/AIDS is also a U.S. problem, because many people who live in the Caribbean use a figurative "air-bridge" to travel back and forth from that region to the United States, carrying with them the potential to fatally infect people in the United States.

USAID estimates that about 1.4 million people in the Caribbean have HIV/AIDS, while Caricom says nine of the 12 countries with the highest infection rates of HIV/AIDS in the Americas are in the Caribbean basin. HIV/AIDS has become a major cause of death among the 15-44 age group in several Caribbean countries, Caricom says. The United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS says that "without decisive action," the epidemic and its effects will cause untold harm in the region for decades ahead.

The Guyana meeting will explore how the United States and the Caribbean nations can work as partners in stopping the HIV/AIDS epidemic, by improved monitoring of patients and education about the disease. Ideas to be discussed may also include U.S. institutions providing scholarships in the Caribbean for clinical research on vaccines, anti-retroviral medicines and drug resistance.

Key to the Bush Administration's strategy about stopping HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean is its "Third Border Initiative." That initiative, announced in April 2001, said that the United States should deepen its commitment to the Caribbean nations, "our often-overlooked third border," on a number of issues, including the spread of HIV/AIDS. Under that initiative, the United States provided $20 million in HIV/AIDS funding in fiscal year 2002, which represents a tripling of U.S. HIV/AIDS prevention and education funding. USAID is sponsoring HIV/AIDS programs in 12 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, including the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, and Jamaica.