What’s your position?

Salorne Mc Donald, CEO of the social development NGO, Jabulous.
Salorne Mc Donald, CEO of the social development NGO, Jabulous.

It's nearly a month since the 30th anniversary of World Aids Day was commemorated on December 1. But has much changed in how TT deals with the disease as it relates to sexual behaviour, especially among young people? Reporter JANELLE DE SOUZA discusses the issue with NACC vice chairman Salorne McDonald.

If you were a teen or older in the 2000s, you may be familiar with the HIV/Aids slogan, What’s Your Position?

The National AIDS Coordinating Committee (NACC) educational campaign encouraged people to abstain, be faithful, get tested, condomise, and call the hotline for more information was developed at the YMCA.

Since then, grants and funding for mass education campaigns have been reduced significantly and with that decrease, so declined the message and levels of education.

However, the fight had to continue so, while there are no longer huge national campaigns, various NGOs are now working on the ground and collaborating with others to engage various communities.

One of these NGOs is Jabulous which means “where intellect meets creativity spawning genius.”

Salorne Mc Donald, CEO of the social development NGO, as well as vice chairman of the NACC, has been working in the field of HIV/Aids and sexual reproductive health for over 22 years.

Mc Donald told Sunday Newsday when he was a young man in the late 90s, he had many friends who were adults. Several of them died “mysteriously” and later, two of them who were sick told him about HIV and Aids.

“I wanted to know what it was. I got some more information and found out about this virus. We had a fair number of people exposed to it but it was preventable if we educate and train people, so I sought avenues to get involved.”

He said in the 80s people did not know what was going on because people were dying from diseases, ailments and infections that the body was usually able to fight off. They were sick and afraid and by the time they got to the hospitals they had full-blown Aids and died.

During the 90s, he said there were many cases, especially among younger people. This, he said, revealed that people were sexually abusing children and infecting them.

He said he researched the virus for years and did presentations until he found RapPort Youth Information and Drop In Centre, and started volunteering there.

However, he noted that a lot of the initial work in advocacy on every level, including advocating for human rights, treatment, and more, was done by the artists of TT. He said internationally recognised playwright and director Godfrey Sealy, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1989 once said, “You don’t die of Aids, you die of a broken heart.”

Mc Donald said people treated others differently when they learned someone had Aids. They stopped interacting with them, there was a stigma of death, and a high level of discrimination. He said he knew of people who were rejected by their families; lost their job on a rumour; and people who were singled out as moral failures by religious leaders.

“In the 80s and 90s there was this spectre of death. There were a lot of grim reaper and skull pictures surrounding it. You had people looking for signs and symptoms where there aren’t any. And it was a very dehumanising experience.”

For example, he said, at one time if a person lost a lot of weight, had a rash, or a cough, people would think they had the virus and disassociate from them. He said a critical element of the fight was to show that people were still people, not just their diagnosis, and to change the way people communicated about the virus.

Since then, he said, TT had come a long way.

Mc Donald said he was hearing less and less about people being treated negatively because of their HIV status to the point of people treating it as just another chronic illness. In addition, free treatment was widely available through the government so it was no longer a death sentence, and there were more supportive options, such as counselling, available.

He said some people still hid their HIV status because of fear of how they would be treated but many more people were living with it openly thanks to those who went public with their experiences though the media, by visiting workplaces and attending open sessions, helped people to understand.

Need for sexual, reproductive health education

Mc Donald said initially there was a lot of education being done, especially with young people because in the 90s and early 2000s half of the people living with HIV, and half of the new infections, were people under the age of 24.

RapPort, Trinidad Youth Council, Advocates for Youth Sexual Reproductive Rights, YMCA, and other NGOs were involved in disseminating information and training. He said the work was helped a lot by the media and media personalities as well.

One part of the work was to remove the fear and the stigma by letting people know that they could not contract the virus by sweat, tears, a kiss, hug, or casual contact but by bringing breast milk, blood, semen and vaginal secretions.

He said there was training from the German Technical Corporation on different peer-to-peer education methods, and UNAIDS had many community projects. Training of peer and community educators allowed for knowledgeable people who could answer questions in various communities.

The other part of it was changing people’s behaviour and counsellors received training in behaviour change and social behaviour communication. The organisations collaborated with the Medical Research Foundation, the Queen's Park Counselling Centre and Clinic, and the Ministry of Health to ensure that the people being tested did not have a negative experience at testing sites.

“We also strongly focussed on preparing people to be okay with using condoms. That was a bit of a battle at one point, primarily because we–TT, the Caribbean and the entire Western hemisphere–have a very strange relationship with comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education. We have some very conservative views which are dangerous for us, and which don’t lend themselves to addressing a lot of the core issues relevant to how and why people get infected.”

He said people, including youths, had the right to quality information, unbiased service, universal access to health care, and that providing comprehensive knowledge and skills would equip them to prevent infection of HIV and other STDs. Also, he said, there was no reason to treat those born positive differently and education would also keep someone born HIV-positive to survive and not pass on the virus.

Mc Donald said there were children getting pregnant at the age of 11 and 12 with sexual initiation as early as nine, some of it not consensual, yet some people think if they teach children about sexual health they would then go out and have sex. He said the education did not have to be in-depth from the beginning. It could start with good touch, bad touch; move on to what a private part of the body was; and by the time children reach their teens they would know about condoms and how to use them.

“You would have a very aware population who is comfortable with the idea of protecting themselves. Yet we are still debating if we should deliver the whole health and family life education curriculum in schools or not. Which is ridiculous because it’s part of a comprehensive programme of ensuring that we create more aware, more skilled, more prepared citizens... Some of those conservative views have us hiding information from people who really need it.”

And it’s not just the youths who were susceptible. He said in the 2000s there was a spike in the rate of new infections among the 55 and over age group. He said some of them knew of syphilis and gonorrhoea and know they could get an injection to treat these STDs, and they assumed HIV was the same. They grew up with information hidden from them and suffered for their ignorance.

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