Glenda Simms, Contributor
WHEN THE Gleaner's headline 'Jagdeo slams Ja' jumped out at me as I passed a newsstand on my way to work on the morning of June 24, 2004, I thought that Guyana had scored a 'touchdown' against the Reggae Boyz in an unpublicised game.
I was greatly disappointed when I read the content of a story which merited such a prominent headline in the newspaper. In fact, I was disgusted by the thought that anyone elected to give leadership in the CARICOM region would try to 'score points' on the emaciated bodies and the scarred psyches of the women, men and children who are the victims of the HIV-AIDS pandemic, and the high levels of violence in many of the nation states of the region.
Whether President Jagdeo was misquoted or the journalists were cavalier in their reporting, the publics in Atlanta and in every community in Jamaica and Guyana need to be reminded that both HIV and crime pose immediate threats to the economic and social stability of our nations.
Our young men, young women and children are 'gone too soon' because of their exposure to the HIV virus and to the gunmen, the extortionists, the kidnappers, the rapists and the drug dealers.
This is not the time for anyone, at any level, to go into denial about the impact of the HIV-AIDS pandemic. Indeed, this is not the time for 'one-upmanship'. HIV-AIDS is not a game of scrabble. It is not an issue on which politicians can score high points.
CANNOT FIND RESOURCES
The time has come for leaders and decision-makers in all our societies to realise that the majority of citizens who contract the HIV virus cannot find the resources to purchase the medications that could afford them some degree of dignity in their effort to cope with the impending onslaught on their bodies of full blown AIDS.
In both Jamaica and Guyana, there is a need for hospices and homes in which persons infected with HIV/AIDS can be properly cared for and treated well.
Also, all Caribbean societies need to deal with the stigmatisation of the HIV-AIDS syndrome, and by extension, the stigmatisation of individuals who contract the virus.
Additionally, all the region's parents and families need to be educated to the fact that they need to stop rejecting their offsprings and relatives who are the carriers of the HIV virus. And certainly, all educators, health providers and employers need to be sanctioned if they are found to be discriminating against citizens who are the victims of the HIV-AIDS pandemic.
SERIOUS ISSUES
All of these and other related issues should be on the agendas of all our political leaders. These serious issues should motivate them to collaborate across national borders in any effort to find sustainable solutions to stem the tide of the AIDS pandemic and the scourge of crime and violence in the Caribbean region. To this end, the region's citizens in the diaspora and those at home must be approached in more focused and intelligent ways, so that all the available resources can be targeted to make a real difference in the war against crime, poverty, ignorance and HIV-AIDS.
In all this, Caribbean women at home and abroad must ensure that their politicians listen to their point of view and that they integrate this perspective at all levels of decision making and planning.
Women must keep stressing the impact of crime and violence and the AIDS pandemic on the day-to-day realities of their lives. It is women who are overwhelmingly bearing the brunt of the physical and social impact of diseases and crime. Women are the caregivers, the helpers, the victims and the ones who are still enslaved by the rigid tenets of patriarchal power structures at the levels of both the private and the public spheres.
Women are therefore less interested in any "political football game" about the infection and crime rates in specific territories. What women know is that in all our nation states, far too many women remain powerless, especially in the control of their bodies and their sexuality.
Also, the Caribbean woman of the diaspora would, if given a chance, remind our political leaders that black women in the United States are living in fear of AIDS.
In the April 5, 2004 edition of the New York Times, writer Linda Villarosa reported that government studies in 29 states in America revealed that "a black woman was 23 times more likely to be infected with AIDS than was a white woman." Furthermore, the number of these women infected through heterosexual sex has been rising dramatically.
BI-SEXUAL MEN
According to Villarosa, in the U.S. "recent studies suggest that all black bi-sexual men may be infected with the HIV virus, and up to 90 per cent of these men do not know that they are infected. There is also clear evidence that many of these men are the 'bridge' between gay men and heterosexual women."
What is true about the risk to black women in the U.S. is also true about the situation of the predominantly black female populations of the Caribbean.
So while politicians keep 'scoring points' against each other the situation on the ground continues to be 'deadly serious'.
Alas, while our modern day Neros 'fiddle', we women continue to 'burn'.
Dr. Glenda P. Simms is the executive director of the Bureau of Women's Affairs.
