- PHOTO BY BARBARA ELLINGTON
Dr. Mechai Viravaidya, Ambassador for UNAIDS, shows one of the innovative T-shirts designed to spread the message of safe sex, to Thalia Lyn, Honourary Consul for the Kingdom of Thailand during a visit to Bangkok last year. They were at 'Cabbages and Condoms' Resort and Restaurant, a facility where profits go towards the fight against AIDS.
Yahneake Sterling, Staff Reporter
LASCELLES CHIN, chairman of the Lasco Group of Companies, has set the record straight regarding his suggestion that the Jamaican society should accept commercial sex workers.
In an interview with The Sunday Gleaner, Mr. Chin stressed that he is not advocating the legalisation of commercial sex, but, rather, an acknowledgement of its existence in the effort to significantly reduce the pandemic of HIV/AIDS now facing Jamaica.
Mr. Chin, whose company has been in the forefront of providing affordable medication for HIV/AIDS, recently visited Thailand as part of a Jamaica delegation to observe the management of the deadly disease in Thailand.
DRASTICALLY-REDUCED NUMBERS
"Thailand with a population of 65 million, has 1.5 per cent of its population living with HIV. The country drastically reduced its new cases of HIV from 140,000 per year to 18,000 per year," he reported. The key to this success, he explained, is the promotion of 100 per cent condom use among sex workers.
The business tycoon noted, contrary to the recent Sunday Gleaner story 'Picking on Prostitutes', that commercial sex should not be legalised, but its existence should be discussed so that every possible measure can be taken now to curtail the rising pandemic.
"It is very dangerous not to do something because preventing HIV is 100 per cent cheaper than the cure," he stressed.
Mr. Chin, however, suggested that emphasis should be placed on education, as this will lessen the discrimination meted out to persons living with HIV. He said workplace education plays an important role and so he is calling on the private sector to play a more significant role.
UNIFY IN THE HIV FIGHT
He warned that if the stigma continues, more people living with the life-threatening virus will not come forward and, therefore, it will get worse. In this regard, he is appealing to Jamaicans in the private sector, Government, universities, churches and non-government agencies to unify in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
Meanwhile, Vivian Gray, advocacy officer at the National AIDS Committee, echoes the sentiments of Mr. Chin that the private sector must insist that the education delivery system incorporate 'life skills training' into the formal curriculum. "Educators must be trained to confront and deal with HIV/AIDS issues in the classroom, in an enlightened, practical way," he said.
He has also expressed his disappointment at the reactions to Mr. Chin's call for acceptance of sex workers. According to Gray, persons should view the call from a public health perspective, "In Jamaica we are not aware of the population of sex workers, thus the inability to stem the spread of HIV."
He also underscored the need for a more open environment where people can come forward for screening to help avert the number of cases of the disease.
Thailand's approach to AIDS
Barbara Ellington, Lifestyle Editor
DR. MECHAI Viravaidya is the Ambassador UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS). In 1974, he founded and chaired the population and Community Development Association (PDA) in Bangkok, Thailand. He led the way then and continues to be a force to be reckoned with today.
When The Sunday Gleaner visited Thailand last year as part of a Jamaican trade delegation, Dr. Viravaidya explained that to successfully keep the pandemic under control a country cannot be in denial about AIDS. He said the authorities must keep admitting and stressing that there is a problem.
"Understand that sick people cannot work and this will have an economic impact and tackle the economics; show government how much they stand to lose," he said.
Between 1991 and 2000, Meechai has worked with over 11,000 villages in Thailand and consulted extensively worldwide as well as held several government positions in Thailand. At the village levels, the programme included shopkeepers, nurses, midwives and farmers. All were involved in learning about AIDS so they could spread the word. Barber shops and beauty parlours became distribution points for condoms and pills and they looked for the most influential persons at all levels of the society then trained them to educate others.
Some strategies that worked for the family planning campaign and which were used in the HIV/AIDS campaign included:
Condom-blowing contests for children - this helped to remove the stigma and embarrassment associated with sex from and early age.Snakes and Ladders games designed around spreading the safe sex message. Cops and robbers - using policemen at stoplights to distribute condoms.Buddhist monks blessed condoms with holy water.Mobile vasectomy programme.Use of lottery for a millionaire vasectomy day.Father's day vasectomy programme.Don't divide the inheritance, so children get parents' buy-in by encouraging them to have fewer children.Independence day vasectomy.Non-pregnancy agricultural credit programme (getting pregnant means repaying at the regular rate) rather than paying at a lower rate if you had fewer children.However, once the HIV/AIDS campaign began to reap success and the number of annual infected cases dropped, the aggressive campaign stopped and in the subsequent years, infected cases grew rapidly. The result is that the pressure had to be stepped up again towards the start of this new decade. Everyone realised they could not relax until there was a cure.
