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He is accustomed to hearing the Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL) being referred to as a gay lobby group, but Anglican priest and chairman of the board of directors for the human rights organisation, Canon Garth Minott, said, like Jesus, they are simply embracing diversity.

“Any churchman, woman, boy, child, leader, follower who takes the life of Jesus seriously would come at it from a different perspective because certainly the Jesus who represents the core persons in the faith, is a person who dealt with differences of gender, age, sexual orientation etc,” he told editors and reporters during a Gleaner Editors’ forum at the newspaper’s North Street headquarters on Thursday.

He pointed to the woman in the Bible who was caught in adultery and was almost stoned to death until Jesus stepped in. While the law required that she be stoned, Jesus took into consideration other factors.

“So the more I read about Jesus and think about his life, the more I see him embracing diversity, embracing difference and in particular embracing those who are on the margins of society. There is a critical mass of the one percent that are usually left out in society and those of us who follow Jesus knows that he is very much with them and we can’t leave them alone,” he said.

The JASL is a non-governmental organisation that provides HIV education, treatment, care and support to persons living with or affected by HIV/AIDS, and persons vulnerable to HIV infection. Among its target population are men who have sex with men and the transgender community.

Given the work of the organisation, Minott who is a lecturer at the United Theological College of the West Indies, admitted that the group has often been accused of trying to normalise homosexuality in Jamaica.

“It (JASL) has been called all kinds of name,” he said.

“Anybody who stands up for anything, of course you are going to be called all kinds of names, but the key is that the evidence suggests that we are doing work and the data is there to substantiate what we do,” he asserted.

(Georgetown, Guyana) A twenty-one-year-old National Football Player has been living with HIV since he was 17-years-old, and now he wants to find a way to break the news to his teammates of his status. However, as much as he believes it’s the right thing to do, he fears being discriminated against, simply because football in Guyana isn’t welcoming to his ‘type’.

To protect his identity, Chronicle Sport will refer to the player as ‘John’.

When ‘John’ was 17, he was invited by some friends to party, but, what he didn’t know was that he was being set-up by his friends. John was raped, repeatedly by a group of men.

“My mother use to ensure that my life was just about school and football, nothing else. I never got the chance to really socialize and so on, but then, mom decided to leave the country for a quick spin and asked that I stay with a family member for the period of time” John said.

“I went with my friends to this party in Kitty, they said it will be fun and I should learn the streets, because I was mommy boy. To make a long story short, I remember being undressed by some men, and got up feeling sore in my a**” John said, in relating his gruesome ordeal with some men he deemed as homosexuals.

The talented player, who represented Guyana at the youth level, including twice at the Inter Guiana Games (IGG), said football is an escape from the ‘noise’ around him. In fact, he said it was football which helped him to cope with abuse at home, suffered at the hands of his father who would also beat his mother to a pulp whenever the two would have an argument.

“My father was the cruelest man I’ve ever met. He use to kick my mom, one time, he hit her with a hammer, and I thought she died that night. But it was a norm in the ghetto, no one came to help. My father died and I never asked why, I didn’t cry and my mother kept me under her wing because I was all she had until my sister came along” John related in an emotional interview.

John’s story was substantiated by his mother and his counsellor, with both women claiming that despite a report being made about the incident of rape, nothing was ever done.

The player, who features for one of Georgetown’s popular football clubs, said he tried not to relate his story to anyone about being raped by men, since people would say he’s gay, “but I’m not. I am not homophobic, but I don’t endorse that kind of lifestyle, which is why that day still haunts me and If wasn’t for football, my mother and some really, really close family and my counsellor, I would’ve been dead by now because I attempted to take my life a few times.”

FINDING OUT BEING HIV POSITIVE

Almost a year after the incident, John fell ill and his mother who works in the medical field, thought her son had pneumonia, “I never thought about HIV” the player’s mother revealed to Chronicle Sport, adding that she thought he probably got some other form of autoimmune disease.

A trip to Georgetown Hospital would change the family’s life after John’s blood test showed that he was HIV Positive. Several tests done at a number of medical institutions in Guyana by the family didn’t change the positive result.

“I can’t even explain the amount of things that went through my mind. But I never had sex before that incident and I never had sex in my life. I met a girl while studying, and I told her I had HIV and she stopped talking to me” John said.

SCARED OF DISCRIMINATION

“Football is my life, understand, there’s nothing that brings me more joy right now other than playing football, even if it’s on my PlayStation but right now, we are searching for ways to come out; come out and tell my teammates ‘hey, I’m HIV Positive’, but I know this game and how unwelcoming it is to people who aren’t seen as normal, be it sexual orientation or their health.”

There has never been a player in Guyana who came out publicly or even hinted to his teammates that he’s HIV positive, but, there have been highly speculated instances of players who died as a result of contracting the virus.

Reports are prevalent from outside of Guyana, where players lose their professional contract after being tested positive, as is the case of Cameroon International Samuel Nled who, just days after signing his contract, was released by his club after his HIV results returned positive.

President of the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) Wayne Forde, when asked if there are provisions to deal with players like John, said “the position of the GFF is very clear when it comes to discrimination, we insist that there’s no place for it in football. I think with the case of HIV, the GFF will not stop anyone from playing the beautiful game unless concrete evidence and medical guidance. I think thanks to more tools of education, people now, unlike the old times, know how to co-exist.”

However, John disagrees with the GFF president, stating “there’s no education for sportsmen and women in Guyana about a lot of things, and HIV happens to be one of them. I know, in football, locally, there are no medical done on our players, clubs and the federation here pay no interest in that part of the game. Take me for example, people don’t know when I was really sick, but, thanks to my mother and close family, I have my antiretroviral drugs; tenofovir, lamivudine, emtricitabine, efavirenz and other drugs that keep me well, along with eating healthy.”

Image: Two daughters look at their mother who is dying from AIDS. Cambodia. 2002. Photo: © Masaru Goto / World Bank

Senior United Nations officials today welcomed a breakthrough pricing agreement by global partners to accelerate the availability in low- and middle-income countries of the first affordable, generic, single-pill HIV treatment regimen.

“What we are talking about today with this life-changing announcement is about the quality of medicine, is about equity, is about the dignity, is about access to medicine as a human right,” Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), told a press conference at UN Headquarters.

The pricing agreement, he explained, will help ensure that the treatment will be made available to 92 countries, and people there will be able to benefit from “one of the best medicines we have” for first-line treatment.

At around $75 per person per year, the HIV treatment regimen containing dolutegravir (DTG) will be available to public-sector purchasers in these countries.

The agreement is expected to accelerate treatment rollout as part of global efforts to reach all 36.7 million people living with HIV with high-quality antiretroviral therapy. UNAIDS estimates that in 2016, 19.5 million – or just over half of all people living with HIV – had access to the life-saving medicines.

DTG, a best-in-class integrase inhibitor, is widely used in high-income countries and is recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an alternative first-line HIV regimen. It is also a preferred treatment by the United States Department of Health and Human Services Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents, among others.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom also welcomed the agreement, stating that “this will save lives for the most vulnerable, bringing the world closer to the elimination of HIV […] WHO will support countries in the safe introduction and a swift transition to this game-changing new treatment.”

The agreement was announced by the Governments of South Africa and Kenya, together with UNAIDS and many other partners.

Earlier today, during an event entitled “Fast-Track: Quickening the pace of action to end AIDS” held on the sidelines of the General Assembly, Mr Sidibé called on world leaders to maintain “global solidarity” to end AIDS.

UNAIDS leads global efforts to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths.

The following is a blog entry from Erika Castellanos, a transgender woman who has been living with HIV since 1995.  

“My name is Erika Castellanos and I am a transgender woman who has been living with HIV since 1995. During the early days of my diagnosis, I was given a life expectancy of only 6 months to a maximum of 2 years. I felt that all hope had been lost and that I should just lie down in my bed to await death. Once, on visiting the hospital, I met a young lady who was also seropositive and whose child, unfortunately, had also been born with HIV. Yet she was not depressed like I was; she was smiling, telling everyone jokes and sharing her plans for the future. In my mind, I thought how naïve could she be, for there can be no plans. Yet her positivity and her constant laughter injected me with hope: that is how my activism story began. I saw in her an inspiration and soon enough I was also making plans for the future and not allowing a diagnosis to interfere with my life.

That is what pushed me to form a network of people with HIV in my country, the Collaborative Network for Persons Living with HIV in Belize (CNET+). My country has the highest HIV prevalence rate in Central America, at 2.3%. However, LGBT people are not included in this statistic and it can be inferred from data in other Caribbean nations, which report rates higher than 20% amongst LGBT people, that HIV prevalence in Belize is significantly higher in the LGBT community than among the general population. CNET+ provides a network for HIV positive people in Belize that offers support, guidance and a sense of community.

There were not many of us at the start, and people were very sceptical about the positive way in which I approached HIV. My goal in life was now to replicate that wonderful gift of hope that I had been given with just a simple smile on a sad day in a hospital waiting room. The power of a smile and transmitting happiness to others is amazing. We started visiting people at their homes, listening to them, sharing our stories and soon enough that happiness became contagious throughout our community. We dedicate our work to educating ourselves, providing support to one another and advocating for better services. Working peer to peer is what makes our work more effective and transformative in people’s lives. As someone with HIV, I am able to identify with what the members of our community are going through and, as a transgender woman, I am able to talk with other LGBT persons who constantly feel isolated and are often victims of discrimination. This is the key to our success; learning from each other’s life experiences and communicating through a peer-based approach.

When I visit someone’s home, it makes my heart swell with joy to see how transformational my visit has been and to realise that our work can be a catalyst for happiness among people who have given up hope. There is no greater reward than to see peers, who had given up, stand up, become empowered and work to have a brighter future for themselves and for others.

I have learned that each and every one of us is different and special. Our lives won’t be similar, of course not! Yet, frequently as human beings we allow our differences to take over and, as a result, we experience hate, stigma, discrimination and violence. I have learned to respect the differences that we might have and to build and concentrate on the similarities we share. That is what can change the world; celebrating our differences and uniting in our similarities. When it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter what you look like, what you believe, who you have sex with or who you vote for, because we should be united by our humanity. Let’s build on that and empower each other to end hate in the world”.

Erika is the co-founder and executive director of the Collaborative Network for Persons Living with HIV in Belize, which aims to improve the quality of life of all persons living with HIV. She studied social work at the University of Belize and LGBT Health Research at the University of Pittsburgh. She is also the vice-chair of the Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+), a member of the Communities Delegation for The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and a delegate to the UNAIDS Program Coordinating Board.