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Haiti's HIV-positive population is proving especially hard-hit by the international community's slower-than-expected earthquake recovery effort, activists said at the 18th International AIDS Conference in Vienna."It's very difficult for grassroots organizations to operate since the quake. We simply don't have the means to do so," said Liony Acclus, head of a Haitian coalition of HIV-related organizations called PHAP+.
Six months after the Jan. 12 disaster, an international pledge of $500 million was only 20 percent fulfilled, the World Bank said. About 90 percent of funding for HIV in Haiti comes from foreign sources, Acclus said.
Aid workers note that before the earthquake, health services constituted a rare bright spot in Haitian development efforts. HIV prevalence in Haiti declined from 6.2 percent in 1993 to 2.2 percent in the middle of the current decade, noted Dr. Jonathan Quick, director of Management Sciences for Health (MSH), a US-based non-governmental organization (NGO).
"What we hear about Haiti is always very negative, but before the earthquake, good things were happening there, in the health sector particularly," Quick said.
Free care for people with HIV, testing, and preliminary treatment are still available, said Edner Boucicaut, head of the NGO Housing Works. However, Haiti cannot provide access to second-line drugs for those whose HIV strain is resistant to initial treatment, he said. Even before the quake, 43,000 HIV-positive persons were not getting the care they needed, he said.
In a joint statement, MSH and other NGOs called for strengthening the Haitian health sector overall as the most effective way to "sustain HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment over the long term."
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
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