There’s a bit of good news from Dr Brent Hardt, the United States’ top diplomat in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean“We are moving forward, quite commendably, in partnership with the Caribbean,” he said in a progress report on the plans by Washington and most of Caricom to ramp up the attack on the spread of the deadly HIV/AIDS virus in the region.It’s a battle which the region have waged, quite commendably for more than a decade, in most cases without much international assistance.Now the Obama Administration has done more than signalled to the region that it wants to assist. It has actually committed itself to spending US$100 million in a dozen Caribbean countries, Barbados included, over the next five years to help stem the HIV/AIDS tide, using funds set aside to finance the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PREFAR, to get the job done.Just last month Washington collected the final signatures of “the framework” countries across the area, as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas signed on the dotted line to get the programme moving in earnest.This is a significant step for a country like Barbados, which up until now has had to bear the full brunt of the HIV/AIDS costly campaign on its own. Because of its overall successful economic and social development track record as reflected in its high rating on the United Nations human development index that has consistently placed the island in the world’s top 50 states, Barbados was routinely denied the kind of help which countries like Guyana, Haiti and the Dominican Republic have come to take for granted, meaning they are the Caribbean states which received PREFAR assistance.“The framework is the overall guidance as to how we are going to work together in partnership with the region. From that we will develop an operational implementation (plan) and that’s what we are involved with now,” said Dr Hardt, one of the most competent US diplomats to be assigned to serve anywhere in the Caribbean.PREFAR, originally fashioned by the Bush Administration to help Africa where HIV/AIDS and malaria, for instance, had taken millions of lives during the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st Century, has made a substantial difference on that continent and it can be expected to have similar results in our part of the Western Hemisphere. When combined with the efforts of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, PREFAR has helped African states cut the fatality rates significantly by providing the retroviral drugs to victims and boosting health and other social services there.“Thanks to these – and similar initiatives, like those spearheaded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria – the number of African patients with access to AIDS drugs jumped tenfold from 2003 to 2008,” said Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. “Since 2004, the AIDS-related mortality rate in sub-Sahara Africa has dropped 18 per cent.”
That was why it boggled the mind when the Bush White House limited assistance to Guyana and Haiti in the Caricom, ignoring the high HIV/AIDS rates in the rest of the region.
Now the Obama Administration has, quite wisely, changed that bit of folly, by bringing in Barbados, the Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago and the other countries Washington had previously considered too well-off to be helped.Actually, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if it turned out that Dr Hardt, the Charge’ D’affaires in the US Embassy in Bridgetown, had a major hand in changing the policy for the better towards Barbados and its neighbours.In fairness though, the US attitude wasn’t much different from how the Global Fund treated Barbados. It decided that Barbados’ high per capita income and level of human development rendered it ineligible for assistance from the Fund.
