Doc leading AIDS fight

A STRANGE and deadly new disease called AIDS appeared on the world stage in 1981 and nobody knew what to do about it.
Three years later Barbados recorded its first two cases.
Like so many others around the world, doctors in Barbados were concerned and the Barbados Association of Medical Practitioners (BAMP) set up a task force in 1985 to address the disease. One member, Dr Hendrick Ellis, anxious to learn everything he could about this new virus, organised a two-day seminar at the Centres For Disease Control in Atlanta, the headquarters for infectious disease control in the Western Hemisphere.
Ellis seized the initiative and went to learn about the disease. He returned in 1986 and joined a task force to educate Barbadians. He and three other members of BAMP were asked by the Ministry of Health to set up a National Advisory Committe on AIDS.
Government again turned to Ellis recently, appointing him chairman of the board of the National HIV Commision which has overall responsibility for the national HIV/AIDS programme. The commission is a coordinating body for the national aids response.
The chairman sat down with the SUNDAY SUN recently to talk about his experience and the state of HIV/AIDs in Barbados,
“Between 1984 and December 2008 we have gone now to 3 316 people and out of those, 2 216 developed AIDS. We have a death rate particularly among the men of about 68 per cent. The women’s rate is a little bit lower at about 30-something per cent. We still have the men outnumbering the women about two to one both in terms of infection and in terms of people falling ill and people dying,” Ellis says.
He reports that people are living longer with the disease since the treatment became available through Government in 2001/2002.
“What we have been seeing is people living longer, and the death rate has fallen, over time, by about 50 per cent . . . there has been significant success in that people are living longer, they are not becoming as ill.”
But people are still becoming infected, and Ellis says the upshot of that is there is “a widening pool of people living with HIVAIDS”.
 
Prevention the key
 
“We don’t have the same success rate in prevention. We need to direct more of our energies to prevention and probably look at new strategies and new ways of preventing people from becoming ill because the answer lies in prevention and not in treatment.”
The statistics contradict predictions made by British doctor Charles Schlosberg which attracted controversy from the local medical fraternity.
And Ellis willingly discusses the Schlosberg matter.
“Schlosberg’s predictions failed miserably. I am very well placed to deal with it because I was the one who made the response.”
“In 1990, this British doctor, Charles Schlosberg, came to Barbados. He got a job with the Government and was working in a polyclinic. The polyclinic in which he worked is the polyclinic where we shunted most of our sexually-transmitted disease cases because it covered the so-called red light districts and he said that he interviewed children from as young as 11 and adults, and he interviewed about 290 people and based upon their sexual practices he concluded and then extrapolated . . . that half the population of Barbados between the ages of ten and 60 would die by the year 2000.”
That came on the heels of another prediction made by the National Committee on AIDS in 1989.
Ellis explained: “In 1989, based on the trends that we saw, we made the prediction that by the year 2000 Barbados was going to have about 1 200 cases of AIDS. By the year 2000 Barbados in fact had less than 1 300 cases. Our prediction was spot-on.”
But despite several education campaigns the chairman remarks: “If you want to measure it scientifically you have to say that they have not been as effective as we would have liked, otherwse we would have arrested the new infections.”
“All the surveys in Barbados have shown that Barbadians are well- educated when it comes to dealing with HIV in terms of the information.
“The problem we have is that people are not translating that information into effective action when it comes to sexual intercourse. So that there is a disconnection between what they know and what they practice. Hence we continue to see infection rates slowly rising. So, clearly, we need to revisit the message. It appears that people are receiving the message intellectually. We need to get them to personalise the message.
“And that’s not unique to Barbados. It is probably worldwide. People still put themselves at risk, still take chances with unprotected sex, and that is not only young people. Because I have had a few older people 50 and plus who would say to me I don’t know why I did this, and I know better. It is the human element.”
Ellis is a general practitioner with 30 years’ experience, who threw himself into the HIV/AIDS battleground and over the past 24 years he has been working tirelessly in all areas to promote positive outcomes in the fight.
He has trained many counsellors and hotline operators, out of whom have emerged the AIDS Society of Barbados.
 
Church programme
 
Since 2003, he has been co-ordinating the Anglican diocese programme establishing a cadre of people with HIV/AIDS education and counselling, among laity and clergy. He also leads the initiative in the Anglican Church towards establishing a ministry for people living with HIV/AIDS, a programme that he identifies as his current passion.
As a doctor he says: “The hardest thing is giving the positive result. People might not think it is also hard on the doctor to give the result. But it is just as hard on the doctor giving it as it is on the person receiving it.
“Females cry, men tend not to show emotion, but generally the counselling makes a difference, you can show them that there is still reason to live.”
He recalls one of his most difficult moments – having to give a positive diagnosis to a patient brought to him, but being prevented by legal and medical ethics from disclosing that information to a family to whom he had been family physician for many years.
Although to a lesser extent, the stigma remains, Ellis reflects on the days when anyone with a positive diagnosis did not return to their home for fear of a hostile family reception, a factor that led to the establishment of the Elroy Phillips Centre.
Now there is an active group of HIV positive people called CARE (comfort, assist, reach out and educate) which provides support and reassurance to victims.
Also the positive diagnosis is no longer regarded as the death sentence as was the case in the early years, and hope has been given through the availability of anti-rectroviral drugs through Government’s assistance. Ellis says that as a result of the treatment made possible by Government in 2001/2002 the island has seen a decrease in mortality and morbidity rates.