| Speech | October 27 2008 |
Address by the Honourable Patrick Manning Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago at the Opening of the Seventh Annual US Chiefs of Mission HIV/AIDS Conference for the Caribbean - HYATT Regency Hotel - Wednesday October 22nd 2008.
I welcome this opportunity to address you at the opening of the 7th Annual U.S. Chiefs of Mission Conference on HIV/AIDS which will focus on sustaining the momentum in the prevention, care and the treatment of the disease in the Caribbean. I extend particularly a warm welcome to all our visitors to our country for this meeting and wish you all an enjoyable stay in the midst of your very important work.
The AIDS pandemic has already devastated the lives of hundreds of millions of people all over the world. We in the Caribbean continue to be very concerned because, after Sub Saharan Africa, our region has a higher HIV prevalence than any other area in the world, with 1.1%of the adult population infected. In 2007 around 20,000 people in the Caribbean became infected with HIV and more than 14, 000 died of AIDS. But my dear friends, we are heartened by the fact that some progress has been made in abating the spread of the disease in our region.
In Trinidad and Tobago, for example, since the launch of our National HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan in 2004, using, inter alia, the Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy for persons living with HIV, there has been a 50% decrease in reported deaths. Persons living with HIV can now experience a higher quality of life since many are able to return to relatively normal lives as a result of the availability of treatment. I am also very proud of the achievements in relation to the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission Programme under which pregnant women in all government pre-natal clinics are provided with HIV testing, and those who are HIV positive, with free access to Anti-Retroviral medication.
These programmes have proven to be one of our most effective strategies and have been identified as a true success story. Notwithstanding these positive outcomes, we must continue to be unrelenting in our efforts to completely eliminate the occurrence of disease in our country and to continue our cooperation with our regional partners in the face of this challenge. There can be no room for complacency in dealing with this global threat to the development of countries in every region of the world. We must therefore express our gratitude to the United States of America for the leadership and very significant assistance it has been providing to combat HIV/AIDS worldwide. We in the Caribbean, along with countries in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, have been beneficiaries of U.S. efforts like the President’s plan for Emergency AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) which has been accessed as the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history.
Indeed my dear friends in July of this year, this programme was renewed and intensified. The expectation is that with the new effort, three million persons will receive support treatment; there would be prevention of twelve million new infections; and care will be provided for twelve million people, including five million orphans and vulnerable children. We in the Caribbean appreciate this further demonstration of concern and collaboration which have characterised the relations between the U.S.A. and its partners all over the world, including its next door neighbours of the Caribbean.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we live in a world of unprecedented interdependence. As the AIDS experience as itself shown, no country is today insulated from the effects of disease, poverty, economic slow down, environmental degradation and underdevelopment taking place in any part of the world. Problems are today more globalised that ever before. The present international financial crisis is a very revealing example of the level of interconnectedness among nations and regions and how much we are going to need effective international collaboration, involving all countries large and small, developed and developing, if we are to avoid a prolonged global slump and its dire consequences. Trinidad and Tobago therefore welcomes the proposed international summit to deal with the present global economic situation. In the closeness of our global village, we must all look out for one another and it is my hope that we can use the experience of the present crisis to ensure an international economic system that empowers all nations to deal individually and collectively with challenges, including that posed by HIV/AIDS and any other that could arise in the future.
We commend the efforts made by His Excellency Dr. Roy Austin, US Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago and his colleagues in the Caribbean to organise this conference to discuss future US Government assistance to mitigate the impact of the AIDS epidemic on the Caribbean region. I wish you very fruitful deliberations as we pool our efforts to overcome this challenge facing humanity.
Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen
May God Bless you all.
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