HIV AIDS: a predator in paradise: today the Caribbean has the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS outside of Sub-Saharan Africa. Some Caribbean scholars are taking steps to educate the academy and national leaders about curbing the spread of the disease

Black Issues in Higher Education, Jan 30, 2003 by B. Denise Hawkins

"The Caribbean has never lost a generation of its most talented young people because of war or natural disaster. It is in danger of doing so because of the pandemic of AIDS," said Arthur in a recent interview with Perspectives in Health magazine. "With it goes the hope, promise and idealism of the best educated and most creative minds in the history of the Caribbean people."

Because of their distinctive culture, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are not typically a part of AIDS response plans developed by English-speaking Caribbean countries. Haiti has been the hardest hit of any of the Caribbean regions with 13 percent of pregnant women testing HIV-positive, and 8 percent of adults in urban areas and 4 percent in rural areas infected. In the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, an estimated 2.8 percent of the population has HIV/AIDS. Some researchers say that the best data on HIV infection in the Caribbean was developed in the Dominican Republic, which in 1991, started tracking the rates of infection among pregnant women, patients with sexually transmitted infections and sex workers.

But there is hope on the horizon for the Caribbean's battle with AIDS, suggests Cleghorn pointing to islands such as Bermuda, Barbados and the Bahamas. Bermuda's AIDS fight has benefited from its wealth, its proximity to the United States, the presence of American physicians and the spread of the disease largely through intravenous drug users, compared to sexual transmission, which is more difficult to contain. Barbados turned to an infusion of World Bank funds to undergird its response to AIDS and today has "a less than 1 percent infection rate," says Cleghorn of the island that also has successfully monitored and treated its disease cases. And the islands of the Bahamas are beginning to see a reduction in its AIDS rate as well, which over time spiked when an influx of Haitian and other immigrants sought refuge on its shores. The Bahamas, Cleghorn says, also benefits from a healthy economy.

The successes these island nations have realized, however, didn't happen overnight, Cleghorn cautions. A country's real response to the AIDS epidemic, he says, has the potential to reduce the spread of the disease, lower the disease rate and ultimately mitigate its impact. But a sufficient response to AIDS, Cleghorn says, "costs money and requires a real investment."