The Trinidad and Tobago Red Cross celebrated the close of PROJECT LIFE with a love gift exercise on Wednesday 17th June at its headquarters in Port-of-Spain. Project Life is an outreach programme which seeks to provide pregnant women with accurate information on HIV and AIDS and the risk for their unborn child, to assist pregnant women to come to terms with their HIV status and to assist in preparing HIV positive women to begin anti retro-viral treatment.
Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to contracting HIV/AIDS because they often do not use contraception once they’ve become pregnant. Project Life therefore sought to educate pregnant women about the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS during pregnancy and the possibility of transmitting the virus from mother to child.
In this vein, the Trinidad and Tobago Red Cross Society decided to develop a project to address this and other issues surrounding the Mother to Child Transmission of HIV. Project Life was successfully implemented at the Ante natal clinics of Mount Hope Women’s Hospital and the Arima Health Facility from February 2008 to March 2009.
Attending the ceremony were Mrs. Elizabeth Brown Senior International Development Officer, Ms. Cherril Perriera – External Relations Officer REPSOL, Nurse Sharon Boney-Burge, Technical consultant for Project Life, Mrs. Angela Gouveia – Director General of the T&T Red Cross, Ms. Margarita Elliot – HIV and AIDS Programme Coordinator, Staff of the North Central Regional Health Authority, Representatives of the International Federation, Staff of the Red Cross, Volunteers of the Red Cross, Mothers and Expectant Mothers.
Nurse Sharon Boney-Burge, Technical consultant for Project Life, commented that based on research, TTRCS is the only national society of the Red Cross in the Caribbean region that has developed a programme along the lines of the PMTCT as part of their overall programming menu where HIV and AIDS is concerned.
According to UNAIDS, at the end of 2007, there were 230,000 persons living with HIV in the Caribbean of which there were 20,000 new infections. There were a total of 63,000 deaths as a result of HIV and AIDS Complications.
The prevalence rate of the Caribbean region is ranked second highest in the world after Sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS continues to be one of the leading causes of death for adults between the ages of 15 and 44.
In Trinidad and Tobago, women accounted for 7,700 out of a total of 14,000 persons including children who were reported as living with HIV at the end of 2007. That 7,700 figure would have been ascertained partially from the Mother to Child Transmission programme at the Ministry of Health. However, it must be noted that the real number of cases could be anywhere within the range of 19,000 to 23,000 because all cases are not necessarily reported and UNAIDS estimates that only 1/3 of the total number of persons who are HIV+ actually know that they are positive.
These figures underscore the context and the impetus for TTRCS’s decision to take on Project Life thereby charting new territory by investing its efforts where it was most needed. Project Life was generously funded by the Canadian High Commission to the tune of TT$115,000 and REPSOL in the sum of TT$156,000.
Other organisations which were instrumental in implementing this project were the staff at the ante-natal clinics of the Mount Hope Women’s Hospital and the Arima Health Facility, PAHO Caribbean Office, Ministry of Health – HIV and AIDS Department. Mrs. Verna St. Rose Greaves was another key partner in facilitating training of Red Cross volunteers.
Thanks to the financial and technical support of the abovementioned partners, the Trinidad and Tobago Red Cross Society was able to conduct 121 information sessions and was able to provide information pertaining to HIV and AIDS and Maternal Health to a total of 6,314 persons including men accompanying women at the clinics.
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| From left to right: Mrs. Angela Gouveia – Director General of the T&T Red Cross, Ms. Cherril Perriera – External Relations Officer REPSOL, Mrs. Elizabeth Brown Senior International Development Officer, Nurse Sharon Boney-Burge- Technical Consultant Project Life, Ms. Margarita Elliot – T&T Red Cross HIV and AIDS Programme Coordinator.
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T&T Red Cross |
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| Nurse Burge presents a love gift to an expectant mother who participated in Project Life |
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| Rene Guerra delivers a message in song |
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