BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, DECEMBER 9TH 2010 (CUOPM) – St. Kitts and Nevis’ Prime Minister Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas says mandatory testing, especially pregnant mothers for the HIV/AIDS virus is a human rights issue that requires education.
“I believe mandatory testing will make a world of a difference, but as the same time we have to respect the wishes of the individual and so education becomes important,” said Dr. Douglas responding to a male caller who suggested on the weekly radio programme “Ask the Prime Minister” that mandatory testing will dramatically reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS.
“Even thou you may not make the test mandatory, if you educate the individuals sufficiently to the point where he or she is aware that the consequences of the virus not detected early can lead to frank AIDS and can in fact take your life prematurely as against if you know that you have the virus and you can begin treatment so that you will never ever get frank blown AIDS, because it is the virus that eventually will do damage in your body that will allow you to get AIDS,” said Prime Minister Douglas.
“It is AIDS that really can kill. The virus in itself may not kill you, but what the virus does to the immune system of the body will allow your systems – your organs to become so affected and eventually it expresses as AIDS and then you can die without appropriate treatment,” said Dr. Douglas, a physician by profession.
Dr. Douglas said that mandatory testing is critically important and it will help “but you have to make sure you respect the person’s right to consent as a human being and proper education will get one very, very close to mandatory testing.”
He recalled that the issue of mandatory testing in St. Kitts and Nevis was discussed at the highest political level and the highest public health level with regard to how to proceed in really curbing the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus.
“Mandatory in other words that it is by law that you must be tested. What that could mean of course, if you are at risk you need to be tested. Some people are at high risk but at the end of the day, all of us are at risk. It seems therefore that there has to be a law that says everybody has to get tested,” said Dr. Douglas, who noted that a few years ago “when we were looking at the mother to child transmission of the virus, there was a notion that every pregnant woman should really be tested.”
“But should you say to her that she is going to be tested as part of the batch of tests that are being done because of the pregnancy and the need to protect you and your child to ensure that they are healthy and that we will do a number of test including the HIV test or do you ask permission of the pregnant woman whether you should do the test,” said Dr. Douglas.
He said he was of the very strong opinion during that debate that if a pregnant woman goes to a doctor and she or he is going to look at her hemoglobin level to make sure that she is not anemic and that she is healthy there are certain tests routinely done when the woman is pregnant.
“Should you do all the tests without explaining that one of the tests is an HIV/AIDS test? What the wisdom is now that you must tell her and seek her permission for her to be tested, even though it is for her own good and for the protection of her own unborn baby,” Prime Minister Douglas told listeners to the call in programme which is syndicated on ZIZ Radio, KYSS FM, Choice FM, Sugar City Roc, Radio One and Freedom FM.
