T&T Health Minister announces free healthcare for all migrants

(Trinidad Guardian) Mi­grants will re­ceive the same free health care as na­tion­als, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­eases, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rance Deyals­ingh said on Monday.

The Min­is­ter said treat­ment of mi­grants was im­por­tant, giv­en that they are like­ly to min­gle with the pop­u­la­tion.

He was speak­ing dur­ing the sev­enth meet­ing of Na­tion­al Aids Pro­gramme Man­ag­er and Key Part­ners at the Trinidad Hilton.

“On the is­sue of mi­grants, we have tak­en a de­ci­sion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, you know we have Venezue­lan mi­grants, to treat them as na­tion­als. Be­cause mi­grants don’t live in iso­la­tion in the coun­tries they mi­grate to. They mix with the rest of the pop­u­la­tion, they in­te­grate them­selves with the en­vi­ron­ment,” said Deyals­ingh, “so we have tak­en a pol­i­cy de­ci­sion at the Min­istry of Health to treat all mi­grants re­gard­less of their coun­try of ori­gin as cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go when it comes to pub­lic health.”

Dur­ing the con­fer­ence, the Min­is­ter said an es­ti­mat­ed 1,000 per­sons in this coun­try have HIV/Aids but don’t know it.

He ad­mit­ted that lo­cat­ing this group proved to be dif­fi­cult de­spite the in­tro­duc­tion of rapid test­ing in com­mu­ni­ties.

Deyals­ingh not­ed that men, in par­tic­u­lar, were averse to get­ting test­ed for the dis­ease.

“It is nigh im­pos­si­ble to get men to be re­spon­si­ble to get test­ing. Our men need to be lead to the well and we are go­ing to have to re­fo­cus on get­ting men’s clin­ics be­cause women see no prob­lem in get­ting test­ed. Women are much more re­spon­si­ble,” said Deyals­ingh.

“For Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­al­i­ty the com­mu­ni­ty rapid test­ing pro­gramme has been seen to be a low yield pro­gramme to get the 1,134 per­sons that rep­re­sent our gap, that is where we have to fo­cus to get our first 90 (per cent erad­i­ca­tion),” said Deyals­ingh as his Min­istry con­tin­ued the push for the erad­i­ca­tion of the HIV epi­dem­ic by the year 2030.

“That gap of a 1,000 peo­ple will be found dur­ing a pe­ri­od of scaled-up test­ing go­ing in­to com­mu­ni­ties and re­al­ly fo­cus­ing on what we call the key pop­u­la­tions. To test them and to find that gap of about 1,100 per­sons who we es­ti­mate are liv­ing with the dis­ease but don’t know their sta­tus,” the Health Min­is­ter ex­plained the key pop­u­la­tion in­clud­ed sex work­ers and ho­mo­sex­u­al men.

An es­ti­mat­ed 11,000 peo­ple are liv­ing with HIV in the coun­try, the Min­is­ter said. It is a num­ber that has been on the de­cline since 2010.

How­ev­er, the di­rec­tor of Pan Caribbean Part­ner­ship Against HIV/Aids (PAN­CAP) Dereck Springer said while this es­ti­mate had been pro­vid­ed via an on­go­ing pro­gramme called Spec­trum, they were set to meet with UN­AIDS from to­mor­row to re­vise their meth­ods of tab­u­lat­ing num­bers.