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Dr. Singh said that, in terms of preventing spread of the virus, the secretariat will continue working to ensure the general public is reached with all of the secretariat’s prevention messages.
She noted that knowledge of HIV is high, and must be maintained in terms of what people know about HIV, such as how it is transmitted and how they can protect themselves.
She said NAPS will continue to work to help persons reduce their risk factors by making sure they have sufficient knowledge about correct condom use, and that they reduce the number of partners (for those with multiple partners) they have.
She said that a lot of this work will be done through the Voluntary Counselling & Testing (VCT) programme, which will be used as robustly as it has ever been used over the years.
Referring particularly to the most-at-risk population, such as commercial sex workers, Dr. Singh noted that NAPS will continue to work with them, as has been done over the years. She informed that the secretariat will be conducting various surveys for 2013, to enable itself to better understand the dynamics of the population, where they’re located, when they can be located, and how best to reach them.
Dr. Singh added that having gathered all of that information, NAPS would be hoping to intensify its work with this most-at-risk population, in order to reach them with its prevention services, sexually transmitted infection (STI) screening and HIV screening, among other screenings.
She revealed that the secretariat also hopes to intensify its work with a number of other groups, including miners and loggers.
“…but to begin that work also, we’ll actually do some data gathering in the first quarter of the year, to better understand those populations,” she said.
She also noted that for work to be done with those groups, the secretariat would need to work along with non- governmental organisations (NGOs) like had obtained in previous years.
Dr. Singh said that in terms of treatment, NAPS will continue to work with its treatment programme, now having concrete evidence that “treatment is prevention.”
She noted that the final results of the HIV Drug Resistance Surveillance Survey, which was launched two years ago, will be released in August of this year.
“So, before the year has ended, we will have a report on that; and I think it will give us additional information on how we can fine tune and therefore better our treatment programme,” she related.
According to Dr Singh, the secretariat is also hoping to better understand and deal with tuberculosis (TB) – HIV co-management, and be able to reduce some of the negative impact of that dual infection.
She also said the secretariat is looking to strengthen and intensify its incorporation of some other core issues into the treatment programme, including family planning, mental health issues, and cervical cancer screening.
The secretariat will also be focusing more on management of elderly people, because a lot of patients have been living with HIV and are being managed for a number of years, and this becomes an issue and has issues that the elderly would have, such as diabetes and problems with their cholesterol.
Speaking about the 2012 World AIDS Day Report, which was released on November 20 by the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, Dr. Singh said that there are a number of important components in that report for Guyana, one of which is that Guyana is one of the few countries that actually reported universal access to antiretroviral drugs (ARVs).
She asserted that this means that more than 80% of the people who need ARVs are actually on the drug.
Dr. Singh also related that another important component in the report is that Guyana is one of the few countries also able to show a more than 50% reduction in its death rates that are HIV-related.
“…and I think that if we use those two as benchmarks we can certainly say that our programme is working well,” she asserted.
She concluded that NAPS will continue to remain working towards intensifying its prevention efforts, so that less people become infected. She said that NAPS wanted to make sure its treatment programme works well, so that persons living with HIV live healthier lives, so that treatment indeed becomes a prevention strategy for the programme.
