Latest update May 6th, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 22, 2011 News
…One UWI Professor thinks so.
“The region has been in a position to fund its own response,” Professor Karl Theodore tells the Plenary Session of the 2011 Caribbean HIV Conference on Sunday morning in the Bahamas.
Professor Theodore, Head of the Health Economics, UWI, St Augustine Campus, believes that regional governments hold the financial ability to solely fund national and regional HIV Prevention programmes on their own. His statement was made as he addressed sustainability and a required financing model for a sustainable Caribbean Response to HIV as part of a panel.
Professor Theodore believes that it boils down to the political will.
“Some people don’t like to hear me say it; this region has always been in a position to finance its way. The amount that was required is a small fraction of our income.”
He listed three countries in the region he believes made a step in that direction.
“Country A has expended US$50 million over the period 2002 to 2009. This compares with a cumulative income over the period close to US$135 billion. The allocation to HIV was there less than .5%”
He said the other country 5.1% of its GDP in 2006 on health with more than three per cent of the 0.5 per cent on HIV/AIDS while the third country laid out a plan in 2008 to spend US$90 Million between 2008-2013 on HIV.
The latter, Professor Theodore said, spent some .4 per cent of its income in 2008 on addressing HIV, which he added Theodore was slightly more than the regional targeted amount.
And how would the government decide what percentage of income to use? Professor Theodore is suggesting that a small percentage of a country’s annual income could be used to aid in the response to HIV and tuberculosis.
“If its one commitment we need to make as a region it is that as countries, we should put aside one per cent of our income. If you are earning $1000, one per cent is $10 and if you are expected to fight something and you can’t put $10 aside to protect yourself, then I am saying something is wrong with you.”
“HIV is gonna destroy our GDP, our income base, as our income is moving, the one per cent is a fraction, as the income goes up we put aside a little bit more”
But how can some countries in the region spend more on HIV in light of other critical expenses? The UWI Professor is suggesting what he describes as creating fiscal space. Among the measures he suggested are an expanded tax base and the establishment of a regional HIV Fund which he refers to as a “regional Pool”
“We expect the donor support is going to decline; we should assume that donor support is gonna be cut by at least half. It will be good for us to start behaving like that support is gonna be cut; it therefore means that we need to gather our domestic service, public and private, to raise the resources that we need”
GRA catch EXXON trying to hunch GUYANA over 11 BUS dollars in one shot!!!!
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