Global HIV/AIDS news and analysis
PlusNews
November 2007
Haiti and HIV: “Gen espwa”
- new hope dawns
* “Gen espwa”, have hope in Haitian Creole
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Features
▪ Fighting HIV a task as tough as the island ................................................................................. 3
▪ Treatment centre reports rising sexual violence and HIV ........................................................... 4
▪ HIV masked by the smokescreen of insecurity ........................................................................... 5
▪ Children start getting specialised AIDS services......................................................................... 7
▪ Proposed law would be weapon against stigma .......................................................................... 8
▪ “We must try our best” ............................................................................................................. 9
▪ Using the power of the cinema to spread the word on AIDS .................................................... 11
▪ References ............................................................................................................................. 12
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HAITI: Fighting HIV a task as tough as the island
A fall in HIV rates in Haiti over the last few years is
welcome news but celebrations may be premature: the
country’s political fragility and endemic poverty are serious challenges to maintaining those gains.
HIV prevalence was estimated at 5.6 percent by the
United Nations in 2003; in 2006 it had dropped to
3.6 percent, but the rate still remains the highest in the
Caribbean and Latin American regions.
Some AIDS workers treat the new figures with caution,
pointing out that the survey was not conducted in the
same number of sentinel sites or among the same section
of the population as in 2003.
Photo: Lyn Duff/Pacific news Service
Hard times remain
Others are more willing to err on the side of optimism.
“It is true that there have been many deaths, which
could account for part of the decline, but we must also
acknowledge work being undertaken to combat this
epidemic,” said Dr Brunel Delonnay of the Ministry of
Public Health and Population’s HIV/AIDS coordination unit.
AIDS in Haiti has a special history, linked to the emergence of the epidemic on the west coast of the United States in the
1980s. The Caribbean island was initially seen by many as the source of the virus, and its spread often attributed to the
“four H’s” - homosexuals, haemophiliacs, heroin-users and Haitians.
“Haiti had to defend itself against this idea until it was finally recognised that the epidemic came from outside and spread
within the country,” said Delonnay.
An estimated 190,000 people out of a population of 8 million were living with the virus at the end of 2005, but Haiti’s
political fragility kept donor assistance away. That has begun to change, prompted to an extent by concern over the rate
of emigration: around two million Haitians live and work in the United States.
Donors turn up
A degree of political stability has been achieved since the forced exile of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004,
and the deployment of more than 8,000 peacekeepers and humanitarian
workers under the United Nations stabilising force in Haiti, MINUSTAH.
In 2002 and 2006, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
awarded two five-year grants. The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS
Relief (PEPFAR) has also invested heavily in Haiti, and plans to spend
US$84.7 million in 2007. The two agencies are the country’s largest funders
of anti-AIDS programmes.
"It is frustrating having to wait
for partners to be able to take
action"
Currently, 10,445 people living with HIV receive free life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs, less than a quarter of those in
need; the government’s target is to reach 25,000 people.
AIDS workers have noted an uptake in the use of condoms, particularly in urban areas, but are aware that it is still early
days.
The weak state institutions struggle to coordinate the myriad programmes that have taken off with the injection of foreign
funding. More than 65 percent of the national budget comes from international sponsors, and when it comes to AIDS
that figure hits 80 percent.
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“Sometimes we learn about what is going on by chance, as it is difficult to access information [from our partners]. It is
frustrating having to wait for partners to be able to take action,” said Delonnay. “The only solution is to be proactive, to
demonstrate that you are flexible, to see where particular projects are heading and if they are doing good work. We must
then attempt to monitor and work with them.”
In an attempt to affirm its regulatory role, particularly with regard to a civil society that is as strong as the state is weak,
the authorities are stepping up the fight against AIDS.
The job is huge. HIV and tuberculosis (TB) coinfection is on the rise, as is multidrug-resistant TB. Health care in rural
areas, where two-thirds of the population live, is particularly bad. The countryside is remote and mountainous, and there
is a national shortage of qualified health workers.
Stigma against people living with the virus is high, with a widespread and deep-seated belief that HIV infection is linked
to the supernatural, which makes prevention work all the more difficult.
The challenges go well beyond public health. One in three Haitians over the age of 15 is unemployed, and violence
against women, particularly sexual violence, has reached worrying levels. Social services are dilapidated and foreign
investment to help lift Haiti out of its poverty remains limited.
HAITI: Treatment centre reports rising sexual violence and HIV
Apart from HIV, sexual violence against women in Haiti is another
virus that has so far proved resistant to a cure. Activists say they
are unsure whether the rise in cases over the last few years is due
to violence becoming more widespread, or the result of campaigns
calling on women to speak out.
Either way, human rights groups say it is an indictment of the
way the society treats its women. According to a study published
by UK-based medical journal The Lancet, 35,000 women were
subject to sexual violence around the capital, Port-au-Prince,
between 2003 and 2005; more than half were younger than 18
years.
Photo: Anne Isabelle Leclercq/IRIN
Not enough love
In 2004, political tensions in Haiti degenerated into violence as a
rebel group made up of anti-government gangs and demobilised
soldiers began to seize towns; President Jean-Baptiste Aristide was
forced into exile.
“The year 2004 saw the climax of the violence, particularly sexual violence,” said Dr Brunel Delonnay, a senior official in
a government unit that coordinates programmes on sexually transmitted infections, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
The violence continued in 2005 and early 2006 with ‘Operation Baghdad’, launched by armed Aristide supporters
demanding his return despite the presence of a United Nations peacekeeping force.
Before the unrest, the Gheskio Centre, the largest HIV treatment centres in Port-au-Prince, was seeing just a handful of
women requesting HIV testing after sexual assaults. In 2006 numbers rose to between 40 or 50 cases a month, many of
them gang rapes.
“At first it was slow - one case here, one case there,” said the centre’s secretary-general, Dr Marie Deschamps. “Now the
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women come, but [nearly half] of them come too late.” Post-exposure prophylaxis, which cuts the risk of HIV infection,
must be administered within 72 hours of the attack.
Twelve percent of the women reporting to the centre are pregnant, and around two percent are HIV-positive, said Deschamps. “In 90 percent of cases, the victims come to get screened for HIV because they are scared. If they thought we
couldn’t prevent HIV infection, they wouldn’t come.”
"Sexual violence drastically
increased with the outbreak of
violence in 2004."
Haiti has an HIV prevalence rate of 3.8 percent, the highest in the region.
Sexual violence linked to political insecurity is just the tip of the iceberg.
“This situation [of political instability] has obscured habitual sexual violence
happening behind closed doors, which was hidden and not brought to justice,” said Delonnay.
Dr Jean-William Pape, director and co-founder of the Gheskio Centre, agrees. “At the start, the [recorded] incidents of
sexual violence were committed by persons who were unknown and armed, but this has changed; now many of the victims
know their attackers,” he said.
Pressed by human rights activists, the Haitian government is beginning to improve the legal protection of women. Legislation was passed in 2005 that reclassified rape as a stand-alone crime carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment;
previously it was categorised as part of the wider crime of sexual molestation.
The definition of adultery had also contained gender double standards: when committed by a man it was only recognised
if it was actually committed in the marital bed, but in the case of a woman the location did not matter, a distinction that
has now been done away with.
Despite these attempts at legal reforms, perpetrators of sexual violence still enjoy a level of impunity; women are often
too ashamed to testify against their attacker, and when the assailant is a man in uniform, too scared. According to the
Lancet study, 14 percent of cases of sexual assault were attributed to members of the police force.
Although the police insist they “do not tolerate such acts”, the behaviour of the police on the streets has been denounced
by human rights organisations and sex workers.
HAITI: HIV masked by the smokescreen of insecurity
Police officers struggling to keep a lid on Haiti’s violent crime can find it difficult to accept that HIV represents just as
real a threat as the armed gangs they battle.
“We don’t talk about AIDS because it’s scary, and then we can’t [have sex],” smirked one officer, who drew laughs from
his colleagues in the courtyard of the police headquarters when he asked, tongue-in-cheek, where he could find condoms.
But his bravado and denial are no laughing matter in a country with the region’s worst HIV prevalence rate. The Haitian
police have been regularly condemned for their lawlessness, which has included serious allegations of extrajudicial killings, corruption, sexual abuse and exploitation.
National HIV prevalence was estimated at around four percent in 1995; in the police service it “fluctuated between 4
percent and 6 percent, and was even higher among the former military integrated into the police: around 12 percent to
15 percent”, said Dr Harry Brossard, head of the Haitian National Police health service.
Haiti’s political upheavals and endemic poverty have stymied effective AIDS programmes. In 2004, tensions degenerated
into violence as a rebel group made up of anti-government gangs and demobilised soldiers began to seize towns. Presi-
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dent Jean-Baptiste Aristide was forced into exile, but clashes between his supporters and the new interim government
continued.
The authorities have slowly managed to get a grip on the insecurity with the help of the United Nations’ Stabilisation
Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), creating a window for prevention and treatment programmes to get underway among the
country’s 7,000 police officers.
The United States-based social marketing group Population Services International launched a peer educators’ programme in 2005, training around
200 officers who have encouraged their colleagues to use the HIV voluntary
counselling and testing (VCT) centre in the police headquarters in the capital,
Port-au-Prince.
Sponsors, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria,
and the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, have also enabled the
authorities to provide life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs. “Members of the
police force who test positive do not have to worry, we look after them free of
charge,” commented Brossard.
However, an HIV-positive result rules out entry into the police academy.
“Recruits who test positive are referred [to HIV treatment centres], but they
are not hired,” Brossard said. “We do not have adequate structures to integrate
them, and when we have dealings with gangs or during riots they could get
injured.”
Photo: Anne Isabelle Leclercq/IRIN
For many police officers, HIV is less pressing than the violence they face
on a daily basis
However, he noted, “it is not enough to hire men in good health, we must also
keep them in good health”. And in Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries,
“we still don’t have the resources to tackle the fight against AIDS”.
The budget for the police health service is just US $1,000 a month to cover the needs of all the country’s police officers.
Some HIV/AIDS programmes have reduced or suspended services due to the lack of funds.
“Following the awareness campaign, we had between 40 and 50 requests for screening each month, but now we no longer
have the funding, and visits have decreased,” said Dr Edwin Belledent, VCT coordinator at the police health centre.
The unit’s pharmacy has almost run out of even basic medication, admitted Brossard, opening the doors of a cupboard
full of empty medicine boxes and packaging. The state of the pharmacy mirrors that of the country, where years of instability and mismanagement have kept development at bay.
HIV is a long-term threat rather than a pressing concern to many police officers, who work under wretched conditions of
service and deal with violence every day. “We are poorly paid; we can be killed dealing with gangs, or even on the street
on the way home because people know we are police officers,” said one cop in his thirties, gesturing towards a police car
riddled with bullets parked in the courtyard.
“The majority of police officers want to leave the force as soon as they find a better job,” he added. “Personally, I’m going
to change profession as soon as I can; it’s too hard and too dangerous.”
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HAITI: Children start getting specialised AIDS services
Erika, 17, (not her real name) is one of an estimated 17,000 children living with HIV in Haiti, the Caribbean island most affected
by AIDS. After years of ill-health and many medical consultations, she was tested for HIV at the age of 13 and referred to the
paediatric and youth clinic at the Gheskio Centre, the largest HIV
treatment centre in Port-au-Prince, the capital.
More than a year passed before the staff told her she was infected.
Dr Francine Noël, who heads the youth clinic at the Gheskio
Centre, explained that the decision to tell a young person is made
on a case-by-case basis, depending on their level of maturity. “At
that age, young people are confused about everything, so if you
add HIV on top of this, it can be terrible,” she said.
Photo: Anne Isabelle Leclercq/IRIN
Living on the streets, many young people risk HIV when they sell sex to survive
“I was really unwell, I was covered in spots, was always feeling faint and each year I suffered from shingles [a viral infection
common in people who are HIV positive],” Erika explained.
Erika contracted HIV from her mother at birth. She was orphaned at the age of six and since then has lived in her mother’s house with her uncle, aunt and their children. The news that she was HIV-positive did not come as a big surprise.
“My uncle and aunt were whispering a lot and I knew something was going on, so the doctors told me,” she added. “I had
heard that it [HIV/AIDS] was an untreatable disease, but I thought you could operate. They told me the truth about it.”
At the youth clinic in a quiet, green area next to the main clinic where adult patients receive their antiretroviral (ARV)
drugs, Erika meets other young people who come to the centre to learn about HIV and sexually transmitted infections
(STIs), or to be treated if they have been diagnosed with HIV.
In a country affected by years of political instability, violence and endemic poverty, Aide Médicale Internationale (AMI),
a French non-governmental organisation, has counted over 2,120 street children in Port-au-Prince, some as young as 10.
A socio-medical programme launched by AMI in 2004 uses mobile clinics to bring healthcare and psychological support
to them.
“Many young people have been ‘demilitarised’ - they were part of armed gangs and were used as mules [who carry drugs]
or foot soldiers, and now find themselves on the streets after police operations to break up the gangs,” said Dr Sénou
Amouzou, the programme’s medical advisor.
Forced to fend for themselves, some fall victim to violence, including sexual violence, while some trade sex to survive. As
a result, STIs account for around 30 percent of consultations at the mobile clinic, and AMI is monitoring seven HIV-positive street teenagers, five of whom are pregnant.
Initially the organisation also offered HIV testing to young people, but has decided to put this service on hold temporarily. Amouzou explained that providing testing alone was not enough: more importantly, HIV-positive children “also need
a roof over their heads and healthy food, but it is not ... easy to find housing and rehabilitation facilities. When you’re
living on the streets, even keeping your medication clean and dry is an issue.”
AMI are looking for funding and resources to provide more comprehensive services to street children, and in the meantime refer them to clinics in the capital for HIV testing and treatment, particularly the youth clinic at the Gheskio Centre.
“We give them medication [for opportunistic infections] - our job is worthless if they don’t have that - we relieve the pain
for a couple of hours, but that doesn’t have any [long-term] impact,” Amouzou said. He added that while it was relatively
easy to find ARVs, HIV-positive teenagers also needed the right conditions for treatment to be successful.
Young people do not always feel comfortable at centres where they are mixed with adults, which can affect treatment
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negatively, according to Dr Noël at the Gheskia Centre’s youth clinic. A study investigating ARV adherence among
young people in Haiti found only 40 percent of those surveyed were following their treatment correctly; one of the main
reasons given was that they did not feel comfortable among the adult patients.
"...When you’re living on the
streets, even keeping your
medication clean and dry is an
issue..."
“They needed to be separated and supervised,” Noël told IRIN/PlusNews.
“Here they have their own centre and their own doctors and nurses.” In a
large room with chairs and a television, overlooking a courtyard shaded by
trees, groups of teenagers chat while they wait for their consultations.
Erika, who has now been on ARV treatment for five years, says she feels
happy here and often comes to chat with other young people. “There is a
girl, who refuses to take her medicine, that I speak to. I also speak to young
people who are infected.” She said she would like to study psychology so she can “help people who don’t want to take
their medication.”
Like many other infected children, Erika has had to deal with the stigma linked to the virus, even in her own family.
Although she still prefers not to talk about her HIV-positive status with her classmates, she tries to explain to her peers
what HIV is.
HAITI: Proposed law would be weapon against stigma
Whether you are an adult or a child, man or woman, heterosexual
or gay, all Haitians living with HIV are subject to the stigma
linked to the virus.
Jean-Sorel Beaujour cannot forget the night he was shot by burglars who broke into his house. “I went to the university hospital
where I saw two doctors. I warned them that I was infected and
they refused to treat me,” he told IRIN/PlusNews. Despite the
seriousness of his injuries, he was left unattended until a young
female doctor eventually agreed to don some gloves and come to
his assistance.
Beaujour, director of the Association of National Solidarity for
Persons Living with and Affected by HIV/AIDS, for which the
Photo: Anne Isabelle Leclercq/IRIN
French acronym is ASON, is far from the only person living
Hospital staff refused to treat Beaujour for gunshot wounds when he told them he was HIV-positive
with HIV to have experienced such discrimination. PHAP+, an
umbrella group that links 15 organisations with a membership of over 5,000 people living with HIV throughout the
country, receives daily reports of such occurrences.
If HIV is linked to a lifestyle considered “immoral”, or outside the norms of a society with deep-seated traditional values,
as in the case of sex workers and men who have sex with men (MSM), the prejudice and stigma is often even greater.
“MSM endure ridicule and marginalisation,” said Réginald Dupont, programme coordinator for Sérovie, a PHAP+ affiliate
organisation working with MSM.
Although MSM are less often victims of violence in Haiti than in other Caribbean countries, Dupont said MSM who are
also HIV-positive face “a double discrimination”. He told the story of a young male sex worker from Jacmel, a coastal
town in the south of the country, whom he suggested should be tested after his partner’s death.
“When he went to get his test, even before he had left the health centre everyone knew he was infected ... he was discriminated against on three levels [he was gay, HIV-positive and a sex worker],” Dupont said.
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There is no legislation specifically protecting the rights of people living with HIV to health care, education and employment. As a result, said Beaujour, it was often difficult to press charges. PHAP+ and its partners have written a paper
proposing such legislation, and a bill has been submitted to the Ministry for Public Health and Population.
Besides protecting HIV-positive people from discrimination, the aim of the bill is to create “a legal framework to protect
the whole of society ... in terms of [AIDS-related] research, [access to] medication and awareness”. Ahead of the Haitian
parliament considering the bill, PHAP+ and its affiliates have launched a campaign to educate the general public about it.
“People’s mentalities are changing; they understand the situation and it is improving, and people who are victims of discrimination are starting to realise their rights,” said Beaujour. “The leaders [of the organisations] say we are undertaking
too much activism, but we reply that we are fighting for life, for our rights and those of others.”
According to Beaujour, the authorities should see the proposed law as a way of involving themselves in the fight against
AIDS, which has largely been led by international donors.
“There is a lack of leadership in the fight against AIDS - it is not visible; but a legal framework could mark the start of this
[leadership],” he said.
HAITI: “We must try our best”
Combating AIDS in Haiti is almost exclusively financed by
international organisations; what would happen if the funding
dried up? It is a concern not only for people living with the virus,
but also for activists trying to build a sustainable response to the
epidemic.
Away from a busy, noisy road in a Port-au-Prince shantytown,
dozens of patients wait their turn in the courtyard of the largest
HIV/AIDS treatment centre in the capital. They avert their eyes as
two hospital porters remove a body covered with a white sheet.
Photo: Anne Isabelle Leclercq/IRIN
There is pressure on the government to establish a ‘solidarity fund’ for HIV in case of political turmoil
In 2006, between 140,000 and 150,000 people passed through
the doors of the Gheskio Centre, in an area nicknamed “Kosovo”
by locals due to the bouts of violence that have broken out over
the last few years.
HIV-positive patients receive their antiretroviral (ARV) drugs here, thanks mainly to funding from the Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
HIV is not the only thing the patients have in common: the majority are young girls from the city’s poorest communities, often infected with both HIV and tuberculosis. HIV is yet another burden for them to endure in a country where 65
percent of people live below the poverty line and one in 12 children do not reach the age of five.
“If you only knew the misery these people suffer - they get up very early, without any food, in an attempt find a means to
survive; they finish at nightfall, and when they return [to the shantytowns] in the evening, they can become the victims of
gangs,” said Dr Jean-William Pape, co-founder and director of the Gheskio Center.
According to the Brussels-based think-tank the International Crisis Group: “Post-conflict and transitional assistance is
only starting to trickle into the capital, whose communes have still not perceived the start of a new era. Likewise, donor
and government coordination is not yet efficient.”
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Accessing ARVs - which slows the progression of HIV - depends on internationally funded treatment programmes. “When
we take our pills, we thank the people in [rich] countries who work hard to pay the taxes that pay for our medication,”
said Jean-Sorel Beaujour, executive director of the National Solidarity Association for People Living With and Affected
by HIV/AIDS (known by the French acronym, ASON).
“But we are scared: if problems arise, what will the government do to pay for our medication?” he added. Beaujour
believes the government needs to establish a ‘solidarity fund’ to ensure that treatment could continue if Haiti’s political
volatility led donors to pull the plug.
“We pay taxes here too, and the state has spent a lot of money on international political lobbying,” he added. “This
expenditure could [finance] healthcare.”
The government appears to have taken some notice, and will try to address the issue in its 2008-2011 strategic plan to
fight AIDS, said Dr Brunel Delonnay, a senior official in the HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis programme coordination unit.
“Haiti has huge financial problems, but we have set out a strategic focus to create the resources for sustainable HIV/AIDS
programmes,” he told IRIN/PlusNews. “The state intends to allocate a budget for this.”
Many AIDS workers believe the focus should go beyond financing AIDS programmes; the entire health service needs to
be overhauled. “What is the point of giving a patient AIDS treatment if they die from malaria?” said Pape of the Gheskio
Center.
Most of the main provincial hospitals were built during the two decades of American occupation of Haiti, which ended in
1934. They were designed to cater to the needs of thousands, but today serve hundreds of thousands.
“The AIDS epidemic is an opportunity to strengthen the health system,” noted Dr Carl François, technical director of the
Global Fund’s programme at Sogebank, the foundation managing the Fund’s grant on behalf of Haitian beneficiaries.
Sustainable funding, however, is a critical problem. The government relies on foreign aid for 60 percent of its budget,
and most Haitians are too poor to bear the cost of an overhauled health system.
One-third of people over the age of 15 are unemployed. “There are not enough employers or people employed to finance
a social security system,” said François.
Training and retaining health professionals in Haiti, which has 1.2 doctors per 10,000 inhabitants, is another hurdle. One
in four Haitians lives abroad - including many trained health workers. The Gheskio Centre, whose roles include training
and scientific research, is beginning to give the future of Haiti’s health system serious thought.
“We are interested in developing countries, to see what can be integrated here,” explained Pape. “Should our health
system be public or private? Should it be co-financed or not? Should the authorities supervise the system or run it? It is
an urgent issue for our young doctors and nurses too, as they need to know what system they will be working in.”
Whatever the country’s difficulties, this is an urgent issue for people living with HIV. “We are poor, but we must try our
best,” said Beaujour.
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HAITI: Using the power of the cinema to spread the word on AIDS
More than one in four Haitians believes HIV can be transmitted by supernatural means, so using the magic of the movies may be one way of opening people’s
eyes to the reality of the pandemic.
“Haiti is a country dominated by the idea of magic, where almost no disease
or natural death exist,” said local moviemaker Arnold Antonin, who wrote the
award-winning film ‘Le Président a-t-il le sida?’ (‘Has the President got AIDS?’).
“It is very difficult, when this notion of illness and death is so ingrained, to
tackle the problem (of AIDS) in a rational and scientific manner.”
Antonin’s film has nevertheless had a big impact in Haiti, one of the world’s
poorest countries, where two in five adults are illiterate. It tackles belief in the
supernatural head-on, and also takes a swipe at those in power who abuse their
authority.
Photo: Anne Isabelle Leclercq/IRIN
Movie magic
‘Le Président a-t-il le sida?’ tells the story of Nina, who falls in love with Dao,
a young Kompa (Haitian popular music) star and heartthrob. He is dizzy with
success, and burning the candle at both ends, believing that voodoo will protect him from HIV. Nina manages to convince Dao that he is deluding himself,
and supports him when he tests positive for the virus.
The filmmaker wanted to address many issues through their story, and that of Larrieux, a politician who thinks that he
can have whatever he wants. “The first message was that AIDS is a very real illness, against which we can protect ourselves, using condoms, for example,” he said.
It is a message well worth promoting in Haiti: according to a study by the Haitian Institute for Children, 25 percent of
women and 15 percent of men believe there is no protection against HIV. Many, especially in rural areas, think that
becoming infected means someone has been “sent an AIDS death”.
Go to a doctor
Antonin wanted to encourage his fellow citizens to “go to the doctor if you have AIDS, or if you think you have it; don’t
go to see a witchdoctor or a [religious] minister”. His film also aimed at encouraging respect for women, the main victims
of HIV and of violence in Haiti.
He opted for a film drama rather than a documentary to tackle the lack of AIDS awareness and the stigma related to the
disease. “I have produced documentaries about children with AIDS, sexual behaviour and pregnant women; but documentaries have limited scope here, as people are not interested in them, they don’t feel it concerns them,” he explained.
“With fiction, you can strike emotional chords and feelings and people identify with the characters. The messages aren’t
direct, but they are better received.”
In a tree-lined square at Place Boyer in Pétionville, one of the most affluent suburbs of Port-au-Prince, the capital, a small
group of young people were passing the time chatting amiably. They had all seen the film and were unanimous in their
appreciation of it.
“I like the fact that Nina [the heroine] does not give in, even though the old guy [Larrieux] has money and Dao [the hero]
is a famous handsome singer who fancies her. She is right,” commented a young woman, who was immediately heckled
good-naturedly by her male friends.
The young man sitting on the bench next to her said the film had opened his mother’s eyes. “She was always saying that
AIDS was a punishment - we argued about it - but since she saw the film, she hasn’t said that any more,” he laughed.
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Antonin took inspiration from his own experiences to write the screenplay: “I’d seen lots of friends get struck down by
AIDS in Haiti, people from all walks of life ... it was a real catastrophe for me.”
The film was shown for the first time in 2005, and he said he felt more optimistic these days: “People’s mentalities are
starting to change, people accept that AIDS is an illness and should be treated as one.”
References
Country Profile: Haiti
http://www.plusnews.org/profiletreatment.aspx?Country=HT&Region=NAM
Human Rights Watch
http://hrw.org/englishwr2k7/docs/2007/01/11/haiti14862.htm
International Crisis Group
http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75011
The Synergy Project
http://www.synergyaids.com/documents/3703_Haiti_brief_rev_2a.pdf
Global Fund in Haiti
http://www.theglobalfund.org/programs/countrysite.aspx?countryid=HTI&lang=en
PEPFAR in Haiti
http://www.pepfarhaiti.com/NewPepfar/Document/WebForm/default.aspx
UNAIDS Country progress report
http://data.unaids.org/pub/Report/2006/2006_country_progress_report_haiti_en.pdf
National survey on mortality, morbidity and HIV/AIDS
http://www.paho.org/english/d/csu/HAIPrelReport-EMMUS-IV.pdf
Panos Institute of the Caribbean
http://www.panosinst.org/
Global HIV/AIDS news and analysis - www.PlusNews.org