CORRECTION AND CLARIFICATION
John Junor (left foreground), Minister of Health, and Gerthlyn Holman (second right), president of the Kiwanis Club of New Kingston, cuddle a baby at the opening on Thursday of the Mustard Seed Communities' paediatrics centre to care for children with HIV/AIDS, at Duncans Pen, St. Catherine. Looking on is Per Engebak (left), UNICEF's Regional Director for the Americas and the Caribbean, and Vivian Monteith, First Secretary, Canadian High Commission, Kingston. Neither the child nor its mother at right is affected by HIV. They had visited the centre as part of the Mustard Seed Communities' team.
John Junor (left foreground), Minister of Health, and Gerthlyn Holman (second right), president of the Kiwanis Club of New Kingston, cuddle a baby at the opening yesterday of the Mustard Seed Communities' paediatrics centre to care for children with HIV/AIDS, at Duncans Pen, St. Catherine. Looking on is Per Engebak (left), UNICEF's Regional Director for the Americas and the Caribbean, and Vivian Monteith, First Secretary, Canadian High Commission, Kingston. - Ian Allen
A PAEDIATRICS centre to care for infants with HIV/AIDS was opened yesterday at Duncans Pen, St. Catherine, coinciding with an increase from 55 to 70 between 1998 and 1999, in the number of infant cases reported.
Health Minister John Junor who spoke at the opening, said current investment in HIV/AID health-care would help to save the Government and other agencies from forking out greater sums of money in the long run.
He explained that comprehensive spending on AIDS health-care would amount to some US$260 million per year which "was more than 10 times what is being spent now," he told the audience, comprising officials from the Ministry of Health, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and various service and child-care organisations.
Mr. Junor added that it was necessary to find partnerships and creative ways to source funding for the projects to help those with the disease as well as programmes aimed at combating AIDS.
Along with Per Engebak, UNICEF's Regional Director for the Americas and the Caribbean, he outlined the severe social impact of the epidemic on adults and especially, children.
According to Mr. Engebak, "It is estimated that 15,000 people acquire HIV every day and that 60 per cent of these new infections will occur in children and young people". "Almost 32 million children under 15 have died from AIDS since the beginning of the pandemic, and because of HIV infection and the loss of family care, it is estimated that child mortality will double in the worst affected by 2010."
The home, called "Dare to Care", is attempting to stem that prediction by helping children with AIDS who have no one to care for them. Fr. Gregory Ramkissoon, Roman catholic priest and executive director of the Mustard Seed Communities, and Mr Junor, warned residents of Duncans Pen and other communities that the centre was for children who had no alternative means of care and so, was not a place to dump children infected with HIV. They urged citizens to take an interest in the care of those and other infected children because "it takes a community to raise a child".
The new paediatrics centre was the idea of Ambassador Marjorie Taylor, Special Envoy for Children, and Fr. Ramkissoon, and was built at a cost of $2.5 million, on the Mustard Seed Compound, Spanish Town. Also, the compound houses facilities to help handicapped and abandoned children such as a school, which Fr Ramkissoon said, already had three classrooms. He said that the children would be included in its activities.
Mr. Junor also reported that 12 children who are now under the care of the Children's Services Division, will be sent to the home, which can accommodate 20 children. The Government is to pay a monthly stipend to Mustard Seed to take care of the children.
Mustard Seed was presented with just over $700,000 in contributions to help operate the centre, which is slated to cost $15 million to run each year, and to continue construction on several buildings on eight acres of land which were donated by the Government. Contributors included the Canadian High Commission and the St. Catherine Preparatory School.
