Horace Peterkin (centre), chairman of the Product Committee of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA), is in a jovial mood as he displays the first condom obtained from the condom dispensing machine at Margaritaville in Montego Bay, St. James. Congratulating him on 'christening' the machine is André Dixon (left), Margaritaville's operations director, while is Ruth Jankee of the National Aids Committee looks on . The occasion was yesterday's launch of the condom dispensing machine at Margaritaville.
-Herbert McKenisErica James-King, Staff Reporter
WESTERN BUREAU:
IN A bid to increase access to condoms as well as trigger a reduction in HIV/AIDS cases islandwide, the Ministry of Health will be making a dozen condom dispensing machines available to the tourism sector over the next six months.
Each machine is valued at US$600, but will be made available, free of cost, to entities in the hospitality sector.
The initiative fulfils part of a mandate given to the Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo) by the Ministry of Industry and Tourism to facilitate the slashing of HIV/AIDS transmission in the sector, under a Memorandum of Understanding with the Health Ministry.
The condom machines are being installed under a pilot project in the Health Ministry which began in March this year and will run until year-end.
HUMAN INTERACTION
Helen Reece, TPDCo's standards director, in underscoring the need for condom vending machines at establishments in the hospitality industry, said, "Tourism by its very nature facilitates the meeting and interaction of persons from different cultures (and) sometimes during the process of that human interaction, persons let down their guard and get involved in activities that put them at risk to contract HIV/AIDS."
And in giving another reason why condom machines should be part of the mandatory tourism landscape in Jamaica, Ms. Reece explains that in Jamaica, as in other tourism centres, there is an underground sex trade that exists outside of the formal tourism system.
Ms. Reece made the comments while addressing yesterday's launch of a condom machine at Margaritaville in Montego Bay, St. James. Ms. Reece was delivering a message on behalf of Michael Muirhead, executive director of TPDCo, who was absent from the launching ceremony.
HIV INFECTION
The installation comes at a time when data from the Health Ministry is showing that St. James has the highest rate of HIV infection in the island, which amounts to 713.5 per 100,000 of the population.
André Dixon, operations director at Margaritaville in Montego Bay is promising that in another few weeks, Margaritaville locations in Negril and Ocho Rios will also come onboard the condom machine initiative.
Meanwhile, Horace Peterkin, chairman of the Product Committee of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association and general manager of Sandals Montego Bay, has announced that his hotel will be the first Jamaican resort to put in condom machines; the first of which will be installed on Monday.
The condom-machine pilot venture sees the Health Ministry supplying the machines, Facey Commodity stocking the equipment with condoms and the National AIDs Committee monitoring the programme.
Other entities outside of the Tourism Ministry that have been provided with condom machines under the pilot project are: University of Technology, University of the West Indies and Caymanas Racetrack.
