THE JAMAICA Hotel and Tourist Association's (JHTA) decision to accept a draft HIV/AIDS policy for the tourism industry, as developed by various stakeholders in the sector, is an important one in the continuing public education drive against the spread of the disease.In effect, it is one more step being taken to craft a unified and co-ordinated framework and to formalise standards governing the relationship between employers and employees on the one hand and staff and guests on the other.
Aspects of the plan have already been implemented in some hotels and some will need clarification or ironing out such as the forbidding of staff from "inviting sexual interactions with guests through verbal or non-verbal gestures". Human interaction will generally bypass that one whatever the well-intentioned ideal. What is to happen when the invitee is the guest?
The policy seeks also to de-stigmatise the disease as far as it relates to persons living with HIV/AIDS by encouraging the development of guidelines that will allow them to continue working as long as is practical. Many companies have simply been forced to deal with the issue in the workplace having seen the devastating effects on their staff and the resultant fall-out of fear and prejudice.
Each step is an important part in the multi-pronged approach needed to halt the spread of the disease. Adopting the policy cannot and will not relieve persons of individual responsibility and of being sensible in the conduct of their private lives. But as we have noted in these columns previously, HIV/AIDS has leap-frogged to the top of the list of public health concerns across the globe.
Speakers at this week's 15th International AIDS conference in Bangkok, Thailand, have highlighted the devastating impact the pandemic is having on entire regions and on women in particular.
Many countries continue to grapple with the issues of tackling the disease from a human rights, public health and moral perspective. But as Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan told the opening session of the conference, world leaders are not doing nearly as much as they can or had committed themselves to doing. In the arena of competing interests, it might be argued that funding for AIDS research and treatment is already disproportionate to other public health concerns. But given the deadly impact on potentially the most productive age groups, this is in a sense, an attempt at pre-emptive care.
HIV/AIDS has already halted the development of many countries by robbing them of the most productive members of their workforce. If each sector, each country and each region give more focused attention on slaying this monster, the likelihood of a turnaround will be that much greater.
The tentative steps taken locally by state agencies as well as by private firms, NGOs and in the instant case by the JHTA members, are important in containing this devastating disease and must be supported in all practical ways.
