- Photo by Andrea Downer
Kerrel McKay, speaking last Thursday to journalists shortly after her plenary address at the 16th AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada.

Andrea Downer, Gleaner Writer

A young Jamaican last Thursday had the ear of the world as she appealed for easier access to condoms and other HIV/STI prevention methods for young people.

Twenty-three-year-old Kerrel McKay, who works as an outreach officer with the Ministry of Health's HIV/AIDS Response Programme, and is president of the Portland AIDS Committee youth group, was one of four delegates attending the 16th conference on AIDS in Toronto, Canada. She spoke at one of the conference's daily plenary sessions on the topic, 'Time to Deliver - The Price of Inaction'.

Kerrel lost her father to AIDS when she was just nine. The death of her father and the harsh realities of stigma and discrimination, which she said was directed at both her and her mother, interrupted Kerrel's mourning process and spurred her into action.

"Daddy did not leave as soon as I thought he would, but living through the process with him was as if I was being killed over and over again," Kerrel recalled. "I watched my childhood, self-esteem, innocence and my father waste away, and the worst thing was that I felt at the time that there was nothing that I could do about it."

Affected and infected

Well, she has since been empowered, and shortly after her father died, she launched the Portland Aids Committee youth group, the first group comprising young people in Jamaica that dealt with the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the challenges faced by the island's young people who were affected and infected by the disease.

Last week, with more than 20,000 delegates from around the world listening, she launched an impassioned plea for immediate action to reduce the vulnerability of youths to HIV.

"Because we have been inactive for so long, young people are becoming increasingly vulnerable and HIV infection among young people has escalated," Kerrel argued. "Despite the attempt to improve the standard of health care centres and to upgrade the quality of service offered to young people, there is still a high sense of stigma and discrimination faced by youngsters who try to access condoms and other services although information about HIV prevention is available."

Kerrel said 20 years into the epidemic, children in her home town in Portland, whose parents are infected, are still being discriminated against by teachers, their peers and other members of the community, including their own relatives.

Data from UNICEF indicate that almost 12 million young people between the ages of 15-24 and three million children live with HIV/AIDS. In addition, UNICEF has found that the majority of new infections is among young people with 6,000 young people and almost 2,000 children becoming infected daily.