JAMAICA'S violent sub-culture is hampering HIV/AIDS awareness among inner-city youths, increasing the prevalence of the dreaded disease in impoverished communities.
"There are younger guys who have gotten wrapped up in the message and the violence within our communities, a wide cross section of our men don't believe that they are going to live to see 40...," said Dr Kevin Harvey, head of the National HIV/STI programme in the Ministry of Health.
"There is a huge sub-culture within our low socio-economic communities and it causes men to feel as if they are vulnerable to other things, so (they ask) why worry about a chronic illness?" he said.
Dr Harvey made the disclosure at the Observer's weekly Monday Exchange with reporters and editors at the company's Beechwood Avenue, Kingston, offices.
He said many studies had been conducted on the HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in some inner-city communities, but declined to name them for fear that the residents would be labelled.
The sentiment was supported by Dr Elizabeth Ward, chairperson of the University of the West Indies-based Violence Prevention Alliance, who added that sexual activities involving young girls in inner-city communities are forced.
"Studies have shown that with a lot of (inner-city) women and girls sex is forced, so there is some level of violence. It's not consensual sex," she said.
"Additionally, particularly the young men are not interested in taking precautions to prevent themselves from getting HIV/AIDS and they feel that they are more at risk from violence than they are from AIDS," she said, adding that there are some 50 inner-city communities within the Corporate Area and more than five in St James.
But the relationship between violence and the spread of HIV/AIDS is not limited to inner-city communities. It trickles into the middle and upper-class communities through the form of domestic violence.
According to Rosemarie Stone -- who has been living with HIV for more than 15 years, and who has been counselling females living with the virus -- some of the issues facing women, regardless of their social status, are very disturbing.
Stone related an incident where an infected husband who broke into his wife's home and raped her after they got divorced because he was HIV-positive.
"There are many men who do those things; that is how our society is, that's how it is with a man who can't resolve anything. He just cannot understand how he could get the virus and the only person he can point to is his wife," said Stone, one of the new faces in the recently launched HIV/AIDS anti-stigma campaign.
Dr Harvey, however, said that there were several initiatives embarked on by the programme to address such scenarios.
"There is what we call contact investigators who will work with the partners, or we can even facilitate the disclosure without you (victims) being involved, so we have a number of processes to deal with that," he said.
According to the latest data, approximately 27,000 Jamaicans are infected with HIV/AIDS, with the Corporate Area and St James having the highest prevalence rates.
Source: Jamaican Observer
