OCHO RIOS, St Ann – THE North-East Regional Health Authority has intensified its safe-sex campaigns, after a survey in the parish- which has the fourth highest rate of infections – identified 61 locations in Ocho Rios alone where people gather on a regular basis to meet sex partners.

Some 1,419 people in St Ann are said to be infected with the disease. And although these campaigns have always been ongoing, the efforts have increased as an anticipated 20,000 visitors are expected to stop over in the resort towns during the staging of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 Tournament which gets under way on March 11. As such, the Authority has intensified its ‘safer sex’ messages to encourage condom use at targeted hotspots visited by tourists and locals. Patricia Russell, regional behaviour change communication officer for the HIV/AIDS prevention programme, noted that while the Authority had implemented similar measures for Portland and St Mary, the focus will be on St Ann since it will be the main transportation corridor from Trelawny to Kingston, where the games will be played.

“Based on the information we received on the sites people visit for entertainment, extra efforts will be placed on these,” Russell said. “We will be there day and night talking to people, because we will have tourists who are here in the days, and we will need to engage them at these spots,” she told the Observer.

Added Russell: “We will be doing our normal work, except that we know that there will be more persons passing through so we will be stepping up our efforts and putting up the ‘safer sex’ messages everywhere.”

She also noted that the Authority had always targeted specific communities to gather baseline data. However, a recent survey, according to Russell, identified 61 sites in Ocho Rios where people go specifically to look for new sex partners.

“We had gone into communities and asked where would I go to meet a new sex partner. They told us those places and we interviewed persons we saw there socialising, and they admitted that they came to meet a new sex partner,” Russell explained. She said that other such sites were identified along the coast as far as Discovery Bay as well as a number of go-go clubs. Consequently, she said they had taken a small sample size of these sites to work with between now and May, before moving on with their ‘safer sex’ messages to other locations.

“The idea is to create the environment that will promote safer sex, so we will be putting up messages in places like the bathrooms on how to use condoms and other safe-sex practices,” she said. Russell also noted that the Authority had also engaged club owners, gatekeepers and other people at these locations to make condoms available to patrons. Commercial sex workers, who are said to make a thriving business from some cruise ship passengers, are also being targeted during this intervention. According to Russell, since the last quarter the Authority has been training commercial sex workers to be become peer sex educator.

“The sex workers have been trained to work with their peers to pass on ‘safer sex’ messages such as the importance of using the condoms, why we don’t support doubling of the condoms, and where they can find a private doctor within the parish they are from if they develop certain symptoms,” she told the Observer. But while the Authority is confident that some of the sex workers are practising safer sex, Russell said the challenge still remains to get them to use a condom with their main partner at home. Another strategy being employed by the Regional Authority is what is referred to as a hype session, where the disc jockeys or MCs at night clubs are asked to do sound bites on ‘safer sex’ messages intermittently throughout the night. The health workers will then engage patrons and workers alike on ‘safer sex’ education as well as on HIV and AIDS issues. For some of these sites, Russell explains that testing is provided on-site for those who request it. As for testing, she noted that people are usually receptive to have on-the-spot testing and that the results are given less than 30 minutes later.

At a recent testing site held at a plaza in Ocho Rios, Russell said approximately 190 people were tested and received their results on the spot