THE Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL) is reporting an increase in new HIV cases among youngsters under 24 years who access the entity’s treatment sites.

JASL, the country’s main advocacy group in the fight against HIV, told reporters and editors at a recent Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange that while a general increase in HIV cases is not being observed, there is a concentration of new cases in all its sites among young people less than 24 years old.

JASL has treatment sites in Kingston and St Andrew, St Ann and St James, but its programmes span islandwide.

Kandasi Levermore, JASL executive director, said while the increase is from JASL-specific programmatic data, the trend is heartbreaking.

“We can’t talk about what is happening nationally. It is very disappointing when you find people practising unsafe sex, leading to HIV. It is hard when you go into a space and you’re talking about HIV and people literally don’t know enough. They don’t know what puts them at risk, they don’t know how to prevent the transmission of it, they don’t know who are at risk. People tend to live in their own bubbles and say it’s not applicable to me and I think those are the heartbreaking stories when you see someone who comes to you, didn’t know and then you have to talk about managing the virus instead of preventing,” Levermore said.

Levermore further bemoaned the lack of sexual education in the general population and a sexual reproductive health policy.

“I remember a professional lady saying to me, ‘AIDS nuh gone long time, every day unu out ya a talk bout HIV’. There are some sets of people who you expect you don’t have to go through that with, but we are going through this with multiple people. It’s difficult to work with young people as we cannot have people less than 18 years in a JASL site. It’s a difficult issue around how young people are able to access services around HIV testing, access condoms.

“It’s been years since we are asking for a sexual reproductive health policy — better guidelines for health workers around providing access to services for young people.The lack of policy puts us in a difficult situation when someone turns up, might be 15, and our obligation is to report. The lack of policy allows health-care workers to shun away from addressing the situation as nobody wants to go to jail or pay a fine. It impedes services especially against the backdrop of research, which tells us the age of sexual début for boys and girls is less than 15,” Levermore said.

She added: “Data tells us young people are engaging in sexual activities and might be engaging at a time when they are not aware of what puts them at risk. There’s no condom use and no knowledge of STDS and other STIs. I always make a clarion call to parents to be that person who talks to your child about HIV. We are not having the conversations with our children and that continues to put them at risk.”

Monitoring and evaluation officer at JASL, Xavier Biggs, added that the lack of a sexual education and a sexual reproductive health policy was causing seroconversion — another disappointing occurrence.

Seroconversion is a term used to describe people who are HIV negative, would have benefited from prevention services, but later produce a positive HIV test.

“In your head you thought you gave them all the information, all the empowerment they needed to stay negative. But these individuals ultimately become positive and that is difficult. Approximately 40 to 50 per cent of cases have been people who have prior tested negative,” Biggs said.

In addition to the lack of policy, Biggs said the issue of sexual education and HIV is not placed at the forefront of decision-making processes, though we live in a very ‘sex-positive’ country.

Biggs referenced the Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) study commissioned by the Ministry of Health and Wellness every five years, which he said illustrates that our sex positive nature does not translate to proper sexual education.

“In 2012 we were looking at about 38 per cent of people who could correctly recall prevention modalities around HIV prevention. By 2017 that fell to 32 per cent, which suggests between 2012 and 2017, there was around six per cent decline in what people were able to recall about HIV prevention. [The] information we have about the upcoming one is suggesting the knowledge has declined even further and that tells us there is something to be concerned about,” Biggs said.

Policy and advocacy officer at JASL, Patrick Lalor, added that conversations around sex are just not happening and it’s something JASL will continue to be vocal about.

“It is not happening with children, it is not happening with teenagers, it is not happening with adolescents, it’s not happening in homes, it’s not happening in schools and that’s one of the things we have been very vociferous around. It’s not people under a rock who don’t know about HIV prevention modalities or how the virus is spread,” he said.