Publication: Taking Decisive Action : The Barbados HIV/AIDS Pprevention Project
Loading...
Published
2004-04
ISSN
Date
2012-08-13
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The first case of HIV/AIDS was detected in Barbados in 1984. At that time, HIV/AIDS was viewed more as a consequence of risky personal behavior by men who have sex with men than as a public health issue that affects the general population. Since then the number of reported HIV cases has risen continuously particularly among 15-49 year olds and the most economically active group, 25-49 year olds. Today, prevalence among adults in Barbados is conservatively estimated at over 3 percent. But people who test positive are estimated to represent only one-fifth of the infected population.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Marquez, Patricio. 2004. Taking Decisive Action : The Barbados HIV/AIDS Pprevention Project. en breve; No. 45. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/10360 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Dominican Republic HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Project : Initial Results(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-07)The Dominican Republic has 120,000 persons living with AIDS (PLWAs), 9 times the total number of reported cases. About 20,000 people have died from AIDS in the last decade. HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age. Prevalence is highest (5 percent of adults) among low-income groups that include many Haitian immigrants living in rural communities and working in sugar cane plantations. Prevalence among female commercial sex workers is about 8 percent, reaching 12 percent in some cities. Tuberculosis (TB) is the largest opportunistic infection for PLWAs. PAHO estimates that over 100 persons per 100,000 are infected with TB, versus 2.6 per 100,000 in Barbados and 4.9 per 100,000 in Jamaica. The 5,320 reported cases in the Dominican Republic are among the highest in the Latin America and Caribbean region.Publication Fighting HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2002-06)In the Caribbean, HIV/AIDS has become the major cause of death among men under the age of 45. Official figures show more than 360,000 people living with AIDS, but estimates place the number at over 500,000 due to underreporting. More than 80,000 children have been orphaned by the epidemic, and the infection rate is estimated to have reached 12 percent in some urban areas, spreading in many countries from high-risk groups to the general population. The Caribbean Regional Strategic Plan of Action for HIV/AIDS will support national programs based on the countries' own needs. While the general population will benefit from a reduction in the rate of new infections, the program will particularly benefit high-risk groups and the 300,000-500,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, by increasing their care quality and coverage. The program (see Table 1, on back page) will focus its support on a participatory approach to facilitate government work in partnership with patients, community groups, religious organizations, NGOs, health professionals and the private sector. The five-year program includes: Communications campaigns to raise awareness; scaling up prevention activities, at the national and community levels; strengthening care of people living with HIV/AIDS by improving treatment, including sexually transmitted infections and opportunistic infections like tuberculosis; supporting research and surveillance; and capacity building to improve program coordination and resource management.Publication Blood Services in Central Asian Health Systems : A Clear and Present Danger of Spreading HIV/AIDS and Other Infectious Diseases(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-05)The report discusses inter-related parts of blood transfusions systems, and presents an overview of the parts that need to be strengthened in Central Asia. Numerous parts are in serious need of organizational restructuring, new investment and increased budgetary support for operation and maintenance. This report sets them out such that each can be addressed in turn and some simultaneously. The report also discusses the health threat posed by alarmingly low levels of blood supplies, fostered by a culture that places little value on donating blood, public fear of being infected by giving blood, and the near absence of donor promotion campaigns.Publication Action Needed : Spiraling Drug Prices Empty Russian Pockets(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-02)In large measure, this is due to the relatively low level of public health spending in the country (about 3.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2008) that underlines the significant gap between the constitutional commitment to a range of medical care services and the actual funding to pay for them. While drugs are supposed to be provided to hospital patients free of charge, an estimated 80 percent of inpatients still have to pay part of the costs of their medicines and most outpatients must purchase them from pharmacies. The outpatient drug program under mandatory health insurance covers only around 16 million people (11 percent of the total population in the country), with more than half of them opting to receive cash rather than in-kind benefits under the 2005 'monetization' of prescription drug benefits. Those who continue with the in-kind benefits appear to be the ones greatest in need of drugs. The situation is further aggravated by the country's ineffective enforcement of controls on wholesale and retail mark-ups for medicines. Household expenditure on drugs accounted for about 30 percent of total health expenditure in Russia, as compared to 12 percent in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in 2008.Publication What Makes Nigerian Manufacturing Firms Take Action on HIV/AIDS?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2002-01)The results of a 2001 survey of Nigerian manufacturing firms, underscore the importance of giving business managers, both a reason, and the means to take action on the implications of HIV/AIDS. Using regression methods to analyze which characteristics of the firms affected the probability about taking action on the epidemic, five variables, statistically predicted such action: known working individual, currently an HIV-positive; deceased individual, or who no longer works with the firm due to HIV/AIDS; information received by the firm on HIV/AIDS in the last year; the industrial importance of the firm; and, an on-site medical clinic at the firm. These findings indicate that first hand experience on the epidemic, is a determining factor for behavioral change, consistent with findings in both developed, and developing countries. Thus, it is suggested that conducting voluntary, anonymous HIV prevalence surveys in the workforce, may become the practice that prompts managers to take action, and, findings also supported the efforts that would promote counseling, and testing, as an intervention to reduce risky behavior, therefore helping prevent the spread of the disease.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Housing Subsidies for Refugees(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-22)Refugees require assistance for basic needs like housing but local host communities may feel excluded from that assistance, potentially affecting community relations. This study experimentally evaluates the effect of a housing assistance program for Syrian refugees in Jordan on both the recipients and their neighbors. The program offered full rental subsidies and landlord incentives for housing improvements, but saw only moderate uptake, in part due to landlord reluctance. The program improved short-run housing quality and lowered housing expenditures, but did not yield sustained economic benefits, partly due to redistribution of aid. The program unexpectedly led to a deterioration in child socio-emotional well-being, and also strained relations between Jordanian neighbors and refugees. In all, housing subsidies had limited measurable benefits for refugee well-being while worsening social cohesion, highlighting the possible need for alternative forms of aid.Publication Ukraine Country Environmental Analysis(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01)The objective of the Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) is to assess the adequacy and performance of the policy, legal, and institutional framework for environmental management in Ukraine, in light of the decentralization process of environmental governance and wider reform objectives, and to provide recommendations to government to address the key gaps identified. Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe and has a population of 43 million, the majority of whom live in urban areas. It is a lower middle income country, with the services, industry and agriculture sectors being main contributors to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Ukraine faces a number of environmental challenges, as identified in its National Environmental Strategy 2020 (NES). Key among these are: air pollution; quality of water resources and land degradation; solid waste management; biodiversity loss; human health issues associated with environmental risk factors; in addition to climate change. The scope of Ukrainian environmental legislation is quite broad and comprehensive (more than 300 legal acts) and covers most areas of environmental protection and natural resources management. However, the environmental legislation faces a number of weaknesses:The environmental legislation is largely declaratory in nature and does not have all the essential enforcement mechanisms for the implementation of legal acts and international agreements; Many of the acts are not coordinated with each other; and Legislation undergoes limited analysis of its impact—for example, no in-depth analysis such as Regulatory Impact Analysis is conducted for proposed pieces of legislation.Publication Thailand Monthly Economic Monitor, October 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-22)Fiscal conditions remained stable, with a modest widening of the deficit to 3.1 percent of GDP. New stimulus measures are expected to support short-term demand without breaching the public debt ceiling. Inflation stayed negative, reflecting lower energy and food prices amid subdued domestic demand. The central bank kept the policy rate unchanged, citing limited policy space. Thailand’s growth momentum has slowed further as manufacturing activity and services weakened as projected. Tourism remained subdued, largely due to fewer Chinese visitors. Goods exports also slowed as earlier front-loaded orders faded, particularly in agriculture and industrial goods. The Thai baht depreciated in early October as the US dollar appreciated and the current account turned negative.Publication Regional Poverty and Inequality Update: Latin America and the Caribbean, October 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-23)This brief summarizes recent facts related to poverty and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) using the latest wave of harmonized household surveys from the Socio-Economic Database for LAC (SEDLAC). This brief was produced by the Poverty Global Practice in the LAC Region of the World Bank.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.