Today the National Aids Commission, along with the Ministry of Health and Wellness launched the findings of their Integrated Biological and Behavioral Surveillance Study. This study is to help combat the prevalence of HIV and to update data that was recorded over a decade ago. This particular survey focused on men who have sex with men in Belize. The executive director of the NAC told us more.
Enrique Romero, Executive Director, National Aids Commission
"This is just one of the tools that as a country, we need to use in order for us to collect data and strategically plan our interventions to combat HIV in Belize. The last study that was done was in 2010/2012 so basically the data that we have been using is pretty outdated and we had to get new data. The good thing about the IBBS study is that it looks at two components, the biological part which is testing that is done and then we look at the behavioral component which is looking at the risky behaviors in individuals. And the IBBS focuses particularly on men who have sex with men in Belize. Previous studies have been telling us that the HIV epidemic is generalized in Belize however it's concentrated among a small group of persons and those key populations are referred to as men who have sex with men."
Dr Marvin Manzanero, Director, International Cooperation In Health
"HIV programs, as many other programs, need to be driven by data so when we review the data we traditionally get from the health sector, we realized that we have lower prevalence rates in the pregnant women population. So one of the ideas of having this study is to find out what is driving the epidemic in Belize. We had done a similar attempt at a study 12, 13 years ago so we launched another behavioral biological survey in men having sex with other men and we're trying to capture a transgender population but we weren't successful with that population so what we're looking for is doing a prevalence rate for HIV, syphilis and Hepatitis B in men having sex with other men and in transgender populations."
"One of the inclusion criteria because we are not classifying anybody based on their sexual preference, we were classifying and admitting people into the study based on risk which is if you've had sex with a man in the previous 12 months you would be eligible to be included in the study, regardless of what you consider yourself, regardless of if you classify yourself as a heterosexual or bisexual whatever, that's not what we're looking for. So that was an inclusion criteria. We found on average a prevalence rate of 11% of HIV in the men having sex with other men population. The Hepatitis B rate is not significant and we found in Orange Walk for example twice prevelance rate of syphilis than we did for Belize City, about 14% which is also a risk factor because it's also another sexually transmitted infection because it seems that we alot concentrate often times as a community on HIV, but you have many other sexually transmitted infections."
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