Relay will raise awareness of AIDS
On Sunday, World AIDS Week will officially open with a fifty mile torch relay. The run will start in Belmopan and finish at Rogers Stadium in Belize City. A number of top athletes, along with primary school children and high school students have decided to participate in the relay in an effort to help raise awareness about the challenges confronting families who have been affected by AIDS. Sherlene Tablada, co-ordinator of the relay, says the run is also being held to raise funds for victims of HIV and AIDS, especially the children.
Jacqueline Woods
“Sadly, these families and even victims of HIV and AIDS have been stigmatised. This relay is being held in an effort to raise funds to help these persons, tell us about the challenges that the families and children are faced with as a result of HIV and AIDS.”
Sherlene Tablada
“This year specifically, the focus of World AIDS Week is on fighting stigma and discrimination. In Belize, a lot of time, because of ignorance, us not knowing enough about the disease, we tend to discriminate and we tend to make families and children who are affected by HIV/AIDS, outcasts. We do not provide them with the support and the attention…we have situations where they are not accepted by family members, they are put outside the home, where within the schools the teachers might not give them the love, the care and attention that they need desperately. As well, not only by society, but it adds to the entire trauma that this family has to go through because they’re already at a financial disadvantage in not being able to provide medication for their selves and food and clothing; it becomes a burden specifically. So there is a lot that a family goes through who is affected by HIV/AIDS.”
The relay gets underway at seven in the morning in Belmopan. Tablada says the last leg of the run, which is from the Lord Ridge Cemetery to the stadium, will be led by the Mayor of Belize City, David Fonseca. Members of the public are asked to contribute whatever financial assistance they can.
