Belize/U.S. Army coordinate HIV awareness in soldiers

For the next week, members of the Belize Defence Force will be bombarded with information about HIV/AIDS. The national awareness campaign is being coordinated by the B.D.F. with support from officers of the United States Southern Command. The initiative is part of a strategic plan by the Department of Defence and the U.S. Army to provide education, training, and technical assistance to countries in the Caribbean and Central America in order to decrease the spread of HIV/AIDS in the region. According to the facilitators, much of today was spent dispelling common myths about sexually transmitted infections.

Staff Sergeant Carolyn Tillett, Workshop Coordinator
?Today we are having a five-day training session on HIV, which would be like training the trainer and also to give awareness to the other soldiers them on their behaviour changes and how to protect themselves when they go to different districts.?

Rodel Beltran Perera, Facilitator
?You no know what I had fu lunch, you no know my bank account, you know how if he gat stinking toe or this one gat athlete?s foot, we don?t know about certain things about individuals. Ladies and gentlemen, the same way we noh know when it comes to sexually transmitted infections.?

Major Cheryl Brown, International Health Specialist
?There are a lot of different beliefs out there and with Ms. Corelia this morning she was able to get rid of a lot of those myths. So they?ve gotten a lot of factual information and you can see the attitudes changing and the knowledge level going up and people are becoming more responsive.?

Additional training for the Belize Defence Force in HIV/AIDS is done by the Pan-American Social Marketing Organization, PASMO.