DECLARATION FROM "EL YUNQUE" TO "MONT JUIC"

P.S.P.S. Inc.

DECLARATION FROM "EL YUNQUE" TO "MONT JUIC"
As People Living with HIV/AIDS from San Juan, Puerto Rico along with sister organizations that fight the epidemic in the Caribbean and surrounding areas we submit, based in the theme of KNOWLEDGE AND COMMITMENT FOR ACTION, to the 2002 AIDS Barcelona the following Declaration: For HIV/AIDS is still spreading tremendously around the Caribbean and Latin American countries, including our fellow citizens that live abroad in large cities as New York, Washington DC, Chicago and many of the urban and rural areas of the mainland USA we insist in undergoing a new awakening in the fight against the illness, united by the sole purpose of meeting the new generations with a message of hope and understanding based in the last twenty years and all the progress that has been made through the efforts of organized activism and advocacy groups. We Patients Living with HIV/ AIDS in doing so make a call of alert to all the governments of the World to work hand in hand with the three other components that make up this struggle: Professionals of the Medicine Fields, Community Based Organizations and the General Community so that united in purpose we may deliver a clear message that our struggle for survival is yet in progress even when some advances have been made, specially in those nations in which medicines are available, understanding that such progress has not yet arrived to every corner of the World, specifically Third World Countries and our Sister Nations of Africa. In doing so we make a call to all for a renovation in the strength, the effort and the resources invested in investigations so that these advances continue and are accessed by those with lesser opportunities of survival who live in areas were economic weaknesses maintain the spread of HIV/AIDS, striking the poor and underdeveloped. We urge specifically that we Patients Living with HIV/AIDS are taken in consideration when decisions are been made that will affect our quality of life, our right to live in happiness and our chances for survival in this war against this illness which has gravely taken so many lives and surrendered so many to the sadness of widowhood, loneliness, and orphanage. We specifically endorse the efforts of all Community Based Organizations, Non Governmental Organizations and States that have the resources so they may share information through a continued and renewed effort of communication all the advances, investigations, medicines and protocols so that hope may reach all corners of the World, specifically those undermined by the sad reality of poverty and hunger, areas were HIV/AIDS spreads easily because of living conditions and the need of such resources. We back Accountability of HIV/AIDS funding, for the misuse of these funds is detrimental to the fight against the epidemic, impeding the flow of medicines in an effort in which continuity of treatments and medicine regimes are essential so that the virus does not continue mutating and deteriorating the already devastated areas, harming the weak and destroying the hope of life and future. We also back advocacy of all HIV/AIDS patients so that we become watchdogs of these resources in order for them to reach the less developed countries, the poor and the underdeveloped. In doing so we demand patient participation in every forum, organization, committee, regulatory body, council and agencies, both governmental and non governmental were our lives are discussed and decisions are taken that will undoubtedly affect our possibility of survival. Adherence to treatments will be impossible if conditions of accountability are not met so that funds serve the sole purpose of advancing HIV/AIDS treatments and patients needs. We denounce situations were money is being misspent in an industry that has made a way of living out of our suffering, our health and our struggle. This type of aberration is inhuman and is as much an evil as the illness itself. We also want to expose the continued need for improvement of the treatments and living conditions offered to those that suffer the effects of drug abuse so that they may be treated as patients of a grave illness which easily conducts and spreads HIV/AIDS both in the free community and in the jails all over the region and the World. These are human beings and must be treated as so. We will not cut the spread of HIV/AIDS if efforts to improve living conditions for these fellow human beings are not met and in their suffering they continue to be a liaison between those infected and the healthy community, specially women all over the Caribbean and Latin America. We urge so that these issues are focused in a real context so that we may win a war that we are definitely loosing so far. We claim for the undernourished and those that do not have a roof over their heads and share the burden of the illness with the fact of not having the documents that are demanded from them in order to be cared for and treated with dignity and love. We claim for all those that struggle against HIV/AIDS, and wonder throughout the region homeless and feeble. We as People Living with HIV/AIDS demand that we may regain our positions as people who fully contribute to the well being of communities all over the World, and claim for all stigmas, discrimination and abuse to end, so that we have a chance for a future that will no longer expose us to these conditions, and we may render and legate to future generations a better World. We do this today in our vision of altitude, hope and love in this DECLARATION FROM "EL YUNQUE"TO "MONT JUIC". Signed in San Juan, Puerto Rico, today January 14, 2002 by "Pacientes de SIDA pro Política Sana", (AIDS PATIENTS FOR SANE POLICIES), and furthermore by all the undersigned.

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