The Sixth Meeting of the Council for Social and Human Development (COHSOD) was held on 17-19 April 2002 in Georgetown, Guyana under the Chairmanship of the Hon. Dr. Douglas Slater, Minister of Health and the Environment, St Vincent and the Grenadines. The Meeting was attended by Dr the Hon. Jerome Walcott, Minister of Health, Barbados; Dr the Hon. Leslie Ramsammy, Minister of Health, Guyana; the Hon. John Junor, Minister of Health, Jamaica; the Hon. Earl Martin, Minister of Health and the Environment, St Kitts and Nevis; the Hon.

At a meeting at the Hilton Hotel, Kingston Jamaica, on 18-19 February 2002, Health Ministers of the Caribbean countries held a successful round of discussions with representatives of leading pharmaceutical Companies on access to care for people living with HIV/AIDS in the Region. This meeting was the first stage in a process and comes close on the heels of Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica developing their own national plans in partnership with United Nations agencies and the pharmaceutical industry.

The Ministry of Health, Jamaica will host the first in a series of regional meetings to discuss ways in which the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Member States can access cheaper anti-retroviral drugs to care for persons living with HIV/AIDS in the Region. The Meeting takes place on 18-19 February 2002, in the capital, Kingston.

The two-day Meeting will focus on negotiations with major international pharmaceutical companies, supplying anti-retroviral drugs to the Caribbean.

The Third Meeting of the Project Management Group for the European Union-funded project on "Strengthening the Institutional Response to HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean" was convened at the Hilton Hotel in Trinidad and Tobago from 17-18 January, 2002.

Today, Saturday, 1 December 2001, the entire world finds itself in the vice-like grip of the most devastating disease ever recorded in the long and enduring history of mankind. Since the first clinical evidence of the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was reported twenty years ago, an unprecedented 60 million people worldwide have become infected with the deadly virus. At this very juncture, an estimated 40 million people from every place on planet earth, every ethnic origin, every religious culture, and every stratum of society are living with HIV/AIDS.