05 June, 2005
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, June 4, 2005. Members of the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras and other accomplished musicians around the United States will gather in Philadelphia to produce a concert benefiting the humanitarian work of the Batey Relief Alliance (BRA). Proceeds of the event will enable BRA to deliver sustainable health and HIV/AIDS/STIs services and essential medicines to families and children infected and affected by the deadly virus. ?Our objective is to fight and control the disease at its core in the most vulnerable communities, specifically the bateyes inside the Dominican Republic,? said Ulrick Gaillard, CEO of the BRA.
The ?Partners In Hope? concert will be held on Saturday, September 10th, 2005 at 6:00 P.M. at the Church of the Savior, 651 N. Wayne Avenue, Wayne, Pennsylvania. Tickets are being sold at $50 per person. For more information on how to attend the concert, purchase a ticket or to make a tax-deductible contribution, please contact Alice Fernley at (215) 646-9904 or afernley@aol.com. Checks or money orders should be made payable to Batey Relief Alliance, at 660 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell, PA 19422.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic (DR) combined have the most HIV cases in the entire Caribbean region, an estimate 85%. The batey population (200,000 who are mostly poor marginalized dark skinned Haitian migrant sugar cane families and Dominicans of Haitian origin) suffers disproportionately from HIV and AIDS, and the UNAIDS estimates that more than 5% of the people living in the bateyes are infected with the deadly virus.
HIV/AIDS has significantly affected Haitian women in the DR. Most of these women and their children live in the abysmal conditions of the bateyes, state-run sugar plantations, where there is often no running water, trash collection, electricity or sanitation. Residents of the bateyes are the most vulnerable and unable to access the few basic education, prevention, or treatment services available in either the DR or in Haiti. A recent study has found that 8.8% of the women in the bateyes are HIV positive, a rate that is higher than in Haiti and equivalent to that of sex workers in the DR. While there are no reliable statistics on how many infants have been affected by AIDS, these numbers are likely to be high since the HIV positive population in the bateyes is young (
