from IRIN Shortages of antiretroviral (ARV) and other drugs in public health facilities in Swaziland have been among a long list of grievances cited by protesters during several weeks of unprecedented political unrest ahead of parliamentary polls on Friday.Health department officials have admitted that supplies of some ARV drugs ran low in July and August, but insist that the problem has been resolved."I can appreciate that people on treatment get very panicky when there are rumours about short supply, but there are people with a political agenda as well, who are using the drug issue to discredit government," said Dr Derek Von Wissel, director of the National Emergency Response Committee on HIV/AIDS (NERCHA).NERCHA oversees the procurement of ARVs, making use of funds from both the...
According to Wikipedia, "activism can be described as intentional action to bring about social or political change. This action is in support of, or opposition to, one side of an often controversial argument." In the global struggle against HIV/AIDS, activists have contributed positively in an number of ways, particularly in securing greater access to antiretroviral drugs for resource-poor countries and increased funding for HIV-related research and programs.AIDS activists share common aims, but recent developments make it clear that there are profound disagreements within the activist community on methods and convictions. In the Autumn issue of the Southern African Journal of HIV Medicine (summary available here), AIDS activists Nathan Greffen and Gregg Gonsalves take dead aim at the...
from the Delaware Online We talk so much about AIDS in Africa, here is an article on AIDS in America. The story touches on how it effects people in poverty here in the states. - KaleBy HIRAN RATNAYAKE,Some blacks engage in risky behavior -- such as unprotected sex -- because they believe HIV/AIDS strikes only gay white men. Others say the risks don't faze them because their lives of poverty can't get much worse.These are reasons cited by advocates in the ongoing struggle among blacks with HIV/AIDS.They say one of every two Americans infected with HIV or AIDS is black. In Delaware, about 67 percent of the people with it are black."You get to a point where you don't care. There's a lack of hope. The future is bleak," said the Rev. Christopher Bullock, pastor of Canaan Baptist Church, a...
from Africa Science News A story from last week on the International AIDS Conference. A South African Professor suggests that policies must be refocused to help children. Written by Henry NeondoChildren have been short-changed in the response to AIDS. They are visible in the photo opportunities and headlines, but mostly invisible in the response to HIV," Prof Linda Richter, of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, told the XVIIth International AIDS Conference here today in a plenary address entitled "No Small Issue: Children and Families".Richter’s is the first plenary address to be devoted to the wellbeing of children affected by HIV and AIDS in the conference’s 23-year history. UNAIDS estimates that 2 million children aged 0-14 were living with HIV in 2007 - an...
If you ask almost any volunteer or professional who has been in the field confronting the AIDS pandemic, the single greatest obstacle to relief is the social stigma attached to AIDS. It was the subject of the second plenary session at the 17th annual International AIDS Conference that ended August 8th in Ciudad Mexico, for the first time taking place in a developing country.
For various reasons depending on local customs and cultures, HIV-positive populations remain overwhelmingly silent about their status, and as many as half of all infected persons may not realize they are HIV-positive. Without a social setting where such populations can feel safer enough to reveal their status, progress will remain limited.
The poor make up the vast majority of the labor force in developing markets....
from AFP via Google An update from the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City. Leading experts say the goal of access to anti-HIV drugs is unlikely to be reached around the world. - KaleLooking to the mounting bill for the drugs that keep millions of poor people alive, they also said China and other fast-advancing economies could shoulder more of their own burdens in the future, freeing up resources for countries mired in poverty.Speaking on the sidelines of the International AIDS Conference on Wednesday, Global Fund chief Michel Kazatchkine and UNAIDS head Peter Piot said they believed countries still stood by the fast-approaching 2010 target, although they doubted the goal would be reached by all."When we look at global targets, none of us believes that it will be 100 percent...
from the Voice of America A village in eastern Kenya is home to children orphaned by AIDS and the grandparents who now have to take care of them. The village contains services like a school and medical clinic. - Kale By Cathy Majtenyi, Nyumbani Village, Kenya It is lunchtime for the Kametis. Agnes Nzembi and her four grandchildren exchange stories of the day.They live in Nyumbani Village near the eastern Kenyan town of Kitui. But this is a different kind of village. The Kametis and 28 other households are run by an elderly grandparent. The grandparent takes care of up to 11 children. Some of the youngsters are their biological grandchildren. The rest are children from other families.Kavata Kameti says she enjoys living with her grandmother, "She tells me about our forefathers and things...
from the Independent A series of questions and answers about AIDS. - KaleBy Jeremy Laurance,Why are we asking this now?Aids has killed more than 30 million people in the last quarter century and is continuing to cause around two million deaths a year. Yet as a predominantly sexually transmitted disease, it is possible to avoid it by taking precautions – using condoms and avoiding multiple sexual partners.In this respect it is unlike infectious diseases such as flu, which it is virtually impossible to avoid. At the International Aids Conference, which opened in Mexico City this week, experts called for a new focus on HIV prevention through behaviour change. Geoffrey Garnett, of Imperial College, London, told the conference that combining different approaches could "dramatically alter...
from IPS News The International AIDS Conference opened in Mexico Sunday. Here is a report on the first day. - KaleThe extraordinary mobilisation of economic and human resources against the HIV/AIDS pandemic has borne fruit, but efforts must be stepped up to continue fighting the disease, Mexican expert Jaime Sepúlveda said Monday, one of the plenary speakers at the first session, on the "State of the Epidemic".According to the 2008 "Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic" by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), an estimated 33 million people were living with HIV worldwide in 2007, and two million died.Sepúlveda also noted that last year, three million people living with HIV in low and medium income countries were receiving antiretroviral therapy, just 31 percent of...
from the Jamaica ObserverDespite the grim headline, the report releasing these stats shows some leveling off on the number of new infections. More funding has contributed to to that stabilizing of new cases. - Kale PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - At least 14,000 people in the Caribbean died of illnesses related to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) last year, but there appears to be a stabilisation in the HIV/AIDS epidemic, according to figures released here on Tuesday.The figures, which were released as part of the Caribbean Launch of the UNAIDS Global report 2008, showed that last year an estimated 230,000 to 270,000 persons were living with HIV, while an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 were newly infected."We have made some headway against HIV in the region," said Dr Michel de Groulard,...
from the Washington Post Funding comitment are usually meant to be temporary. But the AIDS bill the President Bush is about to sign may be indefinite. - KaleBy David BrownPresident Bush plans to sign a bill next week that commits the United States to spending about $40 billion over the next five years to fight AIDS overseas, a major expansion of what many consider his most successful foreign policy initiative.The legislation also extends an implicit pledge that has little precedent in the history of U.S. foreign assistance: to continue purchasing lifesaving drugs for millions of individual people in developing countries for an indefinite period of time.Foreign aid for health care has traditionally been used to put up buildings, buy equipment and train workers. Direct medical care of...
from This Is Zimbabwe "This is Zimbabwe" is an an outstanding blog. Thanks to them for this video entitled "Pain In My Heart" - Kale Link to full article. May expire in future....
from South Coast Today The Global aids bill passes the house and is now on the way to thepresident to sign. This will double the amount of aid that the US sends out worldwide. - KaleBy JIM ABRAMSWASHINGTON — The House voted Thursday to triple money to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis around the world, giving new life and new punch to a program credited with saving or prolonging millions of lives in Africa alone.The 303-115 vote sends the global AIDS bill to President Bush for his signature. Bush, who first floated the idea of a campaign against the scourge of AIDS in his 2003 State of the Union speech, supports the five-year, $48 billion plan.Passage of the bill culminated a rare instance of cooperation between the White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress.It was "born...
from Plus News AIDS drugs can help stave off the disease, but those people need other things too. This story tells how the state of being poor can be forgotten in AIDS patients. - KaleNAIROBI - HIV-positive people are living longer on antiretroviral (ARV) medication, but many of them remain poor and hungry, highlighting the need to create incomes for them, says a new report."The long-term sustainability of people on ART [antiretroviral therapy] and the [treatment] programmes are threatened by the continuing lack of food and economic independence," said a press release on the report, produced for CAFOD, a development NGO based in the United Kingdom.The report noted that ART had had a significant impact on patients, whose expectations had changed from "preparing for death" to looking to...
from Bloomberg By John LauermanHIV risk may jump 40 percent in people of African ancestry because of a slight genetic change, according to researchers who say the mutation might help account for the spread of AIDS virus in Africa.The gene variation may explain as much as 11 percent of all cases of the disease on that continent, said an international team led by Weijing He, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. In a paradox, the variant also appeared to slow the progress of AIDS in infected people, the scientists said in a study that will be published tomorrow in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.About three-quarters of the 33 million people worldwide who are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, live in Africa south of...
Six months after the 2007 edition was published, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has launched its World Disasters Report 2008. The theme of this issue is "Rising to the challenge of HIV in disasters and crises." The complete text of the book is provided online in English, while chapter summaries are available in French and Spanish; Arabic summaries...
from AFP via Google MAPUTO — The spread of HIV in Mozambique has hit the economy and is heightening poverty, the United Nations chief representative in the country said on Friday."One of the biggest challenges of the growth of Mozambique's economy is the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS which is affecting most of the economic sectors and creating new levels of poverty," Ndolamb Ngokwey said at the opening of the country's first national conference on the pandemic.Mozambique has an HIV rate of 16.3 percent among its population aged between 15 and 49 years and authorities say at least 500 new infections are registered daily."As part of the United Nations' reform programmes in which Mozambique is a pilot project there is a need to fight the impact of AIDS and to uplift human rights," Ngokwey...
from News Blaze AIDS has been known worldwide for decades as a symbol of imminent death. A more serious side of this threat is now coming to our knowledge - one that poses a horrific challenge to the entire humanity.In her latest book AIDS Orphans Rising (Loving Healing Press, December 2007), Sister Mary Elizabeth Lloyd reveals the number of children left orphans by AIDS to be running not in thousands or hundreds or thousands but in millions all over the world. Known as 'AIDS orphans', these children lose both their parents to death by AIDS and their numbers are rising with a shocking rate: every 14 seconds, AIDS leaves at least one child orphan! The threat is global, though the situation is particularly serious in African countries, especially South Africa, Ethiopia, and Zambia. Instead...
Guidance on Profiling Internally Displaced Persons (IDMC & OCHA, Nov. 2007) [text]
The Guide to the HAP Standard: Humanitarian Accountability and Quality Management (Humanitarian Accountability Partnership, May 2008) [text]
Manual for Conducting HIV Behavioral Surveillance Surveys among Displaced Populations and their Surrounding Communities (UNHCR, Great Lakes Initiative against HIV/AIDS, &...
ALNAP's 7th Review of Humanitarian Action (ALNAP, March 2008) [access]
Beyond the Nexus: UNHCR's Evolving Perspective on Refugee Protection and International Migration, New Issues in Refugee Research no. 155 (UNHCR, April 2008) [text]
Future Floods of Refugees: A Comment on Climate Change, Conflict and Forced Migration (Norwegian Refugee Council, April 2008) [text]
HIV and the UK Asylum...
from All AfricaallAfrica.comINTERVIEW24 April 2008Posted to the web 24 April 2008By Cindy ShinerStephen Lewis is a renowned and vigorously outspoken Canadian diplomat who has worked extensively to reduce the impact of HIV/Aids in Africa and to advocate for those living with the disease.Formerly the special envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa for United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he is now chairman of the board of the Canada-based Stephen Lewis Foundation, which endeavors to ease the pain of HIV/Aids in Africa by funding grassroots projects. Lewis is also co-director of Aids-Free World, a new international Aids advocacy organization based in the United States.In a wide-ranging interview with AllAfrica's Cindy Shiner, Lewis discussed current efforts to fight HIV/Aids and how Africans...
from the Trinidad ExpressCarolyn Kissoon South BureauGreat-grandmother, Cynthia Pascal, has been living with the deadly HIV virus for five years. And although her lifestyle has changed, Pascal has not allowed the virus to control her daily routine.She still cares for her seven children, 16 grand children and six great grand children. And she is still an active member of the community church.Pascal, 73, stood smiling before an audience at City Hall, Harris Promenade, San Fernando yesterday and spoke about living with the HIV virus."I did not know I had the virus. I was getting slimmer and slimmer and I thought it was my kidney. Doctors could not tell me what was happening until I collapsed one day and was taken to the San Fernando General Hospital. There I was diagnosed with the virus....
from SUNY Cortland NewsThe open discussion of AIDS prevention in the southwestern African country of Namibia is being helped by four videos produced by Paul van der Veur, an associate professor of communication studies at SUNY Cortland. During his six months spent in the Sub-Saharan African nation in Spring 2007, van der Veur collaborated with Namibian filmmakers to produce the videos. Each is a real-life documentary, with its own Namibian subjects and film crew. The videos began airing recently on television channels across the country, said van der Veur, who joined the College in 2002 and has chaired the Communication Studies Department since January 2005. He has a doctorate in international media studies from Ohio University’s School of Telecommunications. The 23-minute...
from World VisionCongress should keep momentum, vote for passage, aid agency urgesWashington, D.C., U.S. congressional leaders, with the support of the White House, today reached an agreement on the proposed reauthorization of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, leading to the bill’s preliminary approval by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Congress is yet to vote on the bill, known as the U.S. Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Reauthorization Act.The following is a statement from Craig Jaggers, World Vision’s health policy advisor in the U.S.:“We commend these lawmakers for coming together on a bi-partisan, comprehensive agreement for reauthorizing PEPFAR that will increase funding and continue to address the needs of millions of...
from AFP via GoogleMANILA (AFP) — Massive Asian Development Bank lending to the region's transport sector may be helping drive the spread of AIDS across the world's most populous continent, the bank said in a study released Thursday.It cited 16 percent prevalence rates of the HIV virus that causes AIDS along one particular transport route in southern India, compared with less than one percent nationwide.In Bangladesh, long-distance truck drivers had the highest HIV rates among the general population, while in China the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among truckers was up to four times that in the population at large.The Mandalay-Muse highway, built in 1997 to link Myanmar with China, has led to an increase in drug use, dramatically raising HIV rates among injecting drug...
On December 3, 2007 AfricaFiles circulated an article that Africa News had published on November 30, 2007. The article is about the wide distribution of the music album "Nous sommes les Tam-tams (We are the Drums)" [which is also the name of the lead song.According to Africa News: "Thirty-seven musicians from across Africa have partnered with the UN to produce an 11-title musical album to sensitise Africans on HIV/AIDS, poverty, gender inequalities, illiteracy and conflicts. According to a statement from the UNDP office in Bamako, Mali, Thursday, the tracks sung in 18 African languages carry very clear messages on the issues. Five of the songs were on the prevention against the HIV infection, the need to break the silence on AIDS, to fight stigmatisation and discrimination around it as...
11th European Country of Origin Information Seminar, Vienna, 21-22 June 2007, Country Reports (Nov. 2007) [access]
- Country reports published on Afghanistan and Iraq.
African Migration Workshop, Accra, Ghana, September 2007, Papers (Nov. 2007) [access]
- Abstracts/full-text papers in English and French.
Asylum Deaths: What to do Next (Institute of Race Relations, Nov. 2007) [access]
Asylum...
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Afghanistan,
Iraq,
Policy,
women,
European Union,
Migration,
country of origin conditions,
asylum seekers,
refugee status determination procedures,
suicide,
public health,
conflict,
Africa,
Aids
Access to health care and human rights of asylum seekers in Malta: Experiences, results and recommendations (Médecins du Monde, 2007) [text]
Fighting HIV/AIDS together with refugees and internally displaced populations: Summary of 2006 UNHCR Missions (UNHCR, Sept. 2007) [text]
Impact Assessment of the Gokwe Integrated Recovery Action Project Zimbabwe (Feinstein International Center, August...
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Russia,
evaluation,
Iraqis,
peace efforts,
UNHCR,
expulsion,
Malta,
Georgians,
fact-finding missions,
health services,
women,
asylum seekers,
internally displaced persons,
Aids
from Medical News TodayThe media's message is clear: the AIDS epidemic will be the downfall of families in Africa. A new study by a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher calls that an overstatement. Her study shows that AIDS compounds the issue of poverty in households where poverty is already a prevailing issue, especially when a household loses its primary income earner to AIDS."We saw some households that had experienced an AIDS death functioning better than some households that had not experienced an AIDS death," said Enid Schatz, assistant professor of occupational therapy and director of social science research in the MU School of Health Professions. "We were surprised to see that all the alarmist predictions in the popular media that AIDS will bring an imminent downfall to the...
A reference to the following article showed up in my newsreader on July 13th. I have a search string saved in PubMed for "refugees and reviews"; search results are sent as an RSS feed. Coincidentally, the full-text of the same article was just posted on UNHCR's site today (most of the authors are with the organization).
"Prevalence of HIV infection in conflict-affected and displaced people in...