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IRIN PlusNews Weekly Issue 271, 17 February 2006
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
NEWS:
ZAMBIA: ARV rollout - quality not quantity?
SWAZILAND: Youth website appeals for help for AIDS orphans
NAMIBIA: Inheritance rights still a thorny issue
SENEGAL: HIV-positive gays face double stigma
SOUTHERN AFRICA: Armed forces to tackle impact of HIV/AIDS
EVENTS:
JOBS:
ZAMBIA: ARV rollout - quality not quantity?
As the Zambian government takes stock of its progress in providing treatment to its HIV-positive citizens during 2005, activists and health officials agree that more emphasis should have been placed on quality, and not quantity.
Having failed to meet its target to treat 100,000 HIV-positive people by the end of 2005, the Zambian government is now providing antiretrovirals (ARVs) to about half that number.
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SWAZILAND: Young heroes website appeals for help for AIDS orphans
The web page is as brightly coloured as a primary school text book, but the images conjure the anxiety of abandonment and uncertainty that any child would feel at the loss of their parents.
"Imagine that you're 12 years old. Your father died five years ago. Two years ago, your mother got sick. You left school to help tend to her, and to care for your little brothers and sisters. You've tried to grow corn on your family land, but there's a drought and you haven't learned enough yet to be a good farmer. Now, your mother has died, too. In the midst of your grief and your fear for the future, questions keep you awake at night: What will happen to us now? How will we live?"
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NAMIBIA: Inheritance rights still a thorny issue
When Barakias Shangheta, 17, heard that his father had died at the local hospital in Okakarara, a village northeast of the Namibian capital, Windhoek, he ran to the cattle pastures and rounded up some of the herd for "safekeeping".
"I knew that my father's relatives would target these and leave me and my mother with nothing," Shangheta told PlusNews.
As elsewhere in Africa, Namibian tradition still allows relatives to take land, livestock, furniture and other possessions from bereaved widows and their children. "They still took all that was left, leaving a few goats and five cattle out of 230 for my mother," Shangheta said.
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SENEGAL: HIV-positive gays face double stigma
Twenty-four-year old male sex worker Doudou (not his real name) was forced to turn to Senegal's leading gay NGO, when his family members threw him out for being a homosexual.
When he discovered he was HIV-positive a year later, Doudou was faced with a double whammy: gay and HIV-positive in a predominantly Muslim country where homosexuality is illegal.
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SOUTHERN AFRICA: Armed forces to tackle impact of HIV/AIDS
The impact of AIDS on the military has been a topic African armed forces have preferred to keep under wraps, concerned with issues of national security.
But in a step towards greater openness, military and civilian experts from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) gathered last week in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, as part of an advisory group to discuss a regional response to AIDS in the defence sector.
More details
[ENDS]
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| Links |
· AIDS Media Center
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· The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria
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· International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS
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· AEGIS
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· International HIV/AIDS Alliance
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PlusNews does not take responsibility for info in links supplied.
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