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IRIN PlusNews Weekly Issue 210, 3 December 2004


	Thursday 9 December 2004

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IRIN PlusNews Weekly Issue 210, 3 December 2004

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

NEWS:

AFRICA: Women wait to be heard - World AIDS Day
AFRICA: UN highlights gender-based violence and AIDS treatment
SOUTHERN AFRICA: Cycle of poverty leads to recurring crises
SOUTHERN AFRICA: Renewed calls for sexual behaviour change
LESOTHO: Abuse of child domestic workers uncovered
ANGOLA: Youth key to halting epidemic
ANGOLA: HIV infection rate for pregnant women at 2.8 percent
TOGO: Truckers know the risks but spurn condom use
ETHIOPIA: Prime minister's wife takes public HIV test
KENYA: HIV/AIDS prevalence down to seven percent, says gob's
UGANDA: US awards grant for AIDS and TB research
SOUTH AFRICA: Children helping children empower themselves
GUINEA-BISSAU: Brazil to sponsor first ARV treatment programme

LINKS:

1. World Bank AIDS Media Centre

CONFERENCES/ EVENTS/ RESEARCH/ RESOURCES:

AFRICA: Women wait to be heard - World AIDS Day

African women don't need statistics to tell them that they are the face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. They are forced to confront this reality in all aspects of their lives - the bedroom, the classroom and the workplace.

This year's World AIDS Day campaign focuses on women and girls by asking: 'Have you heard me today?' But, as the latest figures from this year's AIDS Epidemic Update illustrate, the number of women living with the virus has risen in each region of the world.

Clearly, being heard is not enough - more is needed.

More details

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AFRICA: UN highlights gender-based violence and AIDS treatment

On World AIDS Day the UN has highlighted the importance of treatment, as well as the need to address violence against women and girls, as an integral part of the global AIDS response.

Director-General of the World Health Organisation, Dr LEE Jong-wook, said it was important that countries set their own national targets to ensure equitable access for women and girls to prevention and treatment services.

More details

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SOUTHERN AFRICA: Cycle of poverty leads to recurring crises

Governments, aid agencies and donors need to acknowledge the chronic nature of problems that lead to recurring crises in Southern Africa, such as the widespread food shortages two years ago, a new report recommends.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic was a growing problem in Southern Africa, with HIV prevalence rates and deaths from AIDS being higher than anywhere else in the world.

Infection levels varied "from a high of 38.8 percent in Swaziland to an estimated 5.5 percent in Angola". The disease had also created almost three million orphans across the region.

More details

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SOUTHERN AFRICA: Renewed calls for sexual behaviour change

Growing concern over the sustainability of government-sponsored HIV/AIDS treatment programmes in Southern Africa has prompted renewed calls for a change in sexual behaviour to curb the spread of the disease.

Four southern African countries (Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe) now have national adult HIV prevalence rates exceeding 30 percent.

In an interview coinciding with World AIDS Day, Botswana's President Festus Mogae reportedly told the British Broadcasting Corporation that the funding of anti-AIDS drugs would not go on indefinitely, and Botswana on its own could not afford to keep a rising number of patients alive. Some 35,000 people are now on free anti-retroviral therapy (ARVs), and the number is rising.

More details

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LESOTHO: Abuse of child domestic workers uncovered

The preliminary findings of a study on child domestic workers in Lesotho, forced onto the job market by poverty and HIV/AIDS, has uncovered the sometimes "highly abusive nature" of their relationship with employers.

Commissioned by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), in collaboration with the Ministry of Gender Youth Sport and Recreation, the survey "revealed the serious challenges imposed upon children, as they become more and more reliant on various forms of labour to sustain their poverty- and HIV/AIDS-stricken families," a UNICEF statement said.

"To secure a job and continued support to my grandmother and four siblings, I once succumbed to the luring of my employer who coerced me into stroking his penis in exchange for 100 Maluti (approximately US $15) extra pay," the study quoted a 16-year-old orphaned domestic worker as saying.

More details

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ANGOLA: Youth key to halting epidemic

Angola, which has maintained a relatively low rate of HIV infection, could see an exponential spreading of the virus if it did not act quickly to educate its youth, according to a new report.

Young Angolans have almost all the risk factors associated with the rapid proliferation of the epidemic, said a joint UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Populations Services International and USAID study.

These factors include low levels of education, multiple partners, one of the world's lowest ages for sexual debut, low condom use, one of the world's highest fertility rates and a high poverty index.

More details

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ANGOLA: HIV infection rate for pregnant women at 2.8 percent

The rate of HIV infection among pregnant women in Angola is 2.8 percent, half earlier estimates, according to a new national study.

A health ministry report covering all of Angola's 18 provinces found that the highest HIV rates were in southern Cunene (9 percent) and Cuando Cubango (4 percent), which border Namibia.

"The provinces neighbouring [on] countries with high prevalence, like Namibia ... have the highest rates of seroprevalence, and inland provinces that have been more protected by the effect of war have lower figures of prevalence," vice minister of health, Jose Van Dunem, said at the launch of the 2004 National Study of Seroprevalence in Pregnant Women.

More details

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TOGO: Truckers know the risks but spurn condom use

"It's a question of money," said one of the many truck drivers milling about the main border crossing between Benin and Togo. "Most of the girls are simply after money, and if I decide it'll be without a condom, then it'll be without a condom."

As soon as school ends each day, teenage girls in this Togolese border town head for the border post to sell sweets, bread and sometimes more, to the 1,000-odd truckers and travellers who pass through each day.

More details

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ETHIOPIA: Prime minister's wife takes public HIV test

The Ethiopian prime minister’s wife became one of the few high-profile figures in the country to take a public HIV test on Tuesday.

Azeb Mesfin, 38, joined seven female ambassadors to take the test to mark World AIDS Day and urged others to be tested and "know their status".

More details

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KENYA: HIV/AIDS prevalence down to seven percent, says gob's

The national HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in Kenya has dropped from 14 percent four years ago to about seven percent and the level of public awareness of the disease has risen to an estimated 90 percent across the country, the government said on Wednesday.

"HIV/AIDS is now an established epidemic in Kenya," a statement issued by the Ministry of Health to mark World AIDS Day 2004, said. "It is a declared national disaster and all efforts are being directed to evoking the necessary response to containing it."

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UGANDA: US awards grant for AIDS and TB research

Uganda is one of the four countries to benefit from a $12 million grant from the US to carry out further HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) research and training, the US embassy in the capital, Kampala, said on World AIDS Day.

"The project will broaden the national capacity to meet the public health and scientific challenges of the evolving HIV and TB epidemic in Uganda," an embassy statement said. "Infrastructure will be developed in Uganda to translate basic and clinical research findings into public health policy and interventions and to evaluate their effectiveness."

More details

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SOUTH AFRICA: Children helping children empower themselves

Children often seem helpless in the face of the onslaught of HIV/AIDS, but a South African network of NGOs helping children affected by the pandemic has recognised that they can play a proactive role in combating the disease.

Children in Distress (CINDI), based in KwaZulu-Natal's provincial capital, Pietermaritzburg, has realised that when children assist other children, they not only benefit those in need, but empower themselves as well.

CINDI has teamed up with a number of primary schools in and around Pietermaritzburg to launch 'Children helping Children', a programme where pupils actively help disadvantaged children their own age.

More details

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GUINEA-BISSAU: Brazil to sponsor first ARV treatment programme

Brazil will start supplying Guinea-Bissau with antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to launch its first treatment programme for HIV-positive people in the first quarter of 2005, Health Minister Odete Costa Semedo has announced.

Speaking during World AIDS day in the central town of Bafata, 110 km east of the capital, Bissau, she said doctors and nurses from two hospitals would first be sent to Brazil for training on how to administer the medication.

Costa Semedo, who visited Brazil in September, said the ARV programme would be administered through the new Sant Egidio/Raoul Follereau hospital in the capital, and Cumura hospital, 10 km outside the city.

More details

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LINKS:

1. The AIDS Media Centre (AMC) is a new web portal designed for media professionals (i.e.. journalists, broadcasters, and executives) to improve the quality, consistency, professionalism and - ultimately the impact - of global HIV/AIDS coverage.

The AMC is sponsored by the World Bank and a coalition of contributing institutions - BBC World Service Trust, International AIDS Economic Network, International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, Internews, Johns Hopkins Centre for Communication Programmes, Kaiser Family Foundation, OneWorld International, PANOS, UNAIDS and WHO.

The AMC features include:
- Breaking and embargoed news (as available)
- Links to partner content pages
- Tools and resources for journalists, such as listing media and HIV training events
- Content and multimedia resource libraries
- Interviews with HIV opinion leaders and media specialists
- E-newsletters

For further information about the AMC: www.aidsmedia.org

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[ENDS]

Recent AFRICA Reports

Children helping children empower themselves, 3/Dec/04

Cycle of poverty leads to recurring crises, 2/Dec/04

UN highlights gender-based violence and AIDS treatment, 1/Dec/04

Women wait to be heard - World AIDS Day, 1/Dec/04

Renewed calls for sexual behaviour change, 1/Dec/04

Links

AIDS Media Center

VIH Internet

Sida Info Services

Aides

Le Fonds mondial de lutte contre le SIDA, la tuberculose et le paludisme

PlusNews does not take responsibility for info in links supplied.

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