RHReality Check has a series of bloggers from Toronto, looking at HIV prevention through improved access to sexual and reproductive health care. The prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS is integral to sexual and reproductive health - and yet often ignored in that context.
HIV/AIDS, first and foremost, is a sexually transmitted disease. All too often, however, the response ignores the range of life's issues that relate to human sexuality - and neglects to address this disease for what it primarily is - a sexually transmitted disease.
The pandemic is growing fastest among women and young people, fueled by those who believe that knowing less, rather than more, is a road to informed decision making.
Isn't it amazing when different social movements work together in peace and justice? This past week, 2,000 hotel employees in Toronto voted to authorize a strike, but after considering the havoc this would wreak on the HIV/AIDS conference (you know, the one that we keep gabbing about) they instead deferred the strike and declared their solidarity with people living with HIV/AIDS.
Meheret Melles is a 20 year old Ethiopian-American student at the University of Maryland. She is on the International Youth Leadership Council at Advocates for Youth and a member of the Student Global AIDS Campaign.
When 250 youth from around the world meet to continue the fight against HIV/AIDS, how can you not be excited?
The first day of the Toronto YouthForce Pre-Conference couldn't have started with a more invigorating opening session. Grandma Heather Sole, an elder, and Brenda McIntyre, a Medicine Song Woman, blessed us with their presence in a self-healing ceremony. From then on, the aura of the Pre-Conference was filled with the positive energy and strong desire of youth to utilize their minds in order to strategically strengthen their presence at the Main Conference. The sessions covered a multitude of issues, from Trade Justice to Media & Communications. I even overheard some youth participants bewildered because they simply wanted to attend all the sessions!
Focus on the Family sent out over 90,000 brochures to Missouri residents, with quotes from women's organizations to strengthen opposition to the stem cell initiative. When the Center for American Progress contacted several of the women's organizations, they said their quotes had been taken out of context in order to misrepresent their views. In fact, these women's organizations are supportive of stem cell research. They do NOT think it is "exploiting women in the name of science" as the brochure says. Looks like Focus on the Family was exploiting women's health advocates!
Conservative ideologues share one important characteristic internationally, they believe in stigmatizing people with AIDS. Like his collegue to the south, President George Bush who sent his wife to UNGASS to put a kinder, gentler face on the wasted resources and missed opportunities of his HIV/AIDS policies, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is snubbing 25,000 public health professionals and AIDS prevention advocates who are gathering in Toronto for the International AIDS Conference.
One Canadian who works in the KwaZulu/Natal region of South Africa tells of her life and work there, making the case for the PM to attend. The contrast in her powerful story, and Harper's failure to make an appearance when the world has come to his country to do this important work, is stark.
Girl Guides in Kenya are earning merit badges for promoting abstinence programs to their female compatriots as part of a U.S.-funded strategy for AIDS prevention, reporters were told at a news conference yesterday. "We enhance abstinence among the youth in schools and also in the community," 18-year-old Girl Guide Ranger Millicent Achieng explained from Nairobi during a video conference at the U.S. consulate in Toronto. The guides program has given out abstinence-promotion badges to 2,000 girls who learned they should abstain from sex until marriage and be faithful to their husbands after. The program will receive $200,000 (U.S.) this year from U.S. President George W. Bush's five-year, $15 billion President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, also known as PEPFAR."
Beth Pellettieri is the Coordinator of the International Youth Leadership Council at Advocates for Youth and the co-chair of the Toronto YouthForce Advocacy Task Force.
I arrived in Toronto yesterday morning, with AIDS 2006 banners flying high downtown and 25,000 registered participants gradually beginning to descend on the city. Although the XVI Toronto International AIDS Conference begins Sunday, organizers and activists are already in Toronto, turning months and even years of planning into action.
Naina Dhingra is the Director of International Policy at Advocates for Youth and serves on the Developed Country NGO Board Delegation of the Global Fund.
Bill and Melinda Gates showed their generosity again today by announcing a new $500 million contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. The five year contribution makes $200 million available immediately for the upcoming sixth funding round for which countries are currently applying.
The Global Fund was created by the international community as an innovative public/private partnership. In just four and a half years, the Global Fund has committed over $5.5 billion to over 132 countries. Instead of being driven by donor interests and policies, countries determine for themselves their needs and submit proposals to the Global Fund for financing. The proposals are evaluated by an independent body of world renowned technical experts and then are sent for approval to the Global Fund's governing board. The Board includes representatives of donor and recipient governments, civil society, the private sector, and affected communities. A Secretariat in Geneva is responsible for signing the grants and working with countries to ensure results-based progress.
The Global Fund is crucial to women's and young people's sexual and reproductive health as it is a donor agency that is not bound by ideological donor restrictions. The Global Fund is committed to funding science-based approaches and respecting the rights of countries in determining programs that match their needs.
The FDA yesterday indicated that Plan B emergency contraception could be available over-the-counter soon, promising to act on a new application from the manufacturer within weeks.
Senator Joe Lieberman, who opposed the availability of emergency contraception, even for rape victims, at hospitals whose beliefs he placed more value on than that of the individual woman seeking emergency contraception, was defeated in the Democratic Primary for a fourth term as a US Senator.
The FDA's reputation as an independent agency serving the best interest of the public has been sullied as it allowed itself to be dragged deeper and deeper into the political morass that allows ideology to replace scientific fact and provable health data.
I have spent a lot of time these last couple of months working with my colleagues at the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) and with advocates, researchers, and people living with HIV around the world on the launch of a new campaign to dramatically increase access to the female condom.
During this time, I found myself mentioning the female condom and the campaign (Prevention Now! www.preventionnow.net) to my friends on more than one occasion. These well-meaning and pretty well-informed, progressive people (many of them global health activists) couldn’t figure out why I would be spending so much time on this campaign.
