Thembi is from Malawi. She is representing the Guttmacher Institute's Protecting the Next Generation Project at the conference.
This session was presented by CAP AIDS, a Canada-based organization, which provides small grants to organizations working with communities in Africa. The presentation addressed how effective bikes are in services delivery in African communities. In my country, Malawi, transport is really a big problem and people spend more time walking then providing services. The distances that community health workers have to travel are very long. This makes their jobs ineffective in many communities. However, with the donation of 15 bicycles from CAP AIDS, the service delivery has been improved. For instance, one peer educator with a bike reaches about 40 young people in a week and 200 in a month. This really has a great impact on young people in getting information on sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. A lot of them have been transformed.
In James Pinkerton's mini rant about AIDS activists addressing the pandemic as a social issue as well as scientific-medical issue, he misses the obvious - the underlying factors driving the pandemic are social issues: poverty, gender and other gross inequalities, and the inability to address sexual matters forthrightly and honestly to name a few. Though he goes on about the stigma toward sexual workers, he also misses the obvious point - and one that might actually have some positive impact: this is a demand driven profession.
Maria de Bruyn is the Senior Policy Advisor for Ipas.
Prior to and throughout the International AIDS Conference, activists and experts are meeting in a series of satellite sessions that address issues that may not get the full attention of the conference. This satellite session focused on linking HIV/AIDS with sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), especially with regard to men who have sex with men, sex workers and injecting drug users. There were a number of noteworthy statements and reflections:
Joyce is from Ghana. She is representing the Guttmacher Institute's Protecting the Next Generation Project at the conference.
I was in the skill building session this morning. It focused on "Unemployment, Poverty and Strategies to Empower Youth toward Economic Independence." There was a presentation on the situation of the youth on Saba Island in the Caribbean and structures put in place to promote economic independence.
Clearly from the presentations and results from group work, most countries shared similar youth economic independence barriers. My own country of Ghana is challenged with lack of education and skill, perception and attitudes of both the youth and decision makers, lack of support from the family system and poverty among others.
I’ve spent the week wondering why, while 25,000 people in Toronto and almost every major media outlet has focused in on AIDS, the radical right-wing groups who claim to be “pro-life” have been dead silent about the world’s biggest preventable killer.Focus on the Family?Concerned Women for America?Family Research Council?Nothing to say.But then a little blink from my RSS reader alerted me to a new article posted on LifeSiteNews.com on Tuesday afternoon: they had proved us wrong, and had actually taken time to talk about the conference. And what, might you guess, did they have to say?
Fimba is from Burkina Faso. He is representing the Guttmacher Institute's Protecting the Next Generation Project at the conference.
As I said in a previous post, this conference is an opportunity for me to remind the decision makers in my country to keep their promises. So, yesterday I had a meeting with my minister of health just after his meeting with the 65 delegates of Burkina Faso who are here at the conference. I should point out that during this meeting, I had the chance to meet simultaneously Mr. Alain Yoda, the Minister of Health, Dr. Joseph André Tiendrebogo, the Permanent Secretary of the National Council in the Fight Against AIDS in Burkina Faso and Mrs. Cécile Beloum, a deputy of the National Assembly. During my meeting with my minister, I asked him three key questions:
In a series of articles on the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Latin America published in the July 28 issue of Science magazine, one phrase in particular caught my eye: "The virus is also moving from high-risk groups to the general population." It wasn't the first time I'd read about this so-called "general population," but the more I think about it, the more uncomfortable I am with the concept. In epidemiological terms, I think I understand what it means: HIV/AIDS is now affecting populations other than sex workers, people who inject illegal drugs, and men who sleep with men--that is, the groups that traditionally become infected first when HIV/AIDS shows up in a particular country. In the other corner, we have the general population: mothers, housewives, heterosexual adolescents, celebrities, professionals, educated people, married couples, me, you, our families.
Now, I'm not an epidemiologist, but my hunch is that sex workers and people who inject illegal drugs and men who sleep with men aren't just having sex with each other. I would hazard a guess that they're also having sex with this so-called general population--and, last I checked, HIV was transmitted sexually. Furthermore, aren't sex workers and people who inject illegal drugs and men who have sex with men ALSO mothers, and housewives, and heterosexual adolescents, and celebrities, and professionals, and educated people, and married couples, and yes--sometimes even me, you, and our families too? Who gets to decide where the general population begins and ends?
Mark Hiew is a reporter for the Toronto YouthForce. He can be reached at [email protected]
It seemed like business as usual at the main pressroom on Day 3 of the International AIDS Conference in Toronto. Helene Gayle, President of the International AIDS Society, had just introduced Gregg Goncalves, of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), when the situation rapidly changed. Gregg ceded his spot to two positive black South African women, Sipho Mthathi and another TAC representative-an unusual act in such settings. As Sipho began to speak, a dozen members of the TAC stood up together, chanting slogans and holding signs reading "Gates is not the voice of (People with AIDS)!" and "Media: Activist not 'Hollywood' Conference."
I spent time this morning with a grandmother who has been living with HIV/AIDS for more than 15 years. She expressed her frustration at the conference, saying, "I don't want to sit in crowded rooms listening to scientists and policy-makers talk about what can happen in 20 years. I want to know what will be available to me tomorrow."
Her frustration is shared by other People Living with AIDS (PLWAs) and boiled over in an afternoon press conference today.
For advocates of evidence-based prevention, the International AIDS Conference in Toronto is likely to be remembered as a turning point in our efforts to eradicate HIV/AIDS. From the high-profile attention given to efforts such as microbicides, pre-exposure prophylaxis, male circumcision and harm reduction, prevention has come back to the fore and taken a seat alongside care and treatment, restoring the necessary balance to the global effort. Perhaps most interesting however, has been the repudiation at this conference of the lop-sided prevention efforts that have been focused on abstinence and marriage promotion.
