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.
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.
Yesterday at the "Steady, Ready, GO!: Universal Access for Young People" session, speakers and young people turned research into action.
Steady Ready Go is the synthesis of research on youth prevention programming, analyzing studies to provide policy and programming recommendations. The research breaks programs into four categories for implementation. The first programs are GO for implementation. The second programs are promising and READY, but still need more research. The third programs are STEADY, but definitely need more research. The final category is NO GO, programs that don't work for youth.
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.
To ask where youth may be at a youth reception sounds a bit silly, but the answer to my question was right upstairs. Of course there was a variety of sexy shirts that say money, access, and listen with messages on the back, reading the following: ½ of all new HIV infections are among young people under 25. We need youth-friendly services, including prevention, treatment, voluntary counseling and testing, and access to harm reduction programs. There was even a table for The Condom Project, where youth could make pins out of condoms and decorative fabric.
However, when I heard that famous youth icons like Alicia Keys were speaking, I walked downstairs to discover that only "VIP" guests could attend. Little did I know that very few of these "VIP" guests were youth. So what did I do?
Several thousand miles due south of Toronto, where activists and professionals in the field of HIV/AIDS are spending the week sharing strategies and setting priorities, the pandemic continues to follow its increasingly predictable course across Latin America. In its July 28 issue, Science magazine published a series of articles under the heading "The Overlooked Epidemic" that shed light on how HIV/AIDS is accelerating across the region. According to UNAIDS head Peter Piot, Central America is quickly becoming Latin America's HIV/AIDS hotspot.
It's not surprising, considering Central America's history of[img_assist|nid=475|title=Sexto Sentido|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=640|height=505] brutal dictatorships (many of which were financed by the United States), subsequent conflict (uhm, also largely financed by the United States), and natural disasters-all of which conspired to destroy infrastructures, weaken public services, and strain communities' collective and individual resources. Add the cold shower that is globalization in the global South and the economic migration (and corresponding spike in the sex trade) that generally tends to accompany it, on top of unequal power relations between men and women and an influential Catholic hierarchy that views honest HIV prevention messages as taboo topics, and it's not difficult to imagine how HIV/AIDS is already beginning to change the landscape of countless Central American lives.
Editor's Note: Our coverage this week has been dedicated to the Tornto AIDS Conference, but this poll, released this morning from NARAL Pro-Choice America, is important news we want to bring to our readers. In doing so we also note the increasing importance and interconnectedness of reproductive health, choice, contracpetion and disease prevention efforts in the public dialogue in America today.
On the reproductive rights front, the message is clear: Americans are tired of divisive attacks on a woman's right to choose and in November's election, they are ready to vote for a positive change.
NARAL Pro-Choice America just released a poll that shows pro-choice candidates have an opportunity to capitalize on the public's support for commonsense solutions to prevent unintended pregnancy and reduce the need for abortion. Nearly 77 percent of voters polled agree that the government and politicians should stay out of a woman's personal and private decision about whether or not to have an abortion.
Joyce is from Ghana. She is representing the Guttmacher Institute's Protecting the Next Generation Project at the conference.
I believe strongly in the power of the youth that can make a lot of difference in the fight against HIV/AIDS. I take inspiration from the young South Africans my age or even younger who fought for the freedom of South Africa.
I just closed from a poster discussion section which focused on the "Power of the Youth". It was good to realize how much concerned organizations are doing for the youth. Issues addressed by the organizations included that of gender which deals with both males and females-also inspiring because many gender activists are sometimes tempted to focus on only females, forgetting all about males. This indeed is not Gender Equity as they claim.
My major concern is the fact that the youth power was not felt at all in this discussion.
