Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 31, 2008
KWALE, 31 December 2008 (PlusNews) - Dressed in her neatly pressed school uniform at her home in Bangladesh , a slum in the Kenyan coastal district of Kwale, Winnie Adhiambo s sunny disposition belies the difficult conditions the teenager has had to overcome to stay in school. When her father passed away in 2003, no
Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 29, 2008
MAPUTO, 29 December 2008 (PlusNews) - The actors are on standby and the lights and microphones are on. But before he says Action, director Celio Grandes Machado spends several minutes carefully going over the script. Ntxuva - Vidas em Jogo (Ntxuva - Lives at Play), Mozambique s first locally produced soap opera, has an
Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 29, 2008
SÃO TOMÉ, 29 December 2008 (PlusNews) - The new hit being sung by everyone in São Tomé and Príncipe goes like this: Bleguê Bleguê ... A mi na mecê Bleguê, anda com bebê... The lyrics, in São Tomé s Forro language, have two simple but important messages: when you go out, always take condoms with you, and when you have s
Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 26, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 26 December 2008 (IRIN) - A few months ago, Tapera Jani, a three-year-old Zimbabwean boy who lived with his parents on a farm outside Bulawayo, walked into a fire. The fire left severe burn injuries on his feet. With a non-existent health system, there was little chance of the toddler s survival in Zimbab
Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 26, 2008
TCHAMBA, 26 December 2008 (IRIN) - For years, the Togolese government and its NGO partners have been trying to convince women who perform female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) to trade in their knives for microcredit loans and agricultural equipment. Despite a 10-year-old law in Togo that criminalises FGM/C some et
Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 24, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 24 December 2008 (IRIN) - More than 350,000 people in Mozambique are in need of food aid with hamstrung aid relief agencies saying the onset of the annual flood season in Mozambique will also jeopardise other food interventions for vulnerable children, home-based care recipients and people living with HIV
Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 24, 2008
MOUNT HAGEN, 24 December 2008 (PlusNews) - Dr Petronia Kaima was appalled. She had just been told the two young HIV-positive mothers she greeted as they were leaving the Rebiamul Centre in Mount Hagen, in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG), were married to the same man. Their husband had two other wive
Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 23, 2008
NAROK, 23 December 2008 (IRIN) - Tiampati Ole Kirgoty, 45, looks tired and can hardly support his frail body. He and his two wives are HIV positive. They are supposed to pick up their monthly prescriptions of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) at the district hospital in Narok, capital of Kenya s Rift Valley Province, but thi
Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 22, 2008
PORT MORESEBY, 22 December 2008 (PlusNews) - How do you roll out an effective HIV prevention programme in Papua New Guinea (PNG) where 800 languages are spoken, cultures and sexual mores differ wildly, and much of the country is inaccessible? Add to that headache the fact that in real terms AIDS funding has crashed
Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 19, 2008
CHIMOIO, 19 December 2008 (PlusNews) - With her make-up touched up, a basin filled with seasoned chicken on her head and a bundle of sharpened bamboo sticks in her hand, Lucrecia*, 16, makes her way to an old petrol station near a major truck stop in Chimoio, capital of Mozambique s central province of Manica. I sell a
Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 18, 2008
KARACHI, 18 December 2008 (PlusNews) - Like thousands of Pakistanis, Fida moved to Saudi Arabia in search of a better life 10 years ago. He found work as a labourer in the coastal city of Jeddah, but because he was supporting his family back home, could not yet think of marrying. He visited prostitutes in Jeddah as
Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 18, 2008
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (PNG) has one of the highest prevalence rates of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the Asia-Pacific region. The lack of awareness about safer sex, especially among the youth, is recognised as a particular problem. Three months ago, Marie Stopes International (MSI), whi
Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 17, 2008
KITALE, 17 December 2008 (PlusNews) - Margaret Sichei*, 37, discovered she was HIV positive during a routine antenatal check-up. The pregnancy, as well as the HIV infection, was the product of a gang rape deep in the forests of Mount Elgon in western Kenya , perpetrated by members of a self-styled militia calling thems
Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 16, 2008
ANTANANARIVO, 16 December 2008 (PlusNews) - A squirrel sized lemur from Madagascar has given scientists new evidence about the origins of the HI virus and opened up promising new avenues for investigation. Robert Shafer, a senior author of the research, told IRIN/PlusNews that the discovery is one of the most importan
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 15, 2008
KAMPALA, 15 December 2008 (PlusNews) - Nearly two decades after Uganda managed, with meagre resources, to drastically reduce its HIV prevalence, the rate of new infections is rising again, despite significant amounts being spent on prevention. Prevalence of over 20 percent in the early 1990s declined to about six perce
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 12, 2008
BOGOTA, 12 December 2008 (PlusNews) - When Cesar Leon discovered he had contracted HIV from his long-term boyfriend more than a decade ago, not much information was available about the virus, even among the gay community in Bogota, Colombia s capital. Today, we have a lot of information [about AIDS], but people aren t
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 12, 2008
NAIROBI, 12 December 2008 (PlusNews) - In June 2006, a young woman in western Kenya died of HIV-related complications and left a list of about 100 people that she said she had infected with HIV. A new law, approved by the Kenyan president but yet to be implemented, is hoping to prevent wilful transmission. The HIV
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 11, 2008
DAKAR, 11 December 2008 (IRIN) - Children in sub-Saharan Africa want to know more about sex and how to protect themselves from HIV, but taboos surrounding children s sexuality can mean life-saving information is kept from them, according to an international NGO. Children in the region say they need access to sex educat
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 10, 2008
HARARE, 10 December 2008 (PlusNews) - Moses Mwedzi, who lives in Budiriro, a high-density suburb of the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, has just recovered from a serious bout of cholera. He is also living with HIV and recently started taking antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). One morning he woke up with excruciating stomach cram
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 10, 2008
DAKAR, 10 December 2008 (PlusNews) - In West and Central Africa, large amounts of money are spent on buying antiretroviral (ARV) drugs but weak distribution systems mean many HIV-positive patients never get them, said speakers at the 15th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) in Dakar,
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 9, 2008
DAKAR, 9 December 2008 (PlusNews) - HIV education can improve a young person s knowledge about HIV and AIDS but not necessarily their chances of avoiding infection. These are the findings of a ground-breaking study released last week at the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA), the first in sub-S
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 9, 2008
CHIMOIO, 9 December 2008 (PlusNews) - Lino Matope, 23, is lying on a mangy cotton mattress in a tiny shack made of corrugated iron sheets at the Feira market in Chimoio, capital of central Mozambique s Manica Province, receiving his fourth illegal injection of benzatinic penicillin. The injection is giving me muscle cr
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 8, 2008
DAKAR, 8 December 2008 (PlusNews) - The exclusion of disabled people living with HIV in Africa is so entrenched that they were even marginalised at the latest international conference on the disease, according to disabled rights activists. Rights groups claim that many of their members were shut out of the opening cere
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 8, 2008
LAGOS, 8 December 2008 (PlusNews) - Ijora Badia in Lagos, Nigeria s former capital city and the country s economic hub is a community virtually without government services. Poor drainage and sanitation facilities leave a permanent foul odour at the bustling market and most residents must wade through several refuse dum
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 8, 2008
DAKAR, 8 December 2008 (PlusNews) - Looking to get circumcised to reduce your risk of HIV infection? If you re living in Southern Africa, you might have a long wait until services become more widely available. The demand is there, so is the evidence that male circumcision can work, and even some national policies are i
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 5, 2008
DAKAR, 5 December 2008 (PlusNews) - Armed conflicts and political instability in West Africa have left many children vulnerable to HIV infection and suffering from psychological distress, but little attention is paid to their needs. Delegates attending the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA), in
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 5, 2008
CONAKRY, 5 December 2008 (PlusNews) - How many people with HIV in Guinea are on antiretroviral (ARV) medication? How many are co-infected with tuberculosis? Which population groups are most vulnerable to HIV infection? These questions and many others vital to coordinating an effective AIDS response are hard to answer i
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 5, 2008
DAKAR, Mary Muthoni is physically handicapped and gets around on crutches. She talked to IRIN/PlusNews at the 15th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) taking place in Dakar, Senegal , about the triple stigma she has experienced. I learnt of my [HIV] status in 2000. I didn t want to be tested rea
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 4, 2008
NAIROBI, 4 December 2008 (PlusNews) - Maurine Kamau* lost her first child immediately after birth but did not discover why the baby had died until she fell pregnant a second time and tested positive for HIV at the Nazareth Mission Hospital, on the outskirts of Nairobi, capital of Kenya . She received counselling
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 4, 2008
DAKAR, 4 December 2008 (PlusNews) - While healthcare workers in sub-Saharan Africa struggle to deal with unmanageable workloads resulting from HIV/AIDS, a new study has found that their needs are being neglected. Hospitals are failing to protect their workers from HIV and tuberculosis (TB) infection, and healthcare wor
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 4, 2008
DAKAR, 4 December 2008 (PlusNews) - Great advances have been made in reaching more Africans with life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, but prevention efforts are lagging, according to speakers at the opening of the 15th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) taking place in Dakar,
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 3, 2008
MANZINI, 3 December 2008 (PlusNews) - The release of revised projections indicating that twice as many HIV-positive Swazis are in need of life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs than was previously thought has highlighted the urgent need for government to iron out problems in its treatment programme. A new
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 3, 2008
OLONGAPO, 3 December 2008 (PlusNews) - The bustling northern Philippine city of Olongapo has defied the politically influential Roman Catholic Church by passing its own reproductive health code advocating sex education for high school students and the mass distribution of condoms, among other things. Olongapo hosted on
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 3, 2008
CAPE TOWN, 3 December 2008 (PlusNews) - South Africa s Department of Health has failed to channel US$3.9 million in donor money to 13 HIV/AIDS organisations, leaving them underfunded. As the designated principal recipient of a Global Fund grant to address gaps in the national AIDS response and expand the programme, Sou
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 2, 2008
GUJRAT, 2 December 2008 (PlusNews) - An ongoing investigation into the large number of HIV cases in the small town of Jalalpur Jattan in Pakistan s northern Gujrat district, in Punjab Province, is expected to shed light on patterns of infection in the region and influence the future direction of the country s HIV polic
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 2, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 2 December 2008 (PlusNews) - As the global financial crisis raises the spectre of cutbacks in AIDS funding, countries need to start being more strategic about how they spend their AIDS budgets. If funding is in doubt, how will treatment programmes stay ahead of the growing demand for antiretroviral therap
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 2, 2008
IRINGA, 2 December 2008 (PlusNews) - For two months of the year, James Lusago can count on a steady income from working in the rice fields of Pawaga, in the southwestern Tanzanian region of Iringa. But there s a dangerous side effect to this temporary economic freedom: lonely and far from family and friends, he spends
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 1, 2008
SEMERA, 1 December 2008 (IRIN) - Like most pastoralists in the remote Afar region of northeastern Ethiopia , Ahmed Mohammed made sure his daughter was circumcised seven days after her birth. This is the culture in Afar, we received it from our ancestors, Ahmed said. Afar ranks second in female genital mutilation/cuttin
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 1, 2008
MAPUTO, 1 December 2008 (IRIN) - Sixty years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and on the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day, people living with HIV in Mozambique are still experiencing frequent human rights abuses. There are signs that many people have been the victims of violence, or even lost their liv
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 1, 2008
NAIROBI, 1 December 2008 (IRIN) - The party at a popular restaurant in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, looks ordinary, but the people attending it - all of whom are HIV-positive - are enjoying a rare opportunity to socialise without feeling like an outsider. The young men and women spent the afternoon relaxing and getting
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 1, 2008
MANDERA, 1 December 2008 (IRIN) - Recent fighting and an increased security presence along the Kenya- Somalia border have brought HIV/AIDS campaigns to a virtual standstill in Kenya s northeastern region, according to local health workers. Hundreds of people were displaced in October by a security operation in Mandera
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 1, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 1 December 2008 (PlusNews) - Countries in sub-Saharan Africa are looking at a new way of preventing HIV infections: criminal charges. But experts argue that applying criminal law to HIV transmission will achieve neither criminal justice nor curb the spread of the virus; rather, it will increase discrimina
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 1, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 1 December 2008 (PlusNews) - West Africa has the dubious distinction of having the most HIV legislation in sub-Saharan Africa: over 10 countries in the region have developed HIV laws, often with provisions that have sometimes been described as terrifying , and a danger to HIV-positive people. In places li
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - November 28, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 28 November 2008 (IRIN) - A woman in Malawi left her husband after years of abuse. He found her and raped her, an act not criminalised in Malawi when it occurs within marriage. The woman later tested positive for HIV and discovered that her husband had known his HIV-positive status for some time. When
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - November 27, 2008
NAIROBI, 27 November 2008 (PLUSNEWS) - Universal HIV testing and immediate antiretroviral (ARV) drugs could reduce new infections in high-prevalence countries by as much as 95 percent within ten years, according to a new study by scientists from the UN World Health Organisation (WHO). The findings of the mathematical m
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - November 27, 2008
KAMPALA (PLUSNEWS) - More than 1,000 people were recently tested for HIV at a busy marketplace in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, kicking off a nationwide drive that aims to help at least 20,000 people across the country know their status. Between 26 November and 1 December, World AIDS Day, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 26, 2008
YAOUNDE, 26 November 2008 (PlusNews) - When newspapers in Cameroon carried the story of a local businessman who allegedly had infected young girls with the HI virus, the calls to criminalise HIV transmission grew louder and the debate became more heated. The focus of discussions was a draft bill drawn up in 2002 that p
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 26, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 26 November 2008 (PlusNews) - Thousands of people living with HIV in Myanmar ( Burma ) are dying because the government and international donors are not funding life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, says international humanitarian organisation, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). In a report release
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 25, 2008
CONAKRY, 25 November 2008 (PlusNews) - Five years ago, antiretroviral (ARV) treatment in Guinea cost US$100 per patient per month; today, thanks to a large injection of donor cash, ARVs are now freely available in government hospitals. HIV testing services are being rolled out across the country and an estimated 8,000
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 25, 2008
CARTAGENA, 25 November 2008 (PlusNews) - On the days that Alberis Guerrero Peralta doesn t make soup to sell in her neighbourhood of Arjona, an impoverished community outside Cartagena, a city on Colombia s northern coast, she and her four children don t eat. Like many of the families living in Arjona, armed conflict b
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 25, 2008
HARARE, 25 November 2008 (PlusNews) - Stanley Takaona, deputy president of the Zimbabwe HIV/AIDS Activist Union, has spent the past month volunteering at two state hospitals in the capital, Harare, after health workers began a work stoppage that has virtually closed both facilities, leaving hundreds of people without m
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 24, 2008
NAIROBI, 24 November 2008 (PlusNews) - At the gates of one of Kenya s export processing zones (EPZs) men and women push and shove each other, trying to get their national identity cards taken by the guards. Having one s card taken increases the chances of being employed that day as a casual labourer at one of the facto
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 24, 2008
KAMPALA, 24 November 2008 (PlusNews) - AIDS activists in Uganda have slammed a proposed new law that will force HIV-positive people to reveal their status to their sexual partners, and also allow medical personnel to reveal someone s status to their partner. The HIV Prevention and Control Bill (2008) is intended to pro
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 21, 2008
NAIROBI, 21 November 2008 (PlusNews) - HIV-positive prisoners in Kenya not only suffer isolation from friends and family, but also within the prison walls. Fellow prisoners and warders treat us so uncaringly - they stigmatise us, said Collins Kiwinda*, a prisoner serving time for robbery with violence at Athi River Pri
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 20, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 20 November 2008 (IRIN) - A ground-breaking South African study has provided the first hard evidence that treating HIV-positive babies with antiretroviral (ARV) medicines from as early as six weeks dramatically improves their chances of survival. The study, conducted in Cape Town and Soweto, Johannesburg
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 20, 2008
LAGOS, 20 November 2008 (IRIN) - Getting married in Nigeria often requires more than just the bride and groom turning up at the altar, and having witnesses and wedding rings present: many Christian churches also require an HIV test certificate. It may not seem particularly compassionate, but in an era when sex before m
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 20, 2008
JUBA, 20 November 2008 (IRIN) - For over a year, the South Sudan AIDS Commission (SSAC) has been setting up offices in the ten states that make up Southern Sudan, but a combination of funding delays and a population largely uninformed about HIV is keeping the fight against the pandemic from moving forward. In 2007,
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 19, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 19 November 2008 (PlusNews) - South Africa s newly sworn-in Health Minister, Barbara Hogan, came head-to-head with her first real crisis when antiretroviral (ARV) treatment was withheld from hundreds of people in Free State Province. Some may give her an A for effort, but others say the health department
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 19, 2008
OUAGADOUGOU, 19 November 2008 (PlusNews) - High food prices and cuts in food aid to HIV-positive people are forcing relief organisations in Burkina Faso to take another look at local foods to keep people healthy. We are all working with sustainability in mind, and we cannot always continue to rely on external support,
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 19, 2008
MANILA, 19 November 2008 (PlusNews) - While lawmakers in the Philippines debate whether to approve a controversial bill on reproductive health, health officials have warned that new HIV infections have shot up dramatically in the past year. In a recent report, the health department s National Epidemiology Centre (NEC)
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 18, 2008
ISHASHA, 18 November 2008 (PlusNews) - Violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has forced thousands of people to flee across the border into neighbouring countries, but relief workers in Uganda admit that HIV is low on the list of priorities. [NGOs] are prioritising water, sanitation, basic health; t
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 18, 2008
CARTAGENA, 18 November 2008 (PlusNews) - On the surface, the historic northern city of Cartagena on Colombia s Caribbean coast is an up-market tourist destination, with cruise boat passengers strolling through the old, walled city s maze of narrow streets as sight-seers duck into air-conditioned boutiques and cafes to
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 17, 2008
BEIRA, 17 November 2008 (PlusNews) - When Mariana Uchandidhora s husband was killed in a traffic accident in South Africa a year ago, tradition required that she have sex with her deceased husband s brother in order to be purified. Uchandidhora, 36, refused, arguing that her brother-in-law was much younger than she was
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 17, 2008
HARARE, 17 November 2008 (PlusNews) - Memory Motsi* rents a room in Chitungwiza, about 20km from the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. She wakes up at five in the morning to get to work on time at the school where she teaches Grade 5 in Hatfield, a suburb in the city, because the poor salaries in education sector, totally ou
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 14, 2008
KAMPALA, 14 November 2008 (PlusNews) - A new clinical trial to test the effectiveness of pre-exposure prophylaxis in stable sexual relationships has started in Uganda , with 3,900 discordant couples enrolled in a five-year study. The aim of the study is to find out whether pre-exposure prophylaxis [PrEP] prevents HIV a
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 14, 2008
PORT LOUIS, 14 November 2008 (PlusNews) - Over 500 people from Mauritius , Madagascar , Reunion Island, the Comoros and Seychelles attended the seventh conference on AIDS in
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 14, 2008
MBABANE, 14 November 2008 (IRIN) - Moved by the deplorable conditions he found on a tour of Swaziland s hospitals and clinics, Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini has vowed to reform the healthcare system. If you don t do what I have just said about improving hospitals, you must just hit the road and head home, Dlamini ins
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 13, 2008
NEW YORK, 13 November 2008 (IRIN) - Humanitarian organisations face tough choices if the global financial crisis affects their income, as some analysts predict. Although it is too soon to predict the full impact of the crisis on funding, some agencies told IRIN they were reviewing possible cutbacks and some have starte
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 13, 2008
HARARE, 13 November 2008 (PlusNews) - George Mumba, 24, an accountant in Harare, capital of Zimbabwe , is among the thousands of people whose situation has been drastically affected by hyperinflation, because customers cannot withdraw enough cash from the bank to buy what they need. Almost every day, Mumba, who is
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 13, 2008
CONAKRY, Fatoumata Binta Diallo s husband had been positive for many years when she discovered she was HIV positive in 2001, but he had never told her. Neither had he told his other wives. Diallo, 49, a widow and a mother of six, lives in Conakry, capital of Guinea , and is now President of REGAP+ (network of people in
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 12, 2008
LUANDA, 12 November 2008 (PlusNews) - The best place to gauge the extent of China s growing role in Angola is at the Quatro de Fevereiro airport in the capital, Luanda, where crowds of Chinese wait their turn to have their passports stamped. One immigration official complained to anyone who cared to listen: These Chin
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 12, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 12 November 2008 (PlusNews) - You spoke and we listened. PlusNews has updated its popular report, Mind your language - a glossary of HIV and AIDS slang from across Africa - with your contributions. Namibia (Oshiwambo, spoken mainly in the north) Okakiya - Thorn (Contracting HIV is like being pricked with
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 12, 2008
HARARE, 12 November 2008 (PlusNews) - After a week of drama and suspense, HIV/AIDS activists in Zimbabwe welcomed with relief the decision by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to award the country a US$169 million grant. The Global Fund has approved three grants for Zimbabwe over a two-year period
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 11, 2008
BLANTYRE, 11 November 2008 (IRIN) - The respect Malawi s elderly once enjoyed in society is being soured by the twin pressures of poverty and HIV/AIDS, according to a recent report, and the government is introducing social grants to alleviate the burden they carry. In the past, the elderly in Malawi used to depend on t
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 11, 2008
BUJUMBURA, 11 November 2008 (PlusNews) - When Diane Ndayizeye* was diagnosed with HIV three years ago, she was relieved to discover she could get her life-prolonging antiretroviral medication free of charge at a local hospital. What she did not realise was that the drugs would increase her appetite, a real problem when
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 11, 2008
NAIROBI, Frederick Wanzere, 25, was lucky enough to go to university, but when his guardian (an uncle) found out he was HIV-positive, he stopped paying the fees. Wanzere has had to become a mechanic to help his younger siblings. He told IRIN/PlusNews his story. At times life turns out to be what you don t even expect.
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 11, 2008
OSHIKANGO, 11 November 2008 (PlusNews) - Beer, batteries and sex - everything s a commodity on the border. For many, the town of Oshikango on the Namibia- Angola border, is a way station. For those who grow up there, it s a home with little in the way of things to do, places to go and future opportunities - making econ
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 11, 2008
PHNOM PENH, 11 November 2008 (PlusNews) - At the end of each day, Lux, a construction worker in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, goes home for supper with his wife and young children. At the weekend he leads a different life, cruising the city s most notorious male brothels, where he regularly has group sex with men
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 7, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 7 November 2008 (PlusNews) - On paper, South Africa has some of the world s best HIV workplace programmes, but on the ground they just aren t adding up. Diamond mining giant De Beers has long boasted that 86 percent of employees at its six mines have been tested by its voluntary counselling and testing (V
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 7, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 7 November 2008 (PlusNews) - A new study estimates that more than 330,000 HIV-positive South Africans lost their lives between 2000 and 2005 as a direct result of government delays in rolling out a treatment programme. The report by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health was published in Novem
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 7, 2008
DAR ES SALAAM, 7 November 2008 (PlusNews) - Tips for managing domestic arguments and ensuring a happy sex life are just some of the bits of wisdom passed on at Tanzanian bridal showers. Known as kitchen parties , no subject is taboo as the guests prepare brides-to-be for life as a wife. But gender activists say the par
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 6, 2008
JACMEL, 6 November 2008 (PlusNews) - Despite being the only public hospital serving over 500,000 people in Haiti s South-East Department, St Michel Hospital in the coastal town of Jacmel has only one ambulance and no functioning X-ray machine; it lacks a medical director, is short of nurses and was without electricity
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 6, 2008
PORT MORESBY, 6 November 2008 (PlusNews) - The number of people living with HIV in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is rising, not just in urban areas but more so in rural areas, a new report has found. The epidemic is still increasing more rapidly than the response, said the report by the Independent Review Group (IRG) on HIV/
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 6, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 6 November 2008 (PlusNews) - The future of Zimbabwe s AIDS programmes hangs in the balance after the government failed to meet the deadline of Thursday 6 November to return over US$7 million to the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Earlier this week, executive director
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 5, 2008
YAOUNDÉ, 5 November 2008 (PlusNews) - Marie Gisèle Tientcheu, 30, an AIDS activist, has developed resistance to second-line antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, and has had to look outside Cameroon , her home country, for the medicines she needs. Her story has received a lot of media attention in Cameroon, and has thrown th
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 5, 2008
NAIROBI, 5 November 2008 (PlusNews) - In one of the many backyard taverns selling chang aa (illicit brew) in the Korogocho informal settlement of Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, two women desperately try to get patrons to listen to their lecture about HIV; many are too drunk to care, but others are more attentive. To the
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 5, 2008
MBABANE, Thembe Manana, 40, left her job as a domestic worker in South Africa and returned to her village in Swaziland 10 years ago to care for her mother and children. She talked to IRIN/PlusNews about her struggle with HIV and surviving in a country stricken by drought and poverty. I was healthy when I came back
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 4, 2008
HARARE, 4 November 2008 (IRIN) - Zimbabwe s AIDS organisations have condemned the government for failing to account for more than US$7 million provided by the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The money was held by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ), but allocations were released er
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 4, 2008
OTJIVERO, 4 November 2008 (IRIN) - There are no roads, no major industry and no historical landmarks in Otjivero, a village about 150km east of Windhoek, the Namibian capital and previously known for little more than its poverty. But in January 2008 it became part of one of the world s first basic income grant (BIG) pr
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 4, 2008
JACMEL, 4 November 2008 (PlusNews) - Clement Bouvais, a Haitian voodoo priest, presides over the Temple de Nos Ancetres (Temple of Our Ancestors), a windowless wooden structure painted in fading shades of blue and red on a narrow side street in the southern coastal town of Jacmel. It is dusk; the mosquitoes are biting
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 4, 2008
NAIROBI, 4 November 2008 (PlusNews) - The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was formed in 2001 for the purpose of setting up an innovative approach to providing finance to combat the three diseases that kill more than six million people worldwide every year. Since its inception, the Fund has committed
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 3, 2008
BANJUL, 3 November 2008 (IRIN) - President Yahya Jammeh s traditional herbal treatment for HIV has had an unanticipated side-effect, say HIV experts in the country - rather than pulling people towards a herbal cure, it has raised the profile of conventional antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) to treat HIV. Twenty months since
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 3, 2008
PORT-AU-PRINCE, 3 November 2008 (PlusNews) - After her aunt turned her out onto the chaotic streets of Port-au-Prince, capital of Haiti , eight months ago, Marie Jessy*, 16, survived by befriending men who gave her a place to stay for the night and some money the next morning. I don t want to do this kind of work, I wa
UN Integrated Regional Information System - November 3, 2008
KIGALI, 3 November 2008 (PlusNews) - While neighbouring countries struggle to get pregnant women to visit antenatal centres, women in Rwanda seem to be flocking to them. Rwanda manages to reach 72 percent of pregnant women with HIV testing and counselling and other prevention of mother-to-child services (PMTCT), but fe
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 31, 2008
NAIROBI, 31 October 2008 (IRIN) - Five months after a specialised facility for multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB) patients was established at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, the lack of isolation wards is raising concerns. This is not the best place; TB is a highly infectious disease, Catherine Koskei, a
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 31, 2008
JACMEL, 31 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Even before Hurricane Gustav barrelled into the southern coast of Haiti in August, life was a struggle for Destin Domoud, an artist selling his paintings and papier-mache crafts from a small gallery in the seaside town of Jacmel. Until last year, Domoud made a modest living in one o
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 31, 2008
JACMEL, Celeste*, 15, contracted HIV from her mother at birth. She lives in Jacmel on the southeast coast of Haiti , which was battered in August and September by four successive hurricanes, and has been receiving assistance from a local NGO for people living with HIV, called KALMI (Haitian Collective for a Better Life
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 31, 2008
HARARE, 31 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Zimbabwe s prison walls have not insulated inmates from the effects of the country s economic meltdown. A recent report has warned that the nation s 55 prisons have become death traps , with conditions deteriorating rapidly and diseases spreading even faster. The Zimbabwe Associatio
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 30, 2008
PHNOM PENH, 30 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Evidence of the large-scale use and manufacturing of methamphetamine in Cambodia could pose a new challenge to the fight against HIV/AIDS, warned non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In the capital, Phnom Penh, 14 percent of injecting drug users were found to be HIV positive i
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 29, 2008
NAIROBI, 29 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Kenya will have to find new sources of funding to keep more than 200,000 people on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment after the country s latest bid for support from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was rejected, a senior government official said. We are too
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 29, 2008
NAIROBI, 29 October 2008 (PlusNews) - A man in a bar gets progressively more drunk and disorderly, his speech growing more slurred and his sexual advances to a waitress becoming more aggressive as he tries to get her to go home with him. The scene is from a sketch at the second national bar hostesses conference in the
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 29, 2008
NAIROBI, Jacinta Wanjiku, 40, has been a waitress for 15 years, but lost her most recent job two weeks ago; she told IRIN/PlusNews that she was probably sacked because she is getting older and the management wanted to replace her with a fresher face to attract male customers. It s a job; it pays the bills and feeds the
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 28, 2008
MBABANE, 28 October 2008 (IRIN) - The irony is not lost on Swazis: the population is among the world s poorest, and yet the kingdom is classified as a middle-income country . How come? According to Musinga Timothy Bandora, resident coordinator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), A nation s wealth is measured by sev
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 26, 2008
NYERI, When Susan Muthoni became critically ill with HIV-related complications, she quit her job and retreated to her family home in Nyeri, a town in Kenya s Central Province, where neighbours whispered that she could go at any time. She told IRIN/PlusNews how she beat the odds to live a healthy and productive life.
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 24, 2008
BUJUMBURA, 24 October 2008 (PlusNews) - HIV programmes in Burundi have been struggling to support people affected by the pandemic since the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria rejected the country s request for funds a year ago. It has been very hard; we have tried to use our internal resources
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 24, 2008
HARARE, 24 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Excitement is mounting in Zimbabwe with the news that the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has found the country s Round 8 application for funding technically sound , and has recommended that the grant be approved. The Technical Review Panel (TRP) of the Global Fu
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 23, 2008
KATUNA, 23 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Edward Oboth Ofumbi is glad his days as a long-distance truck driver are over; glad to have left a life filled with long, solitary journeys on some of Africa s worst roads, carrying valuable cargo on highways with minimal security. Truckers are a frustrated bunch; the roads are horr
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 23, 2008
KAMPALA, 23 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Developing countries like Uganda , which is seeking funds for its HIV/AIDS programmes, could find themselves even more cash-strapped as donors caught up in the global economic crisis become more conservative in their spending. Last week, Uganda launched a five-year national strateg
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 22, 2008
SUBA, 22 October 2008 (PlusNews) - On both occasions when Mary Atieno* gave birth in her home district of Suba, western Kenya , she knew that going to one of the health centres would be safer, but she was too afraid that the routine HIV test might reveal that she was HIV-positive. I normally just deliver at home with
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 22, 2008
BUJUMBURA, Yves Niyonkuru is a lanky 30-year-old Burundian who speaks easily about his life as a gay man in a society that has little tolerance for homosexuality. He told IRIN/PlusNews about his experiences since coming out of the closet. When I was 18 I told my mother that I was gay. She was very supportive, probably
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 21, 2008
BUJUMBURA, 21 October 2008 (PlusNews) - When Georges Kanuma, the head of a gay rights movement in Burundi , first attended an HIV conference in 2004, he was surprised to discover that water-based lubricants, and not petroleum jelly - which breaks down the latex that condoms are made from - should be used during anal se
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 21, 2008
PHNOM PENH, 21 October 2008 (PlusNews) - The Cambodian government s crackdown on human trafficking and sexual exploitation could reverse the progress made in curbing the spread of HIV/AIDS, as sex workers fleeing the police have been unable to access health services. Legislation against human trafficking, introduced in
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 20, 2008
HARARE, 20 October 2008 (PlusNews) - For almost six months now, John Mberi*, 14, from the high-density suburb of Mufakose in Zimbabwe s capital, Harare, has been taking care of his sick mother, Fortunate, who returned home from neighbouring South Africa very ill. The community attributed Fortunate s condition to food p
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 17, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 17 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Clinical trials of a new tuberculosis (TB) vaccine recently kicked off in Kenya , meanwhile international TB researchers and activists are worried by funding gaps that may worsen in the global financial crisis. In the first stage of human testing, known as Phase I trials, the
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 16, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 16 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Isn t it time that journalists started taking HIV/AIDS beyond the newsroom and into the bedroom? In many newsrooms the highly politicised topic of HIV/AIDS remains just that - political. Journalists aren t immune to HIV/AIDS; they just don t talk about it. But they are just as
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 15, 2008
KATUNA, 15 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Said*, a long-distance trucker from the Democratic Republic of Congo, is married with six children. His work keeps him on the road for weeks at a time, and on those long, lonely nights he turns to his girlfriend, who lives in town of Malaba on the Kenya- Uganda border.
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 15, 2008
NAIROBI, Fatma Swalleh, 24, lost her mother, the only parent she had ever known, six years ago to HIV/AIDS. Watching her mother indulge in heavy drinking while denying her status made Fatma s life miserable, but the responsibility of caring for her three younger siblings and bedridden mother strengthened her resolve to
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 14, 2008
KABUL, 14 October 2008 (IRIN) - Solid waste produced by the health-care system in Kabul and other major cities is not being properly managed and poses a serious public health risk, according to health experts. Medical waste - including used needles and syringes, soiled dressings, body parts, diagnostic samples, blood,
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 13, 2008
MAPUTO, 13 October 2008 (PlusNews) - When classes finish at Francisco Manyanga Secondary School in Maputo, capital of Mozambique , most teachers and students head for the bus while others walk home. Julia*, 16, a 10th-grade student, gets into a luxury car, where a man who looks to be in his 40s waits for her. The man i
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 10, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 10 October 2008 (IRIN) - Zimbabwe s official annual inflation rate reached 231 million percent in early October, from the July estimate of 11.2 million percent, and the deadlock in talks between the ruling ZANU-PF and opposition parties is likely to push hyperinflation higher. The state-run daily newspape
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 10, 2008
KAMPALA, 10 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Children living with HIV in Uganda have been given greater access to treatment with a new paediatric HIV care centre opened at the main referral hospital in the capital, Kampala. More than 20,000 children are infected with HIV every year, and 50 percent of them die before their sec
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 9, 2008
KISUMU, 9 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Health facilities in Nyanza Province in western Kenya are struggling to meet the demand for medical male circumcisions since politicians threw their weight behind efforts to promote the procedure as a way of reducing HIV infections. The campaign initially faced opposition by communit
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 8, 2008
AMURU, Christine Auma has lived in a camp for internally displaced persons in northern Uganda s Amuru district for more than 20 years. Relative peace has returned to the region over the past two years, and she has watched neighbours and friends move out of the camp into resettlement camps closer to their villages. But
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 8, 2008
HARARE, 8 October 2008 (PlusNews) - The new board of Zimbabwe s National AIDS Council (NAC) has a glaring omission: not one member is living openly with the HI-virus. AIDS activists have slammed the move, describing it as discriminatory and a step backwards in the fight against the epidemic. The NAC was established in
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 7, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 7 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Grassroots AIDS organisations in Malawi are facing uncertainty as the National AIDS Commission (NAC) ends its dependence on international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for dispersing grants. The responsibility for channelling funds to more than 3,000 AIDS organisations
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 6, 2008
GULU, 6 October 2008 (PlusNews) - As calm returns to northern Uganda , tens of thousands of people previously living in camps for internally displaced persons (IDP) camps are now in satellite camps mid-way between the IDP camps and their villages. The new camps are less crowded and people can cultivate their land, but
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 6, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 6 October 2008 (PlusNews) - The reliability of HIV diagnoses obtained from finger prick tests has come into question with the recall of a brand of rapid HIV test kits used at public testing sites in two South African provinces. A local newspaper reported on 28 September that more than half a million Wondf
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 3, 2008
MIGORI, Thirty-three year-old Emily Ajwan g, a resident of Nyatike village in western Kenya s Migori district, lost her husband to an HIV-related illness two years ago. She now works in the district s gold mines to support her five children. Diagnosed with HIV after the death of her husband, she told IRIN/PlusNews abou
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 3, 2008
GULU, 3 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Disabled people in northern Uganda - many of whom were injured in the long conflict between the government and the rebel Lord s Resistance Army (LRA) - are calling on the government to provide a more targeted HIV response. Although there have been no rebel attacks in the region for ove
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 2, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 2 October 2008 (PlusNews) - South Africa s new health minister, Barbara Hogan, has listed the twin epidemics of HIV and TB as among the most serious health challenges facing the country. Addressing journalists on Thursday, 2 October, she promised to involve all sections of our society in the government s
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 2, 2008
MIGORI, 2 October 2008 (PlusNews) - The sleepy town of Nyatike, in western Kenya s Migori district, has relied on gold mining since foreign prospectors discovered the precious metal in the 1930s; men do most of the mining, while women and girls come to the mines to sell food. I come here to make tea or at times porridg
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 1, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 1 October 2008 (IRIN) - Angola s new government is promising better health facilities at both primary and secondary care levels, as well as to reduce the prevalence of HIV/AIDS over the next four years. The oil- and diamond-rich nation went to the polls earlier last month and returned the ruling MPLA part
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 1, 2008
BALAKA, 1 October 2008 (PlusNews) - Jackson Edward, 37, is an HIV-positive father of three who lives in Balaka, a small town in southern Malawi . He dedicates his time to educating communities about living positively with HIV and distributing condoms in local bars. He talked to IRIN/PlusNews about how discovering his s
UN Integrated Regional Information System - October 1, 2008
LILONGWE, 1 October 2008 (PlusNews) - A chronic lack of healthcare workers in Malawi has crippled the health system, but a different way of doing things has alleviated the shortages, bringing new players to the field. Many Malawian doctors and nurses head to wealthier countries in search of greener pastures, so the gov
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 30, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 30 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Adjusting to college or university life can be rough - moving into residence, living with roommates, balancing academic demands with those of social life. Now try taking your antiretroviral (ARV) medication without the whole world knowing you re positive, and things get even
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 29, 2008
TETE, 29 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Ines Muterua, 29, lies on a frayed straw mat between two mud huts and places an old tin can full of sand by her side. I usually spit my phlegm into this can to keep from spitting just anywhere and contaminating others, like what happened with me. Muterua contracted tuberculosis (TB)
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 29, 2008
HARARE, 29 September 2008 (PlusNews) - AIDS activists are hoping that the country s new administration will make good on promises to urgently improve access to affordable HIV/AIDS treatment and services at state hospitals. The country s three political parties - ZANU-PF and the two factions of the majority Movement for
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 26, 2008
PRETORIA, Gift Mangwende was diagnosed with HIV less than a year before starting his first year at the University of Zimbabwe in 2004. Antiretroviral (ARV) treatment brought him back from what he described as a point of no return , but trying to take the drugs without his new classmates and lecturers noticing put his n
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 26, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 26 September 2008 (PlusNews) - South Africa s newly appointed health minister, Barbara Hogan, has inherited an unenviable to-do list from outgoing minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, but AIDS activists are optimistic that she is up to the job. Hogan has no background in health, but has been a member of the
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 25, 2008
GULU, 25 September 2008 (PlusNews) - By day the northern Ugandan town of Gulu is a busy municipality, but at night it really comes alive, when its pubs, powered by generators and fuelled by the local spirit, Waragi, fill up with boisterous patrons looking for a good time. In the Buganda bar, named after a kingdom in ce
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 25, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 25 September 2008 (PlusNews) - As South Africa prepared to swear in a new president on 25 September after the dramatic ousting of Thabo Mbeki four days before, attempts by commentators to summarise the former president s mixed legacy have not failed to mention his controversial stance on AIDS. AIDS ac
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 24, 2008
MOMBASA, 24 September 2008 (PlusNews) - A couple strolling hand-in-hand along a sandy beach in Kenya s coastal city of Mombasa could have jumped straight off the pages of a cheesy romance novel, except for one major difference: the man is local and in his early twenties, while the woman, a tourist, is middle-aged. The
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 24, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 24 September 2008 (PlusNews) - An estimated three million injecting drug users in 120 countries around the world are HIV positive, according to new research, but a lack of data from Africa, the Middle East and Latin America could be obscuring an even larger global health problem. The study, published in B
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 23, 2008
KAMPALA, 23 September 2008 (PlusNews) - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has been forced to withdraw food aid to HIV-positive people as part of broader cutbacks to its Ugandan programmes caused by a funding shortfall. For the past six months we have had hardly any funding for HIV/AIDS activities, and as a
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 23, 2008
MOMBASA, Seventeen year-old Maureen* is a sex worker in Kenya s coastal city of Mombasa. She moved to Mombasa six months ago from her native home of Kisii, in western Kenya. Still deeply affected by her parents divorce, she told IRIN PlusNews how she ended up making a living selling sex. Growing up, my parents used to
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 23, 2008
MUTARE, 23 September 2008 (IRIN) - During the bitterly contested Zimbabwe elections between President Robert Mugabe s ruling ZANU-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the country s rural areas became effective no-go areas. There were numerous reports of politically motivated killings and wid
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 22, 2008
BONDOLFI MISSION, 22 September 2008 (IRIN) - Five children have died in Zimbabwe s southern drought-prone Masvingo province from severe malnutrition-related illnesses, according to members of a faith-based mission. The children died of starvation last week, said a member of the Catholic-run Bondolfi Mission, a member o
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 19, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 19 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Combining antiretroviral (ARV) therapy with treatment for tuberculosis (TB) could more than halve the current mortality rate among patients co-infected with HIV and TB, saving an estimated 10,000 lives a year in South Africa . These are the findings of a clinical trial by th
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 19, 2008
JUBA, 19 September 2008 (PlusNews) - In Lokony, a suburb of Juba, capital of South Sudan , educational messages about HIV are plastered on the outer walls of a local school, but passers-by barely glance at the posters. This is not surprising as most people cannot read. Just 24 percent of southern Sudanese can read and
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 18, 2008
GULU, 18 September 2008 (PlusNews) - The recent slaying of a woman in western Uganda by her husband after he tested positive for HIV has highlighted the need for the government to tackle HIV-related human rights abuses. The man is reported to have hacked his wife to death in August, after accusing her of infecting him
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 18, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 18 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Shortages of antiretroviral (ARV) and other drugs in public health facilities in Swaziland have been among a long list of grievances cited by protesters during several weeks of unprecedented political unrest ahead of parliamentary polls on Friday. Health department offic
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 17, 2008
LURAMBI, 17 September 2008 (IRIN) - Violet Aburuti sat cradling her three-week-old baby as she waited to see the nurse at Eshikhuyu local clinic in Lurambi division, Kakamega District, western Kenya . This is a routine clinic visit for my new baby, Aburuti told IRIN. But I visit the clinic quite often because of my oth
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 17, 2008
COTONOU, 17 September 2008 (PlusNews) - If you live along the main highway linking Abidjan, Cote d Ivoire s economic hub, with Lagos in Nigeria , it is almost impossible to ignore the many AIDS awareness messages along the route, travelled by 47 million people each year. A few years ago I would never have believed it w
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 17, 2008
DENPASAR, 17 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Indonesia s Bali Province is phasing out the role of local HIV/AIDS non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in distributing needles and syringes to injecting drug users (IDUs). The move is mainly in response to a recent revision of the country s narcotics legislation, which design
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 16, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 16 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Just over 50 percent of HIV-positive Namibians thought to be in need of life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) treatment are accessing the drugs, but the country is struggling to keep track of patients. Namibia is one of the least densely populated countries in the world. With
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 15, 2008
HA TSIU, 15 September 2008 (IRIN) - Chief Paulosi Lebakeng is a troubled man. Food production has dipped in his village of Ha Tsiu, perched about 2,500m above sea level on the Thaba Putsoa mountains, about 100km east of Lesotho s capital, Maseru. Rainfall has become less frequent every year, as has snowfall; both impor
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 15, 2008
MASERU, Motlomelo Thakali lives with his family of five in Motloang, a village 70km east of Maseru, capital of Lesotho . He is HIV positive and unemployed, and depends on casual work to help feed his family, comprising his daughter, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. Lesotho s HIV/AIDS prevalence rate of 23.2 per
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 15, 2008
MEXICO CITY, 15 September 2008 (PlusNews) - It has been ten years since Svitlana Moroz, from Donetsk in Ukraine , stopped regularly injecting herself with drugs, a decision she made after learning that she was pregnant and HIV positive. Now 30 with two children, she campaigns for injecting drug users (IDUs) to be given
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 12, 2008
KISUMU, 12 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Dunga Beach, along the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya s western city of Kisumu, erupts into activity when the boats bring in their catch. Female fishmongers scramble along the beach to buy fish, shouting themselves hoarse to get the attention of the fishermen and middlemen, who
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 11, 2008
ADDIS ABABA, 11 September 2008 (IRIN) - Fewer Ethiopian parents are subjecting their daughters to female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM), according to an NGO campaigning to eradicate the practice. The knowledge [that FGM is harmful] is increasing, said Abate Gudunfa, head of the Ethiopian National Committee on Tra
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 11, 2008
KISUMU, 11 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Peter Otieno*, a 25-year-old taxi driver in Kisumu City, the capital of Kenya s western Nyanza Province, is considering getting circumcised. I have heard about male circumcision as a way of reducing one s chances of getting infected [with HIV], he told IRIN/PlusNews. His only conc
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 11, 2008
MEXICO CITY, 11 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Three years ago Gurmit Singh s future looked bright: he had received a scholarship to study in Australia and fulfil his life s dream of becoming a researcher. But his hopes were dashed when he was refused a visa. Singh, now 36, told his story during the recent International A
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 10, 2008
KAMPALA, 10 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Uganda has been called the birthplace of AIDS; some of the earliest known cases can be traced to the central district of Rakai, where long-distance truckers started dying from a mysterious illness in the mid-1980s. That small demographic soon mushroomed into a global pandemic, wi
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 10, 2008
MARÁVIA, 10 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Gidion Mutata, 37, rolls up his shirt sleeves, picks up his tools and makes his barefoot way to his gold claim in the mining region of Marávia in Mozambique s northwestern Tete province. Most afternoons are spent trying to sell what he finds, but his daily routine is usually not
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 9, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 9 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Several prominent demographers and scientists have vigorously refuted Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang s claim that South Africa s HIV epidemic is declining and that the country may be making some real progress in its response to the HIV epidemic . Tshabalala-Msimang
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 8, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 8 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Around the world an estimated 3,500 girls under the age of 15 become child brides every day, while another 21,000 get married before reaching the age of 18. The consequences of such early marriages, according to a new report by the Christian humanitarian organisation, World V
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 8, 2008
NAIROBI, 8 September 2008 (PlusNews) - A study of Kenyan sex workers who appear to be immune to HIV could provide important clues to the development of an effective AIDS vaccine. A team of researchers from Canada s University of Manitoba and Kenya s University of Nairobi, who have been studying a group of Kenyan sex wo
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 4, 2008
KAMPALA, 4 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Uganda s rising HIV prevalence is forcing policy makers to look for inventive ways of educating people about the virus. Their latest tool is mobile phone technology, whose rapid growth has provided an avenue that could potentially reach millions with messages. Text to Change (TTC)
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 4, 2008
HARARE, 4 September 2008 (PlusNews) - The Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ), which represents journalists in the country, has launched a programme to provide life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to its HIV-positive members. Chakanyuka Bosha, the ZUJ s national co-ordinator, told IRIN/PlusNews that the union had
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 3, 2008
KAMPALA, 3 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Uganda s health ministry has been scrambling to stave off a nationwide shortage of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) that could jeopardise the lives of tens of thousands of HIV-positive people. Health officials said an inefficient drug procurement system, sporadic drug donations and a s
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 2, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 2 September 2008 (PlusNews) - The HIV prevention benefits of rolling out large-scale male circumcision programmes could be lost due to a lack of training and resources to carry out the procedure safely. The World Health Organisation and UNAIDS recommended male circumcision as a HIV prevention strategy in
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 2, 2008
NAIROBI, 2 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Africans comprise up to 70 percent of all new heterosexual HIV cases in the United Kingdom each year, but they struggle to access prevention information and services, advocacy groups have said. A 2007 report by the UK parliamentary office for science and technology found that of a
UN Integrated Regional Information System - September 1, 2008
LILONGWE (PLUSNEWS) - AIDS-related deaths in Malawi have dropped by 75 percent over the last four years, thanks to the availability of free antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, but better nutrition for people living with HIV would further lower the figure, officials have said. Mc Anthony Ajabu is seven years old and one of 159,
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 28, 2008
YANGI-NOOKAT, 28 August 2008 (PlusNews) - The story of how Nasiba, 32, and her 2-year-old son, Akram, both became infected with HIV is not the familiar one of an unfaithful husband and a mother unwittingly infecting her child. Nasiba and Akram live in Yangi-Nookat village, in southwestern Kyrgyzstan s Nookat District,
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 27, 2008
KAMPALA, 27 August 2008 (PlusNews) - Faith is a member of the Ariel Children s Club, a group for HIV-positive children supported by the Elizabeth Glaser Paediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF). She talked to IRIN/PlusNews about the challenges of growing up with HIV. Before I knew about my HIV status I used to be very sick w
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 27, 2008
RUSTENBERG, 27 August 2008 (PlusNews) - South Africa s mining houses have received kudos for being among the earliest industries to adopt workplace policies and corporate social responsibility programmes mitigating the impacts of HIV/AIDS. Besides the bottom-line benefits of HIV testing and treatment programmes that ke
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 26, 2008
KAMPALA, 26 August 2008 (PlusNews) - The number of Ugandan children becoming infected with HIV during pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding remains high despite the government s ongoing rollout of services to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT). The provision of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to pregnant wom
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 26, 2008
KAMPALA, Bwenge Kana is a member of The Aids Support Organisation (TASO) in Mbale district, eastern Uganda . She has been taking antiretroviral (ARV) medication since 2005, when she enrolled in TASO s prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) programme after she became pregnant with her second child. She told
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 25, 2008
ADDIS ABABA, 25 August 2008 (PlusNews) - Birkay Gadenah is not any bank s idea of a good credit risk. The 36-year-old mother of five lives in the tin-roof shantytown of Burayu, 12km west of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. But eight months ago, she and nine other women from the neighbourhood funeral society, or edir
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 25, 2008
RUSTENBERG, 25 August 2008 (PlusNews) - Thembi Maboyana is a home-based caregiver who works for a community-based HIV/AIDS programme called Tapologo in Rustenberg, in South Africa s North West Province. She talked to IRIN/PlusNews about life in Freedom Park, an informal settlement that has sprung up next to one of the
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 25, 2008
RUSTENBERG, 25 August 2008 (PlusNews) - When Margaret Ndinisa came to Freedom Park, the inappropriately named squatter camp that surrounds Impala Platinum mine in South Africa s North West Province, the settlement consisted of little more than a few shacks which the police regularly dismantled. That time, eish, it was
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 22, 2008
MBABANE, 22 August 2008 (PlusNews) - Several hundred Swazis, including people living with HIV, marched on 21 August to highlight the need for government to prioritise funding to alleviate the humanitarian crises in the country. The protestors had been spurred by reports that eight of King Mswati s 13 wives had taken a
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 21, 2008
MOMBASA, 21 August 2008 (PlusNews) - People in Kenya s Coast Province, believed not to be genuine herbalists, are selling concoctions purported to treat HIV and persuading many patients on life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to abandon their medication. Omari Mwanjama, of the National AIDS Control Council in Coa
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 21, 2008
IJARA, 21 August 2008 (PlusNews) - For the past ten months, health workers at Ijara District Hospital in Kenya s North Eastern Province have been caring for two children, aged six and seven, who were abandoned by their father after he discovered he was HIV-positive. Nurses say the children were weak, malnourished and s
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 21, 2008
RUSTENBERG, Kevin Dowling is the Catholic Bishop of Rustenberg, a mining town in South Africa s North West Province surrounded by informal settlements, where as many as 50 percent of pregnant women test positive for HIV. In 1998, he and members of his diocese started Tapologo ( peace and rest in Setswana), a community-
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 21, 2008
NAIROBI, 21 August 2008 (PlusNews) - During a recent trip to report on a pilot male circumcision programme in Kisumu, a part of Kenya where male circumcision is not traditionally practiced, I was allowed to sit in on a pre-op counselling session. The counsellor gave information on hygiene and the signs of infection, an
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 20, 2008
ADDIS ABABA, 20 August 2008 (PlusNews) - Bellissima, on bustling Gabon Street in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, could be just another upmarket cafe, except that each order comes with a packet of Sensation condoms, and is served in Sensation cups by staff wearing Sensation T-shirts. I wanted to link business w
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 19, 2008
MEXICO CITY, 19 August 2008 (PlusNews) - Experience has shown that it is possible to run successful paediatric HIV programmes in rural African settings, yet less than 10 percent of patients on life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs are children, field officers of the international medical NGO, Medecins Sans Frontie
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 18, 2008
MBABANE, One of two wives, Winile Mngometulu, 32, was tested for HIV in 2002 after her husband s death. Mngometulu now works for the Swaziland AIDS Support (AIS) organisation, helping HIV-positive people come to terms with their status. She told IRIN/PlusNews of her experience. The people I counsel to test for HIV,
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 15, 2008
KANO, 15 August 2008 (PlusNews) - Idris is a pimp and makes no bones about it. Because of the way the sex industry works in Nigeria s northern city of Kano, he and the women he pimps have a co-dependant relationship - they exploit each other. Kano s history dates back 1,400 years as an iron-working centre that adopted
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 15, 2008
JOHANNESBURG (PLUSNEWS) - More international aid has been dedicated to fighting HIV/AIDS than any other disease, but what impact have all those donor dollars had in countries where HIV/AIDS funding often exceeds total domestic health budgets? The three largest HIV/AIDS donors - the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculos
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 14, 2008
PORT HARCOURT, 14 August 2008 (PlusNews) - The deployment of additional troops to Nigeria s restive, oil-soaked delta has managed to improve security, but not even their commanders believe there can be a military solution to the armed young men in the creeks, willing to back their demands for a greater share of the wea
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 14, 2008
BEIRA (PLUSNEWS) - More and more HIV-positive pregnant women are testing for the virus and seeking out prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) services in Sofala Province, in central Mozambique , but local health officials say much work remains to be done. During the first three months of 2008, HIV tests wer
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 14, 2008
ABUJA (PLUSNEWS) - There is no explicit gay scene in Nigeria , but in the Ibiza bar in the capital, Abuja, the action on the packed dance floor seems a little more exclusively guy-on-guy, a little bit raunchier than may be considered normal . According to Oliver Okem*, a smart and trendily bespectacled AIDS activist, w
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 13, 2008
ELEME, 13 August 2008 (PLUSNEWS) - Petrol tankers parked nose-to-tail line the five-kilometre stretch of road from the southern Nigerian town of Eleme to its refinery, waiting to fuel up and begin their long journey home. If the trip runs smoothly, a tanker leaving the big cities of the north at dawn should arrive at E
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 12, 2008
NYERI (PLUSNEWS) - Ruth Wangechi, 32, married soon after dropping out of school. Although her husband had contracted HIV, he and his family kept the information under wraps. When she became aware of her HIV-positive status, she decided to openly speak about it and shared her experiences with IRIN/PlusNews. For several
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 12, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 12 August 2008 (PlusNews) - A packaging error by a factory worker a year ago has led to a nationwide recall of two types of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs manufactured by Adcock Ingram, a major supplier of ARV medicines to the private and public sectors. The error occurred when the worker put blister packs of
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 11, 2008
MAPUTO, 11 August 2008 (IRIN) - Antiretroviral (ARV) drugs are free in Mozambique , and access to them is relatively easy, but for many HIV-positive Mozambicans the real challenge is a far more basic problem of finding enough food. ARVs are powerful drugs that need to be taken with nourishment. Regular and nutritious m
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 11, 2008
MEXICO CITY, 11 August 2008 (PlusNews) - Steadily increasing prices could lead to a lack of affordable and nourishing food, endangering the lives of people living with HIV in the developing world, experts have said. As prices continue to rise, people will start to buy cheaper, less nutritious food and may begin to skip
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 8, 2008
MEXICO CITY (PLUSNEWS) - Tuberculosis (TB) is the biggest killer of people living with HIV in Africa, but only one percent of HIV-positive people accessing treatment were screened for TB in 2006, an oversight that activists say threatens to roll back the gains made in placing more than three million people on life-prol
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 8, 2008
MEXICO CITY (PLUSNEWS) - Lucy Chesire is the coordinator of the Kenyan chapter of the non-governmental organisation, Advocacy to Control TB Internationally. After being diagnosed with HIV in 1992, she contracted TB and had to undergo a series of painful surgeries due to poor diagnostics. She told IRIN/PlusNews about he
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 8, 2008
MEXICO CITY, 8 August 2008 (PLUSNEWS) - While researchers and advocates at the International AIDS Conference this week urged donors and governments to rapidly scale up male circumcision programmes, others raised concerns about what this would mean for women. In March 2007, the World Health Organisation and
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 7, 2008
MEXICO CITY, 7 August 2008 (PLUSNEWS) - Maura Elaripe is at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City this week, closely following sessions on the sexual and reproductive rights of HIV-positive women. As the first woman to publicly disclose her HIV status in Papua New Guinea , the
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 7, 2008
MEXICO CITY (PLUSNEWS) - In an attempt to stem the spread of the virus, African countries are increasingly passing legislation that criminalises HIV exposure and transmission. But these laws could do more harm than good, delegates attending the International AIDS Conference in Mexico , heard on Wednesday. Africa
UN Integrated Regional Information Newtork - August 7, 2008
MEXICO CITY, 7 August 2008 (PLUSNEWS) - The recent controversial statement by Swiss researchers that HIV-positive people on treatment with an undetectable viral load could not infect their sexual partners was a hotly debated issue at the International AIDS Conference this week. Delivering a presentation on the first da
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 7, 2008
MEXICO CITY (PLUSNEWS) - Huge strides have been made in the provision of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, and HIV prevention is receiving more attention than ever before, but the global AIDS response has neglected children, said experts at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City this week. Children have been sh
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 6, 2008
MEXICO CITY (PLUSNEWS) - If black America were a country, it would rank 16th in the world in terms of the number of people living with HIV, yet activists say black Americans lack many of the HIV services their government has provided to other nations through the President s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). A re
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 6, 2008
MEXICO CITY (PLUSNEWS) - As the search for an effective HIV prevention strategy intensifies, scientists are hoping that antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, normally associated with HIV treatment, may provide part of the answer. We are in a desperate race against time in pursuit of prevention that works, former UN Special Envoy
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 6, 2008
MEXICO CITY (PLUSNEWS) - Most sex and HIV education programmes for young people focus on the risks of unsafe sex, leaving them ill-equipped to deal with their sexuality and unable to lead sexually fulfilling lives, experts have said. Teaching about the risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases is necessary, b
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 5, 2008
MEXICO CITY, 5 August 2008 (PlusNews) - It s a truth universally acknowledged that sex sells. But safer sex? Talking about sex at an AIDS conference usually involves highly technical diagrams and scientific explanations that strip away the layers of desire, intimacy and emotion, reducing the act to a cold, clinical aff
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 5, 2008
MEXICO CITY, 5 August 2008 (PlusNews) - The road to finding an effective HIV vaccine has recently been marked by a string of disappointing setbacks, and researchers have warned that a breakthrough in this field is still a long way off. Should we give up hope? Delegates at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico Cit
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 5, 2008
MEXICO CITY, 5 August 2008 (PlusNews) - The contribution of faith-based organisations to the treatment and care of people living with HIV and AIDS is well known, but it is less clear whether religion is an aid or a barrier when it comes to HIV prevention efforts. According to UNAIDS , 70 percent of the world s popul
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 4, 2008
PORT MORESBY, 4 August 2008 (IRIN) - The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the National Aids Council (NACS) last month took their HIV/AIDS awareness programme to the inhabitants of the world s fast-sinking atoll, Carteret Islands, to prepare them for relocation to the main Bougainville Island. The Port Moresby-based team,
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 4, 2008
MEXICO CITY, 4 August 2008 (PlusNews) - Calls for less spending on HIV and AIDS are unwarranted, because the pandemic remains an emergency that needs continued effort and funding, speakers at the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City have said. The epidemic is not over anywhere in the world, said Peter Piot
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 4, 2008
MEXICO CITY, 4 August 2008 (PlusNews) - Roadside bars, truckers and sex workers have long been seen as one of the most dangerous combinations for the transmission of HIV, with truckers often blamed for spreading the virus. But research presented at the International AIDS Conference held in Mexico City this week, sugges
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 4, 2008
NAIROBI, 4 August 2008 (PlusNews) - The risk of an HIV-positive mother infecting her child through breastfeeding can be significantly reduced by antiretroviral treatment (ART), say health officials in Kenya . HIV-positive mothers on ART lower the risk of transmission through breastfeeding from 20 [percent] to five perc
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 4, 2008
TZANEEN, 4 August 2008 (PlusNews) - When Steve Matlhabela, 16, left his home on a chilly June morning to visit some relatives in a village not far from his in the rolling hills outside the town of Tzaneen, in South Africa s Limpopo Province, he didn t expect that it would be a month before he returned. At his relative
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 1, 2008
KAMPALA, 1 August 2008 (PlusNews) - In Uganda you have a higher risk of contracting HIV if you are married and over 30 than if you are single and in your twenties, according to the UNAIDS 2008 global epidemic report. The report notes that although HIV prevalence in Uganda has stabilised at 5.4 percent, there are signs
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 31, 2008
MBABANE, 31 July 2008 (IRIN) - There is a growing belief among men in Swaziland that circumcision provides complete protection against HIV, a perception that worries non-governmental organisations (NGOs) battling the highest HIV prevalence rate in the world. In recent years circumcision has been lauded by Swazi public
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 31, 2008
NAIROBI, 31 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Aid agencies working in a climate of heightened insecurity in Somalia have been forced to come up with inventive ways to keep their HIV programmes, and their staff, alive following the recent kidnappings of several foreign and local aid workers. The security situation has deterior
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 31, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 31 July 2008 (PlusNews) - When is a particular practice cultural and when is it just something that people have got used to? Does culture justify male promiscuity? Domestic violence? Female genital mutilation? Is culture the last taboo? Although we ve long known that some cultural practices increase peopl
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 31, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 31 July 2008 (PlusNews) - The 1980s pop icon Pat Benatar once said, Love is a battleground. If you re a woman, so is your wardrobe. In 2006, a prominent South African AIDS activist accused the country s former deputy president and chairperson of the South African National AIDS Council, Jacob Zuma, of rape
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 30, 2008
DAR ES SALAAM, 30 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Tanzania is undertaking a US$10 million programme to modernise medical laboratories in regional hospitals to improve HIV/AIDS monitoring, Minister of Health David Mwakyusa has said. The programme was launched on Monday 28 July in Tanzania s commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, and
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 30, 2008
COTONOU, 30 July 2008 (PlusNews) - With selective power cuts regularly plunging Benin s largest city, Cotonou, into darkness, Alain*, a young taxi driver, no longer has to worry about paying for a hotel room to have casual sex - a quiet corner on a dark street will do. The soaring price of petrol has led to a renewed o
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 29, 2008
MUSINA, 29 July 2008 (IRIN) - The border between South Africa and Zimbabwe is more than an international boundary; it also determines the method of payment for sex workers, because on one side cash is taken, while on the other, goods are bartered. The South African frontier town of Musina is a regional trucking hub
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 29, 2008
MOMBASA, 29 July 2008 (PlusNews) - In the next four months, Rashid Mwaneno Dona will become the father of a baby that he and his girlfriend, Fatma Chelimo, conceived while living on the streets of Mombasa, on the Kenyan coast. The excited couple have already chosen names: if it is a boy, he will be named DJ, in honour
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 29, 2008
BLANTYRE, 29 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Malawian women have little say when it comes to condom use, but the government hopes that the recent launch of the female condom in the country could go some way in solving this age-old dilemma. Sandra Mapemba, national condom programme coordinator at the Reproductive Health Unit (RH
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 29, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 29 July 2008 (PlusNews) - The rate of new HIV infections is slowing in a number of countries, but the AIDS epidemic is not over in any part of the world, and is gaining pace in some. This was the message UNAIDS officials drove home as the agency released new data, giving the most up-to-date snapshot of th
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 28, 2008
BEIRA, 28 July 2008 (PlusNews) - In the AIDS unit of the paediatric ward in Beira Central Hospital, Mozambique , four-year-old Jacinto Cruz is glued to the television while he waits his turn to be treated. His mother has brought him to the hospital after a persistent bout of diarrhoea, the most common opportunistic inf
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 25, 2008
NAIROBI, 25 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Keeping Kenyan girls in school and ensuring they have access to HIV and sex education has a dramatic effect on lowering future levels of HIV, according to experts. Young people do not have the information they need, and the dropout rate, particularly for girls, is still too high, sai
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 24, 2008
ISIOLO, 24 July 2008 (PlusNews) - The government s campaign to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child is failing pregnant HIV-positive women in Kenya s remote rural areas. A shortage of testing sites and trained medical staff in rural areas means many of these women are unaware of their status and that their bab
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 23, 2008
SÃO TOMÉ, 23 July 2008 (PlusNews) - No one expected that the reaction to empty condom dispensers on São Tomé and Príncipe would be so angry. I thought the country had run out of condoms - you people are fouling up too much, Palmira Torres, the owner of Alfa Restaurant, complained to Almerindo Ferreira and Desinela Barr
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 23, 2008
LIMBÉ, 23 July 2008 (IRIN) - The persistent and increasing outbreaks of violence against members of the gay community in Africa are jeopardising efforts undertaken to combat HIV, both within this group and across the population as a whole, AIDS activists warned at a recent meeting in Limbé, Cameroon . The
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 23, 2008
JOHANNESBURG , 23 July 2008 (IRIN) - The expectation that the ban on humanitarian organisations operating in Zimbabwe would be lifted after an agreement between rival political parties was signed, was misplaced, the country director of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, George Tadonki, told IRIN.
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 23, 2008
KABUL, 23 July 2008 (PlusNews) - The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US, and Constella Futures, a US-based research organisation, have been awarded contracts to implement Afghanistan s first major HIV/AIDS projects in four cities, the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) told IRIN/PlusNews. The two projects, costing
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 22, 2008
BEIRA, 22 July 2008 (PlusNews) - With its white sand, sunny blue skies and cashew nut trees, Miramar Beach in the port city of Beira, Mozambique , has all the right ingredients to draw tourists from all over the world. But that is not all this idyllic coastline attracts. The beach is fertile ground for the spread of th
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 21, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 21 July 2008 (PlusNews) - A move by the United States Senate to repeal legislation prohibiting HIV-positive visitors and immigrants has been hailed as an important step in the fight against stigma and discrimination. On 16 July, the Senate passed the re-authorisation of the President s Emergency Plan For
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 21, 2008
GULU, 21 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Acute poverty is forcing girls as young as 14 into early marriage and sex work in parts of northern Uganda affected by the war, says a new report by local NGOs. A combination of extreme poverty, a large number of child-headed households, and the high mobility of internally displaced fami
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 18, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 18 July 2008 (PlusNews) - The rate of new HIV infections, which has fuelled the global HIV/AIDS epidemic since the 1980s, has peaked throughout the world and is now declining. But population growth and the life-prolonging effects of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment mean that the total global number of HIV-i
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 18, 2008
NAIROBI, 18 July 2008 (PlusNews) - HIV-positive people are living longer on antiretroviral (ARV) medication, but many of them remain poor and hungry, highlighting the need to create incomes for them, says a new report. The long-term sustainability of people on ART [antiretroviral therapy] and the [treatment] programmes
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 17, 2008
MBABANE, 17 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Larger numbers of pregnant women living with HIV in Swaziland can now access services to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus, but activists and health officials say more emphasis should have been placed on quality rather than quantity. The programmes are going well,
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 16, 2008
JAKARTA, 16 July 2008 (PlusNews) - From the day Lenny (not her real name) was diagnosed HIV positive, she opted to get her life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs from overseas - a vote of no-confidence in Indonesia s sclerotic supply system. I heard from my friends that hospitals often ran out of ARVs, so I became
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 16, 2008
MERU, 16 July 2008 (PlusNews) - We [people living with HIV] must eat well, must keep off stress - it is not good for you ... if you can, please walk out on anything annoying and go and watch Vitimbi [a popular TV sitcom] or sing your favourite song ... be happy and positive. This is part of a message Dorothy Kendi* giv
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 16, 2008
MAZAR-I-SHARRIF, 16 July 2008 (IRIN) - High food prices, drought, unemployment and lack of socio-economic opportunities are pushing some women and young girls in northern Afghanistan into commercial sex work, women s rights activists and several affected women told IRIN. I have no way of feeding my children other than
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 15, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 15 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Hidden behind the high walls that surround most middle-class suburban homes in South Africa is one of the largest and most marginalised black, female workforces in the country. Domestic workers are still a standard feature of many households. Their labour is cheap and in plentifu
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 15, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, Bev White, a business owner and mother of one, started a support group called Living Positively at Home for employers of HIV-positive domestic workers after her child s nanny, Thandi, was diagnosed positive three years ago. She talked to IRIN/PlusNews about her experiences. My initial response was: keep T
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 14, 2008
MBABANE, 14 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Siphiwe Hlope is a pioneer. She was one of the first Swazi women to publicly declare her HIV status, in 2001, at a time when stigma against people living with the virus was intense. She went on to form Swaziland Positive Living (SWAPOL) to advocate awareness and the rights of HIV-posi
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 11, 2008
DURBAN, 11 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Prince Mshiyeni Memorial Hospital, just outside the port city of Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal Province, has one of South Africa s busiest maternity wards. About 1,200 women a month give birth here, of which about 40 percent are HIV-positive, according to figures from the antenatal clinic.
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 11, 2008
CHIMOIO, 11 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Sex between prison inmates is a reality at Manica Provincial Prison, in central Mozambique , but because same-sex relations are taboo, and conjugal visits are not allowed, many HIV-positive inmates say they were infected before they were sent to the largest prison in Manica Province.
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 10, 2008
JERUSALEM, 10 July 2008 (PlusNews) - In spite of the blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip , Israeli officials said they were still allowing condoms into the enclave as part of efforts by UN agencies and Palestinian organisations to keep family planning and disease prevention programmes going. While some were concerne
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 9, 2008
LUSAKA, 9 July 2008 (PlusNews) - The drugs to manage HIV are available, and so is knowledge about how to prevent it, but far too few people in Zambia are coming forward to be tested. I would rather die than go for VCT [voluntary counselling and testing], Joseph Mwewa, 28, a resident of the capital, Lusaka, told IRIN/Pl
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 9, 2008
MOMBASA, 9 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Like thousands of other Kenyans, Susan Wairimu, 17, was displaced from her home in the Rift Valley Province s Molo district during the violence that followed a disputed presidential election in December 2007 and sought shelter in the nearby town of Nakuru. A cousin living in the coasta
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 9, 2008
HARARE, 9 July 2008 (IRIN) - The already high levels of politically motivated violence in Zimbabwe s rural areas are escalating, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change told IRIN. Violence surged in the aftermath of the 29 March elections, in which ZANU-PF lost it majority in parliament for the first time since i
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 8, 2008
NAIROBI, 8 July 2008 (PlusNews) - HIV/AIDS funding to low- and middle-income countries reached a record level in 2007, according to a new report by UNAIDS . AIDS spending by the G8 group of wealthly nations, the European Commission and other donors hit US$ 6.6 billion last year, up from US$ 5.6 billion in 2006. However
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 7, 2008
KAMPALA, 7 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Joanna*, 25, an HIV-positive schoolteacher who lives in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, decided to take a chance on love by putting a personal advertisement in the newspaper. She spoke to IRIN/PlusNews before her first date with a man who responded. I ve only dated one person who doesn t
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 7, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 7 July 2008 (PlusNews) - If you inject heroin into yourself, you probably know about the risk of becoming infected with Hepatitis C or HIV, but if you re one of the thousands across the world who visit informal healers for a jab of vitamin B you may be getting more than a shot of vitamins and not know it.
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 7, 2008
TEL AVIV, 7 July 2008 (PlusNews) - HIV may be a relatively small problem in Israel , but the soaring rate of new infections among vulnerable populations has forced health officials to take action. According to the Israel AIDS Task Force (IATF), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) providing HIV/AIDS education and supp
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 4, 2008
KAMPALA, 4 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Dr Michael Kyomya is responsible for the health of almost 5,000 inmates in Uganda s Luzira Prison, but his caseload is not the biggest challenge - the architecture is. The high walls just outside his office in the prison s medical facility not only keep the prisoners in, but also infec
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 4, 2008
DURBAN, 4 July 2008 (PlusNews) - TB cure rates in South Africa have remained stubbornly low - about 60 percent nationally, but less than 50 percent in many districts. A number of studies presented at the national TB conference in Durban this week looked at some of the reasons why South Africa s programme is failing.
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 3, 2008
DURBAN, 3 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang opened South Africa s first national tuberculosis (TB) conference this week with some welcome good news: her department is to acquire technology that will reduce the time it takes to diagnose drug-resistant TB from as long as four months to less
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 3, 2008
KIGALI, 3 July 2008 (PlusNews) - The soldiers in the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) will be the first men to benefit from a government policy to use male circumcision as a tool in the fight against HIV/AIDS, according to senior health officials. Early in 2008, the Rwandan Ministry of Health declared its intention to includ
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 3, 2008
DURBAN, 3 July 2008 (PlusNews) - The increasing number of South Africans contracting drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) demands a radically different approach than the current policy of isolating patients in specialised facilities for long periods. This was the message of several presentations at the first national TB co
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 2, 2008
CAPE TOWN, 2 July 2008 (PlusNews) - After more than a quarter of a century of the AIDS pandemic, there is an extensive lexicon of jargon associated with HIV infection, but this has not made it any easier for doctors to communicate with their patients. Linguists at South Africa s University of Stellenbosch are beginning
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 1, 2008
AWASSA, 1 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Like much of Ethiopia , the south, where Amarat Mebrie lives, is experiencing severe food shortages. She told IRIN/PlusNews how she has coped since her son died two years ago, leaving her the sole guardian and caregiver of his three children. I am 66 years old and a widow. After my husb
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 1, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 1 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Everyone knows the story of how HIV/AIDS treatment finally became available to ordinary South Africans. It is a tale of science and reason pitted against denial and superstition, of a long struggle in which AIDS activists eventually prevailed over politicians. By now, the life-pro
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - July 1, 2008
KIGALI, 1 July 2008 (PlusNews) - Ensuring that health systems reach the people who need them goes beyond equipping hospitals: investment in the efficient management of finances, drug distribution and data management is vital to the success of the public health sector. Donors have focused on providing drugs and equipmen
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 30, 2008
DAKAR, 30 June 2008 (PlusNews) - The global rise in petrol prices favours oil-producing countries like Chad , but the funds allocated to the fight against AIDS in the government s 2008 budget have decreased compared to 2007 because of a need for increased expenditure on security in this unstable country. Boosted by
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 27, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 27 June 2008 (PlusNews) - Chad has experienced decades of armed rebellions and weak governments, so a looming AIDS crisis is the last thing it needs. The West African country that sprawls across the Sahel is among the world s poorest; its development indicators, especially regarding women, are abysmal. It
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 27, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 27 June 2008 (IRIN) - Already heavily dependent on food handouts, Lesotho is buckling under chronic food insecurity, poverty and one of the highest HIV rates in the world. Now, rising food prices are adding to the crisis, and the most vulnerable, often children, are paying the price. The increase in
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 27, 2008
SANAA, 27 June 2008 (PlusNews) - A Yemeni non-governmental organisation, made up of members of parliament, has prepared a draft law aimed at guaranteeing the rights of people living with HIV and preventing the spread of the virus. If approved, Yemen would be the third Middle Eastern state to pass such a law, after
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 27, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 27 June 2008 (PlusNews) - The awarding of a new tender for antiretroviral (ARV) drugs by South Africa s health department will mean important savings for the state s treatment programme, already the largest in the world and still growing. The health department has chosen six companies to supply ARV drugs
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 26, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 26 June 2008 (PlusNews) - As Zimbabwe s political crisis deepens ahead of the presidential run-off election on Friday 27 June, and the status of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) remains uncertain, the situation for HIV-positive Zimbabweans is more precarious than ever. Nicholas Goche, the social welf
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 26, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 26 June 2008 (PlusNews) - Providing HIV/AIDS services to people on the run from armed conflict or natural disaster seems, on the face of it, too complicated when trying to meet the pressing immediate demands of an emergency. By failing to address people affected by HIV in such situations, however, aid org
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 25, 2008
DOUALA, 25 June 2008 (PlusNews) - When Clémentine Banzoat, 41, a mother of two, learnt she was HIV positive nine years ago, she not only lost her partner, the father of her second child, but also her job. After several failed relationships with HIV-negative men, she decided to look for an HIV-positive partner to form a
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 24, 2008
KISUMU, 24 June 2008 (PlusNews) - The reproductive health NGO, Marie Stopes Kenya (MSK), has started a mobile circumcision pilot project in the western, largely non-circumcising province of Nyanza. IRIN/PlusNews recently visited one MSK mobile clinic in a suburb of Kisumu, the capital of Nyanza, where a large number of
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 23, 2008
BANGKOK, 23 June 2008 (IRIN) - In spite of massive spending on efforts to counter HIV/AIDS, experts warn that many young Thais are still having unsafe sex. The problem, according to Sittichok Chaisupasin, a 16-year-old peer educator, is not a lack of knowledge about HIV, but a lack of interest among young people in act
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 23, 2008
ADDIS ABABA, 23 June 2008 (PlusNews) - Whenever Bellatu Bakane goes to her local market in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, she can t help but feel frustrated. I get angry because every time I go food prices are higher, said the 38-year old mother of three. Because food prices are increasing, we are eating less.
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 20, 2008
MAPUTO, 20 June 2008 (PlusNews) - The number of children orphaned by AIDS has doubled since 2003, and the high rate of HIV prevalence has dented Mozambique s growth rates, a new report has found. The 2008 HIV and Nutrition Status Report on Mozambique, funded by the World Bank, said an estimated 441,000 children younger
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 19, 2008
LUANDA, 19 June 2008 (PlusNews) - It was a wedding that pulled out all the stops, including a party at the Marine Club on the island of Luanda and a five-star nuptial night at the Hotel Presidente Meridien. The ceremony didn t go unnoticed by Angola s newspapers. Shameless, screamed the cover of one of the country s we
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 19, 2008
BANGKOK, 19 June 2008 (PlusNews) - In spite of massive spending on efforts to counter HIV/AIDS, experts warn that many young Thais are still having unsafe sex. The problem, according to Sittichok Chaisupasin, a 16-year-old peer educator, is not a lack of knowledge about HIV, but a lack of interest among young people in
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 18, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 18 June 2008 (PlusNews) - HIV has hit our lives, our families, our economies; it also shapes the way we talk. IRIN/PlusNews looks at how the virus and its impact translates into everyday speech from the streets of Lagos to the townships of Johannesburg, and finds that despite the billions of dollars spent
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 18, 2008
HEILBRON, 18 June 2008 (PlusNews) - About 100 home-based care workers were expected at a recent one-day workshop by the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG) in the small farming town of Heilbron in Free State Province. On the day only about 30 participants, mostly middle-aged women wearing the sturdy shoe
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 18, 2008
PATONGO, Widow and mother of four, Margaret Awoi, 48, has been abducted five times by Joseph Kony s Lord s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels. She told IRIN why falling into rebel hands was easier than living with HIV, which was diagnosed in 2004 after her deceased husband succumbed to it. Many people in northern
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 17, 2008
KAMPALA, 17 June 2008 (PlusNews) - The arrest of three people protesting the lack of HIV/AIDS programming for men who have sex with men at the recent HIV/AIDS Implementers Meeting in Kampala, capital of Uganda , has drawn criticism from HIV activists around the world. IRIN/PlusNews spoke to one activist about growing u
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 16, 2008
KOTIDO, 16 June 2008 (PlusNews) - Karamoja, in the northeastern corner of Uganda , is a remote and highly traditional society where the writ of successive governments has had only limited impact. The Karomajong, fierce and nomadic cattle herders, had managed to hold onto a way of life that seemed to basically ignore th
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 13, 2008
NEW YORK, 13 June 2008 (PlusNews) - After going into an unscheduled third day, the United Nations High-Level meeting on HIV/AIDS ended on 12 June with civil society groups complaining over the lack of true partnership with governments in the fight against the pandemic. Greater involvement of civil society has been iden
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 13, 2008
HARARE, 13 June 2008 (PlusNews) - The Zimbabwe government has exempted AIDS relief organisations from a ban on NGOs operating in the country, but advocacy groups have reacted cautiously to the news. Nicholas Goche, the social welfare minister who regulates NGO activity, said on 13 June that more than 400 organisations
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 13, 2008
CAPE TOWN, 13 June 2008 (IRIN) - Comrades, we won! shouted Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) founder and long-time HIV/AIDS activist, Zackie Achmat, outside the Cape High Court in Cape Town on Friday. In a landmark judgment, the Court ruled that clinical trials of multivitamins in the treatment of HIV/AIDS by controversi
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 12, 2008
NEW YORK, 12 June 2008 (PlusNews) - With the encouragement of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, civil society organisations are pressuring government representatives gathered at the UN High-Level meeting on HIV/AIDS in New York this week to step up their efforts in the global HIV/AIDS battle. The meeting, a
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 12, 2008
LUSAKA, 12 June 2008 (PlusNews) - A pilot project to rehabilitate thousands of children living on the streets of the Zambian capital of Lusaka is failing because government is excluding civil society from the programme, civic leaders are claiming. Two years ago, the government began recruiting Lusaka s street kids and
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 11, 2008
KAMPALA, 11 June 2008 (PlusNews) - Routinely counselling and testing patients for HIV during regular clinic visits is proving effective in increasing testing numbers in several Ugandan districts. The Research Triangle Institute (RTI), an independent research organisation with headquarters in North Carolina, has been ro
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 10, 2008
MBABANE, 10 June 2008 (IRIN) - New statistics revealing the alarming number of female children that are victims of abuse is seeing child welfare and anti-abuse groups turning to Swazi tradition in the hope of reviving a sense of community responsibility towards the wellbeing of Swaziland s children. The findings from a
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 10, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 10 June 2008 (PlusNews) - Temba* had watched a string of friends and family die from AIDS-related illnesses before he himself tested positive for HIV in 2004. Convinced he was next, he kept his status to himself and lay awake at night contemplating suicide. I thought about shooting myself, he told IRIN/Pl
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 10, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, Thokozile Mdaki, 43, has been going to Ekupholeni Mental Health, a South African nongovernmental organisation with a centre in Katorus, a Johannesburg township, since 1996. She relies on the counselling and support group meetings she attends there to deal, not only with being HIV-positive, but with the tr
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 9, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 9 June 2008 (IRIN) - Foreign nationals displaced by xenophobic violence and sheltering in a temporary camp near Cape Town, South Africa , have threatened mass suicide to draw attention to their plight. Soetwater camp, 30 km south of Cape Town, has become home to over 4,000 foreign nationals displaced by t
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 9, 2008
KOTIDO, Christian Nachan was forced to leave her manyatta, a small group of mud huts that make up a homestead in the remote region of Karamoja in northeastern Ugandan, when her husband, his second wife and two of her children died. After discovering she was HIV-positive, she started a new life in the town of Kotido.
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 9, 2008
LUSAKA, 9 June 2008 (PlusNews) - The Zambian government has begun treating people living with HIV earlier, a move intended to reduce deaths and medical complications resulting from the disease. According to national antiretroviral (ARV) treatment coordinator Dr Albert Mwanga, the state was now making ARVs available whe
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 9, 2008
PORT LOUIS, 9 June 2008 (PlusNews) - Last year, Camille Liu s* future was looking good. He had met a woman - a perfect match – while working in Mozambique as an electrician. They fell in love, decided to move to his home country, Mauritius , get married and have children. But when Anna Magurra* arrived on the tro
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 6, 2008
BRAZZAVILLE, 6 June 2008 (PlusNews) - After a long day s work at a printing office in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo (RoC), André Mikangou* usually buys a bottle of beer at the local petrol station shop and gets some locally produced Ami-3 condoms from the vending machine. I slipped my 100 CFA franc (US$
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 6, 2008
CAPE TOWN, Denis Matwa, 36, has turned his life around since he discovered he was HIV-positive eight years ago. At one time a heavy drinker and womaniser, he became an AIDS activist and is now involved in an intervention by South Africa s Medical Research Council targeting sugar daddies - men who are at least five year
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 5, 2008
BOBO-DIOULASSO/OUAGADOUGOU, 5 June 2008 (PlusNews) - That teenagers, and even pre-teens, become sexually active is usually kept under the blanket, especially in conservative societies, but when these young people are HIV positive the issue becomes even harder to acknowledge, and has been largely ignored. As life-prolon
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 5, 2008
KAMPALA, 5 June 2008 (PlusNews) - After years of dragging their feet over HIV/AIDS in their ranks, African armies are slowly making strides in curbing the spread of the pandemic, senior military officers at the fourth HIV Implementer s meeting in Kampala, Uganda , admitted this week. Since its formation in the mid-
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 5, 2008
CAPE TOWN, 5 June 2008 (PlusNews) - Multiple, concurrent partnerships has become the latest catchphrase in the HIV/AIDS lexicon. It refers to the practice of having more than one sexual partner at the same time, which experts say is a key driver of Southern Africa s devastating HIV/AIDS epidemic. In a South African pop
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 4, 2008
MANILA, 4 June 2008 (IRIN) - Each of the dozen or so beds in an airy ward in Quezon Institute, in Metro Manila, a private hospital dedicated to fighting tuberculosis, has a story to tell. Rosalinda Dunton, 71, wonders when she can go back home to Capiz Province. She has been confined for three weeks now, suffering from
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 4, 2008
CAPE TOWN, 4 June 2008 (PlusNews) - While public health experts in South Africa spent much of the last decade focusing on controlling infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and eradicating malnutrition, the growth of another public health crisis has gone almost unnoticed. High obesity levels, which have given rise to a v
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 4, 2008
KAMPALA, 4 June 2008 (PlusNews) - One-size-fits-all HIV programmes are leaving huge gaps in the global response, and a better understanding of each country s unique epidemic is central to successful management of the pandemic. Emerging information shows varied epidemics between countries, and varied epidemics within co
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 4, 2008
BUJUMBURA, 4 June 2008 (IRIN) - Lost in their thoughts, the women sit patiently on benches as they wait for assistance at the offices of the League Iteka, a Burundian human rights group. Among the 10 or so women at the offices are two young girls. One of them was raped by a close family friend - and she is only 13, an
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 3, 2008
KOTIDO, 3 June 2008 (PlusNews) - Frances Otim, living in Kotido, an urban centre in Uganda s northeastern Karamoja region, doesn t use condoms because he doesn t know how, and doesn t use a mosquito net because the one he has is ripped. For most adults, malaria isn t life threatening, but for people living with HIV, ac
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 3, 2008
CAPE TOWN, 3 June 2008 (PlusNews) - More than 400,000 HIV-positive South Africans have begun antiretroviral treatment (ART) since the government launched its programme in 2004. But this impressive-sounding figure still only represents one third of the estimated number of people in need of treatment, and that number is
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 3, 2008
COLOMBO, 3 June 2008 (PlusNews) - Living with the HIV virus can be extremely frustrating in Sri Lanka , just ask those infected by it. You are totally shunned, Princy Mangalika, an HIV-positive Sri Lankan, told IRIN/PlusNews. You can t attend family functions, work or live in your own village; your children can t even
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - June 2, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 2 June 2008 (PlusNews) - First, the good news: in 2007 about a million more people in poorer countries across the globe began taking antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, bringing the total number to almost three million. The pace of providing the life-prolonging treatment has also accelerated, and an increasing nu
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 30, 2008
LILONGWE, 30 May 2008 (PlusNews) - When Pastor Gilbert Momola told the audience at Civo Stadium in Malawi s capital, Lilongwe, that he was HIV positive, he touched the hearts of many, including that of retired Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda. Such openness is one of the tools with which to reduce the prevalence rate a
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 29, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 29 May 2008 (PLUSNEWS) - The links between HIV and mental illness are so multi-layered, and little understood, that doctors often struggle to determine which came first. Mental healthcare professionals in South Africa sometimes battle to understand the causes of a patient s psychosis or
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 29, 2008
JOHANNESBURG (PLUSNEWS) - It is 5 a.m., but the winter night sky is yet to lighten over Johannesburg, South Africa ; Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the international medical and humanitarian aid organisation, says the persistent drizzle and near freezing temperatures are contributing to respiratory infections and diar
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 28, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 28 May 2008 (IRIN) - Before 11 May, Zimbabwean national Samuel Zona used to work as a gardener. Now, in the wake of violent xenophobic attacks that have swept across South Africa and left at least 56 people dead, he prepares thousands of meals for hundreds of displaced foreign nationals seeking refuge and
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 28, 2008
GARISSA (PLUSNEWS) - The recent suicide of a secondary school student in Kenya s North Eastern Province after he was diagnosed as HIV positive has highlighted the shortage of qualified counsellors in the region, and the urgent need to address the misinformation and stigma attached to the virus. Serious awareness-raisin
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 27, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 27 May 2008 (PlusNews) - While most of the local and international aid workers in Myanmar are scrambling to meet the immediate needs of 2.4 million people left stranded by Cyclone Nargis, several organisations are working to ensure that survivors living with HIV are included in the response. According
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 27, 2008
MATANY, Namoe Aisha, an HIV-positive widow with four children, is currently undergoing treatment for tuberculosis at the Matany Hospital in Moroto district, a remote region of Karamoja in northeastern Uganda . She told IRIN/PlusNews about the difficulties she has encountered since being diagnosed with the virus two yea
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 26, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, When loveLife, a non-governmental organisation that targets South Africa s youth with HIV awareness programmes, started assembling a network of grandmothers across the country to help prevent HIV among children, they approached Lucia Ngobeni, 56. She had already been taking abandoned and orphaned children
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 26, 2008
LUANDA, 26 May 2008 (PlusNews) - Proposed reforms to Angola s Penal Code have divided opinion in the country about whether HIV-positive people who intentionally infect others with the virus should be punished. The law under discussion calls for a sentence of between three and 10 years in prison for those who knowingly
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 23, 2008
KITUI, 23 May 2008 (PlusNews) - Janet Kithika, 59, is the youngest of 29 grandmothers or shoshos in Nyumbani village in eastern Kenya , which is home to children orphaned by AIDS and the grandparents who care for them. A former teacher and court typist, Kithaka separated from her husband in 1995 and raised her two daug
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 23, 2008
BOUAKE, 23 May 2008 (PlusNews) - When the New Forces rebels launched an armed insurrection against Cote D Ivoire s government five years ago, Princess*, 41, who had tested positive for HIV the previous year, fled Bouake, the rebel stronghold, to seek refuge in her home village in the bush, about 30km away. In 2000, aft
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 22, 2008
KITUI, 22 May 2008 (PlusNews) - The word nyumbani means home in Swahili, and that is exactly what a pilot village in the eastern Kenyan district of Kitui is trying to provide for two generations devastated by the AIDS pandemic. More than 250 orphans and 29 elderly people, all of whom have lost parents and children to A
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 22, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 22 May 2008 (PlusNews) - It s almost noon in Zola, one of the rougher neighbourhoods in Soweto, Johannesburg s biggest township. Kids grow up fast and hard here in the midst of poverty - ambition for some is merely to die with something more than what they were born with. Role models are kwaito stars, per
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 21, 2008
KANO, 21 May 2008 (IRIN) - Nigeria s porous border with its northern neighbour Niger is being exploited by traffickers smuggling teenage girls to Europe where they will work as prostitutes, immigration officials told IRIN. Our 910 kilometre boundary with Niger is too much for us to police which provides human trafficke
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 20, 2008
MANZINI, 20 May 2008 (PlusNews) - Why are condoms so unpopular? This question has baffled and discouraged health experts for a decade, but in Swaziland the mystery of why men and women refuse to use condoms is slowly being unravelled by a project that is getting Swazi men to open up about their condom use, or lack ther
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 20, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 20 May 2008 (PlusNews) - To be a nurse at Sizwe Hospital, a special facility for treating patients infected with drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis (TB), requires a thick skin and a forgiving nature. Cecelia Mngomezulu, the hospital s head matron, has been verbally abused, spat on, assaulted and held
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 19, 2008
MANZINI, Hannie Thulasiwe Dlamini is approaching 40 years of age, a feat most people in Swaziland considered impossible when he became the first person in the country to publicly declare his HIV-positive status in 1995. By profession I am a builder. I graduated from school in 1990 and started working in 1991. I was sic
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 16, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 16 May 2008 (PlusNews) - South Africa s High Court in Pretoria has ruled that the military s exclusion of HIV-positive people from recruitment, promotion and foreign deployment is unconstitutional. This case is not about the relevance of HIV in a military context, argued senior advocate Gilbert Marcus. T
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 16, 2008
BUJUMBURA, 16 May 2008 (PlusNews) - A new HIV prevention campaign targeting drivers of commercial vehicles and their passengers is causing a stir in Burundi , with some locals praising it as a much-needed tool in the fight against HIV, while others are branding it crude and out of step with the country s culture. I
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 15, 2008
BANGUI, 15 May 2008 (IRIN) - Women in Ndele, a remote town in northern Central African Republic , are making a stand for their rights. The local chapter of the national women s organisation, OFCA, has launched a campaign to alert women to their rights on issues such as female genital mutilation/cutting, early marriages
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 15, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 15 May 2008 (PlusNews) - Elizabeth Kineelwe, the cook at a drop-in centre that provides meals and support to orphans and impoverished families in Soweto, Johannesburg s largest township, is on the frontlines of a nationwide struggle to cope with rising food prices. Lately, she has been cooking a lot of ca
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 14, 2008
NAIROBI, Catherine Wanjiku is a visually impaired teacher from Thika District in central Kenya who was diagnosed with HIV in 2001. She told a recent media briefing on HIV and the disabled about her difficulties in accessing HIV services. I am a mother of six young men, and a widow - my husband died in 1996. When I fell
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 14, 2008
BOUAKE, 14 May 2008 (PlusNews) - Josette* remembers the black day on 19 September 2002, when the New Forces rebels, based in Bouake, Cote D Ivoire, launched an insurrection against President Laurent Gbagbo s government, forcing thousands of people to flee the city. The people of Bouake are still suffering the consequen
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 13, 2008
GARISSA, 13 May 2008 (PlusNews) - Soaring food prices are beginning to affect the health of HIV-positive people in Kenya . Health workers say the situation is especially dire in the remote and chronically food insecure northern parts of the country. The success of ARV drugs is no more; many patients are suffering serio
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 12, 2008
JUBA, 12 May 2008 (PlusNews) - For years, Lole Laila Lole had to drink, cook with, and bathe in the dirty, contaminated water he fetched from the River Nile. There was no other way, he told IRIN/PlusNews. Lole, chairperson of an association for people living with HIV/AIDS in southern Sudan , discovered he was HIV
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 12, 2008
GARISSA, 12 May 2008 (PlusNews) - Muslim leaders in Kenya s North Eastern Province have resolved to campaign against the promotion of condoms as a means of preventing HIV. The decision was made after a recent meeting on the theme of Islam and Health , attended by more than 60 Muslim scholars and teachers in the provinc
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 9, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 9 May 2008 (PlusNews) - Eish, with ARVs [antiretrovirals], you get fat and you get old, a patient at Johannesburg Hospital recently told her doctor. A few years ago, when people infected with HIV in the developing world were wasting away and dying in devastating numbers, her complaint would have been caus
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 8, 2008
BOUAKE, 8 May 2008 (PlusNews) - A straw hut in the courtyard of the Ariel Glaser Paediatric Centre in Bouake is filled with children of all ages playing or eating meals prepared by the centre s cook, all under the watchful eye of relatives. This special space for children infected or affected by HIV was set up in 2007
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 7, 2008
BUJUMBURA, 7 May 2008 (PlusNews) - Fabien Hamisi can neither hear nor speak, but don t call him dumb just because he speaks a language not understood by everybody. Hamisi is the executive director of Burundi s National Association for the Deaf, which aims to facilitate communication for the hearing-impaired by teaching
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 6, 2008
KABUL, 6 May 2008 (IRIN) - Millions of condoms will be distributed across Afghanistan in 2008 in a new drive to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, reduce maternal mortality and improve family planning, aid agencies and the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) said. Millions of condoms have been purchased and imported i
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 6, 2008
NAIROBI, Marie*, 25, comes from France but works for an international non-governmental organisation that often requires her to travel around Asia and Africa. While on one such trip she made a decision that could change her life forever. I met a colleague from one of our other offices; he seemed really nice and almost a
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 6, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 6 May 2008 (PlusNews) - HIV/AIDS treatment guidelines for South Africa s public health sector are out of sync not only with those of many other countries in the region, but also with the latest research on how to most effectively treat people living with HIV. Various studies indicating that patients who s
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 5, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, Thembi Ngubane, from Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town, South Africa , discovered she was HIV positive when she was 16 years old. Six years later, while attending a support group, she was approached by a United States-based radio producer interested in making a documentary about a year in the life of a
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 5, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 5 May 2008 (PlusNews) - The reality TV show Imagine Afrika , about to begin its second season, pits 12 young Africans against some of the most serious problems facing their continent, including how to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The show first hit the airwaves in October 2007 as part of a campaign by th
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 1, 2008
KIREKA, 1 May 2008 (PlusNews) - Melia Alanyo, 46, left northern Uganda for the capital city, Kampala, in the late 1980s when the rebel Lord s Resistance Army (LRA) started abducting, attacking and killing people in her village. She has spent the last 20 years in Kireka, a low-income suburb on the city s outskirts, coll
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - May 1, 2008
KIREKA, Carmela Acen fled her home in northern Uganda when the rebel Lord s Resistance Army (LRA) began its insurgency campaign in 1986. She told IRIN/PlusNews about her life in Kireka, a poor township in the capital, Kampala. I couldn t stay longer in Kitgum [district in northern Uganda]. Two uncles and two relatives
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 30, 2008
HARARE, 30 April 2008 (IRIN) - Children are not being spared the impact of Zimbabwe s post-election violence. The UN Children s Fund (UNICEF) in Zimbabwe told IRIN its work was being hampered by the countrywide violence, which, according to widespread reports, was being carried out by soldiers, war veterans and militia
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 30, 2008
NAIROBI, 30 April 2008 (PlusNews) - When Bishop James Otieno Okombo revealed he was HIV-positive in 1996, his archbishop summarily dismissed him, calling him a sinner and a disgrace to his church. He [the archbishop] called me before a church leaders conference and told me to repent; to denounce the sins that led to me
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 29, 2008
NAKURU, 29 April 2008 (PlusNews) - Harsh living conditions and the onset of the cold rainy season in Kenya are making it increasingly difficult for HIV-positive people displaced in the recent post-election violence to stay healthy, according to health workers in the camps. The main difficulty is getting a good balanced
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 28, 2008
ELDORET, 28 April 2008 (PlusNews) - Thousands of Kenyans who dropped out of HIV treatment programmes in January as a result of the country s post-election violence are gradually returning to clinics and the antiretroviral (ARV) drugs that help prolong their lives. Initially more than 90 percent of our patients failed t
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 28, 2008
NAKURU, Henry Kamau Mwiterere works with the Academic Model for the Prevention and Treatment of HIV (AMPATH) as a facilitator for HIV support groups in Kenya s western Rift Valley Province. Made homeless by the country s post-election violence in January, he told PlusNews how he has managed to make a difference to disp
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 28, 2008
BOUAKE, 28 April 2008 (PlusNews) - War has left its mark on Bouake, Cote d Ivoire s second largest town and the stronghold of the New Forces rebels, about 300km north of the port city of Abidjan. Many public buildings are empty and dilapidated, roads are in disrepair and carry few vehicles. The university hospital cent
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 24, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 24 April 2008 (PlusNews) - In less than two months, government officials and AIDS activists from around the world will convene in New York to review the global HIV/AIDS response. National progress reports, submitted earlier this year, will be compared to targets adopted by the United Nations General Assem
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 24, 2008
SANAA, 24 April 2008 (PlusNews) - Samah Riyadh, 20, has been educating people about HIV/AIDS and ways to prevent it since 2005. In the beginning, people had very limited knowledge about HIV/AIDS, and dealt with this issue insensitively...People are now beginning to understand what HIV/AIDS is and how it is transmitted,
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 24, 2008
COLOMBO, 24 April 2008 (IRIN) - Sri Lanka , once among Asia s worst affected nations for malaria, is now close to eliminating it. The sharp drop in the number of reported cases to 196 in 2007 - with no deaths - demonstrates that the national malaria control programme has been effective even in the traditionally disease
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 23, 2008
HARARE , 23 April 2008 (IRIN) - Scores of nongovernmental (NGO) and humanitarian organisations are threatened with collapse after Zimbabwe s central bank failed to release money required for their operational costs. Cephas Zinhumwe, chief executive officer of the National Association of Nongovernmental Organisations (N
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 23, 2008
BANGKOK, 23 April 2008 (IRIN) - As a child, Poel wondered why she fell sick so often, why she was always breaking out in lesions, why she constantly felt tired. The answer seems obvious now - her parents died of HIV/AIDS when she was very young. But the aunt who looked after her never sent her for tests and her status
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 22, 2008
MBABANE, I grew up in the north. My father died when I was two years old and I was raised by my mother. I have two brothers and five sisters. Two things I really like to do are teach and communicate with people about HIV. This is a big job in Swaziland : the most conservative survey showed that over a quarter of the ad
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 18, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 18 April 2008 (PlusNews) - Twenty years into the pandemic, people are looking for new ways to live with HIV, and for some alternative medicine has become part of the answer. The TsaBotsogo Community Development and Training Centre, based in Dobsonville, Soweto, a sprawling township south of Johannesburg,
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 17, 2008
JUBA, 17 April 2008 (PlusNews) - In a tiny recording studio in the southern Sudanese capital, Juba, Patrick Taban s phone rings off the hook, but he pays it no attention - he s too wrapped up in his preparations for a big production later that evening. Taban heads The Heavens, a drama and musical group of 14 members wh
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 16, 2008
KEHEMU, 16 April 2008 (PlusNews) - Home-based caregiver Salome Vendura knows firsthand that in Namibia s far-flung rural areas, one of the biggest determinants of HIV/AIDS treatment adherence is access to affordable and reliable transportation. In Vendura s community of Kehemu, in northern Namibia, the nearest hospital
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 16, 2008
JAKARTA, 16 April 2008 (PlusNews) - A visit to the barber s shop or hairdressing salon in Indonesia could entail far more than a shave or a trim - a lesson in HIV/AIDS and how to prevent it. The French-based international company L Oreal, with the support of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNE
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 15, 2008
NAIROBI, 15 April 2008 (PlusNews) - When the music s pumping, drinks are flowing and hormones are raging, condoms don t often spring to mind, until it s too late. By then, the shops are closed and a packet of three is hard to come by. That s where enterprising vendors outside the busy bars and nightclubs in Nairobi, th
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 11, 2008
Is mass male circumcision the new big thing in HIV prevention, or is it a risky social experiment that threatens to divert funding from tried and tested interventions? UNAIDS is careful in its assessment: Without question, we absolutely have to ensure that men and women are aware that male circumcision is not a magic
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 11, 2008
The bar is vibrant, despite its seedy and stale appearance CABINDA, 11 April 2008 (PlusNews) - Money and men are in no short supply in the petroleum-rich Angolan enclave of Cabinda. Workers from the petroleum industry, truck drivers, merchants and some 60,000 soldiers and police are based in the area; and sex workers f
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 10, 2008
NAIROBI, 10 April 2008 (PlusNews) - The Kenyan government has embarked on an ambitious national programme to fast track the national rollout of male circumcision as a means of preventing HIV. Results from three randomised controlled trials in South Africa , Kenya and Uganda , in 2006 showed tha
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 8, 2008
KAMPALA, 8 April 2008 (PlusNews) - Throughout his childhood, Gordon Turibamwe, 20, was sickly, suffering from frequent bouts of malaria and chest infections, but his father only told him he was HIV-positive when he was aged 16, something Gordon says caused him serious trauma. I was so shocked and so angry with my dad f
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 7, 2008
N DJAMENA, 7 April 2008 (PlusNews) - If someone living with HIV in the southern Danamadji region of Chad needs to go to hospital, and they are not too weak, the best way of getting there is usually by ox-cart, but it can take up to a day and a half to get there - unless they are attacked by elephants on the way. De
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 7, 2008
LAGOS, 7 April 2008 (IRIN) - It is now illegal to encourage the use of condoms in southeast Nigeria s Anambra State. The state government has also banned the advocacy and distribution of other forms of contraceptives including IUDs (intrauterine device) and any other un-natural birth control. Instead of teaching childr
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 4, 2008
MBABANE, 4 April 2008 (PlusNews) - Overworked and poorly paid, volunteer caregivers in Swaziland struggling to cope with the growing numbers of bedridden patients with HIV, are faced with a hard choice: to quit or go hungry. I love helping people. It is the first time I have done anything out of the home. I do not do t
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 3, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 3 April 2008 (PlusNews) - More mothers and children in developing countries are receiving treatment than ever before, according to a new report by the United Nations. But stigma, limited information and fragile health systems still pose hurdles to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Coverag
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 2, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 2 April 2008 (PlusNews) - It s house music. It s dinner, drinks and a movie. It s first dates, first loves and first heart breaks. It s being young - and it s also about HIV, as a new global campaign against stigma aims to redefine the face of the virus. Does HIV look like me? is run by a US-based organis
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - April 2, 2008
NAIROBI, 2 April 2008 (PlusNews) - The threat of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) has been heightened by the displacement of an estimated 300,000 people in Kenya s recent political crisis, health workers have said. During the violence, many displaced people were disrupted from their lives, which meant disrupt
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 31, 2008
JAKARTA, 31 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Indonesia is home to an estimated 500,000 injecting drug users. As many as 70 percent of them are HIV positive. Seen through the eyes of two ex-addicts, the new film by IRIN/PlusNews, A Cleaner Fix takes you into the world of the drug user and those who try to help. Timotius Hadi
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 31, 2008
ABIDJAN, 31 March 2008 (IRIN) - Hygiene in most hospitals in Cote d Ivoire is so low that the ministry of health has launched a nationwide clean-up campaign. We hope to eliminate from our hospitals [bad] practices that add risks to patients health, Health Minister Remi Allah Kouadio told journalists at the campaign s l
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 28, 2008
N DJAMENA, 28 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Lowering the chances of an HIV positive mother passing the virus onto her child is a simple case of giving mother and baby one dose of the antiretroviral drug, nevirapine . Implementing a national prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission programme, however, is far less simple
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 28, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 28 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Linda* was already sick when she arrived in Johannesburg from Zimbabwe , but she did not know her HIV status. After months of sleeping rough in a park her health deteriorated further and she finally plucked up the courage to go for an HIV test at an inner-city clinic. I had
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 26, 2008
NAIROBI, 26 March 2008 (IRIN Film & TV) - Across Indonesia there are an estimated 500,000 injecting drug users. As many as 70 percent of them are HIV positive. Dece: Pepin? Pepin? Cik. Where is Pepin? Is he at home? Woman: I think he s in that house by the small mosque. Dece: Which small mosque? Woman:
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 26, 2008
N DJAMENA, 26 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Wracked by decades of political insecurity, HIV/AIDS simply wasn t a priority in Chad for many years. A chronic lack of health workers and uncertain funding delayed efforts further, but the government of Chad is finally starting to take action. Chad covers around 1.3 million squa
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 25, 2008
DHAKA, 25 March 2008 (IRIN) - Abdul Ali Sardar, a fisherman in southern Bangladesh , never thought he would survive tuberculosis (TB). One year ago, I caught a cold after returning home from a night of fishing along the Kirtankhola river. The cough continued for more than a month. Then came the fever. It would come eve
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 25, 2008
KINSHASA, 25 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Efforts to combat the spread of tuberculosis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been slowed down by the problem of TB patients also infected with HIV, local health officials said. The disease [TB] is on the increase because there is a link with HIV - there are co-infecte
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 25, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 25 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Another hospital breakout in South Africa by drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) patients desperate to spend the holidays with their families has some public health experts questioning whether forced isolation is either the most effective or humane way to treat such patients. O
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 25, 2008
SANAA, 25 March 2008 (IRIN) - Officials at the Yemeni Ministry of Health s National Tuberculosis Control Programme (NTCP) have said they have made great strides in reducing the incidence of tuberculosis (TB). Amin al-Absi, general director of NTCP, told IRIN Yemen was on track to achieve Millennium Development Goal 6 o
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 24, 2008
JERUSALEM, 24 March 2008 (IRIN) - The Palestinians lack of control over their borders plays a small but not negligible role in the low tuberculosis rates in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), health officials said. Israel s jurisdiction over all crossing points, with its own system of screening and treatment, he
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 24, 2008
LAHORE, 24 March 2008 (IRIN) - Uzma Hassan (not her real name) will never forget the day almost five years ago she was told her son, then aged 10, had contracted tuberculosis (TB). He had been coughing and losing weight, but we never thought of TB, because, frankly, that s a sickness associated with poor people, Hassan
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 20, 2008
KAMPALA, 20 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Becky Mugisha* had been ill with a hacking cough for three months before she was admitted into one of Kampala s busiest tuberculosis (TB) wards, but she recognised the symptoms long before that. It was her second bout with the disease. The last time Mugisha had had TB, about a year b
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 20, 2008
LUSAKA, Webster Katope*, 43, a pastor from Lusaka who is married with three children, found out he had tuberculosis (TB) in 2007. He talked to IRIN/PlusNews about the difficulties of completing a nine-month course of medication. I had no idea that I had TB because I never coughed so much. I had never suffered any prolo
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 18, 2008
NAIROBI, 18 March 2008 (IRIN) - Sexual violence against women is rampant in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) but the majority of perpetrators, especially in no-law zones, go unpunished, according to a UN independent human rights expert. In South Kivu Province, for example, 14,200 rape cases were registered betwee
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 17, 2008
KAMULI, 17 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Admitting to being HIV-positive is a difficult task for anyone, but David Balubenze was faced with some special challenges as the pastor of Deliverance Church Nankandulo, in Kamuli, about 100 kilometers from the capital, Kampala. Balubenze knew he was HIV-positive for a year before he
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 15, 2008
THIKA, For four weeks, Teresia Wamwitha, 47, took refuge in the bush with 10 children - eight of her own and two of her sister s, who died 10 years ago - after fleeing post-election violence in Kenya s Rift Valley Province. Her house in Burnt Forest area was razed to the ground; she barely managed to get the children o
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 14, 2008
KAMPALA, 14 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Fatuma and Hamidu Kamugisha met 12 years ago as hotel employees in Tanzania s Victoria Lake-side town of Mwanza and sparks flew. The couple hooked up, married and then returned to Hamidu s native Uganda where they had four children. Almost ten years later, however, Hamidu fell seriou
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 14, 2008
MASAKA, Josephine Nakalema*, 22, was born HIV-positive but only realised that she had the disease when she was a teenager. Now a trained HIV/AIDS counsellor, she told IRIN/PlusNews how the late diagnosis affected her family and her love life. As a child I used to fall ill so frequently that the kids at school nicknamed
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 13, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 13 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Mothers and children in South Africa are dying in alarming numbers. Far from being on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing child mortality by two-thirds, the country is among only a dozen worldwide where child deaths are rising. In 2000, South Afri
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 13, 2008
MULTAN, 13 March 2008 (IRIN) - In her second storey home in Multan, Punjab Province, Raheela Ahmed, aged 25, gasps for breath as she struggles up the stairs carrying her youngest child, Kulsoom. I have been sick since she was born. I often feel weak and dizzy, Raheela told IRIN. A blood transfusion the mother-of-three
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 13, 2008
KAMPALA, 13 March 2008 (IRIN) - Up to 5,000 children under the age of five will be saved in Uganda every year after a vaccine halted mortality rates from the deadly strain of meningitis that has been infecting up to 30,000 people in the east African country, officials said on 13 March. Sam Zaramba, the director-gen
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 12, 2008
BLANTYRE, 12 March 2008 (PlusNews) - A billboard showing traditional and religious leaders holding hands in the fight against AIDS is a common feature in Blantyre, Malawi s commercial capital, but overzealous church leaders claiming to cure HIV with prayer are now causing more harm than good. A pastor in southern Malaw
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 12, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 12 March 2008 (IRIN) - Burgeoning unemployment, rising inflation and trade deficits are signs of a weak economy, but could child abuse be added to the list? As rates of this crime continue to climb, experts say economics is no longer just about numbers. Sexual violence against children in
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 10, 2008
GORE, 10 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Most of the roughly 50,000 people in the Amboko and Dosseye refugee camps near Goré, in the tropical forest of southern Chad , have fled across the border from neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR), but efforts to prevent and treat HIV among the camp residents are still in their i
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 8, 2008
KAMPALA, 8 March 2008 (PlusNews) - In many parts of Uganda , especially rural areas, women s roles have not changed since the first Women s Day a hundred years ago. Women are still the primary caregivers, and they still don t get credit for it, according to Sylvia Tamale, the Dean of Makerere University s Law School, i
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 6, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 6 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Before you wrap it up, meet the people who check it out. IRIN/PlusNews went inside the condom testing facilities of the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) to see what it takes to ensure condoms really are the frontline of HIV/AIDS prevention. The SABS tests everything from
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 6, 2008
KAMPALA, 6 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Off the beaten track east of Uganda s capital, Kampala, a four-wheel-drive vehicle is taking a nurse, a community health worker and a cooler full of life-saving medication to Gayaza village, where they will call on homes affected by HIV/AIDS. Although more Ugandans than ever are on an
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 5, 2008
KABUL, 5 March 2008 (IRIN) - The government of Afghanistan and neighbouring states must join forces to stop the smuggling of precursor chemicals, particularly acetic anhydride, to Afghanistan where they are used in the illicit manufacture of heroin and morphine, the International Narcotics Control Broad (INCB) said in
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 5, 2008
HARARE, 5 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Njabulo Sibanda, 15, who lives in Highfield, a low-income suburb in southwestern Harare, capital of Zimbabwe , is one of the more than one million children in the country orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. After his parents died of AIDS-related illnesses over a year ago, he had to drop out
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 4, 2008
ABIDJAN, 4 March 2008 (IRIN) - Tuberculosis (TB) infections in Côte d Ivoire increased 9 percent between 2006 and 2008, and almost 10 percent of the cases were multidrug resistant, according to new World Health Organization (WHO) and Ministry of Health data. The total increase corresponds to an increase of 23,000 cases
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 4, 2008
NAKURU, 4 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Residents in a camp for displaced persons in Nakuru, in Rift Valley Province, western Kenya , were deeply shocked when a gang of men attacked and sexually assaulted five boys, but the health officials dealing with sexual violence during the recent political upheaval have had to become
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 4, 2008
KIGALI, Devotha Mukagasana, a 26-year-old former commercial sex worker and mother of one, is now a member of Tubusezerere (Kinyarwanda for goodbye to poverty and prostitution ). The group comprises women who have quit the sex trade in favour of other income-generating activities in Rwanda s central district of Muhanga:
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 4, 2008
KAMPALA, 4 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Much excitement greeted the opening of Quality Chemicals in 2007, the first manufacturer of antiretroviral (ARV) medication in East Africa, but six months later the production lines are still idle. The spacious factory, which cost about US$38 million and covers roughly 1,115 square me
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - March 3, 2008
KASENYI, 3 March 2008 (PlusNews) - Stephen Mukasa, 23, a fisherman on East Africa s Lake Victoria, is more terrified of drowning than he is of dying from an AIDS-related illness. Marine accident death is more mourned than when one dies from HIV/AIDS, he told IRIN/PlusNews. It is tragic for one to die suddenly, but AIDS
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 29, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 29 February 2008 (PlusNews) - The South African health department has called on drug manufacturers to submit bids to supply the government s antiretroviral (ARV) treatment programme, just days before the current ARV tender is due to expire. AIDS experts and activists said decisions on which drugs to inclu
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 28, 2008
NEW DELHI, 28 February 2008 (PlusNews) - Bedroom politics were in the spotlight this week at the fourth international conference on microbicides in New Delhi, India , as researchers explored the power dynamics in sexual relationships, and their implications for microbicides. The idea behind microbicides has always been
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 28, 2008
N DJAMENA, 28 February 2008 (PlusNews) - Some of the young people who seek help at the Youth Information and Orientation Centre for Reproductive Health (CIOJ) in N Djamena, capital of Chad , do not understand how they became pregnant or contracted a sexually transmitted infection (STI). Workers at the centre blame the
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 27, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 27 February 2008 (PlusNews) - A record number of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) cases have been documented in the most extensive global survey of its kind. The findings were released this week by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The report estimates that nearly half a million new cases of M
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 27, 2008
NEW DELHI, 27 February 2008 (PlusNews) - The silence and taboo surrounding anal sex is putting millions of men and women at risk of HIV, delegates attending the fourth international microbicides conference in New Delhi, India , heard this week. Often thought of as strictly a gay thing , studies are showing that anal in
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 26, 2008
N DJAMENA/DAKAR, 26 February 2008 (PlusNews) - People living with HIV in Chad risk becoming victims of the explosion of violence in the capital, N Djamena, in early February. During clashes between the army and groups of rebels from the east of the country, health services were damaged and many organisations working to
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 26, 2008
KISUMU, Roselyne Anyango, 32, is an HIV-positive single mother who moved to Naivasha five years ago to work on a flower farm. When violence broke out after December s disputed elections, she and her two children, aged 13 and six, were forced to flee. Her elder child has special needs. For safety, they were taken to Kis
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 26, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 26 February 2008 (PlusNews) - 25 percent of pregnant women are HIV + in South Africa , according to the national health department. More on HIV/AIDS in South Africa JOHANNESBURG, 26 February 2008 (PlusNews) - More than 40 % of pregnant women in Durban, South Africa test positive for HIV. JOHANNESBURG,
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 25, 2008
NEW DELHI, 25 February 2008 (PlusNews) - After a string of depressing trial results, the fourth international microbicides conference in New Delhi, India , kicked off this week with a ray of hope that new research could deliver a new generation of HIV prevention approaches for women. It has been a disappointing yea
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 23, 2008
NAIROBI, 25 February 2008 (PlusNews) - New research from Somalia has debunked the long-held view that discussions about sex are off-limits in this conservative nation, opening the door to a deeper understanding of sexual behaviour patterns and the possibility of more tailored prevention strategies. It s not so muc
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 22, 2008
DAKAR, 22 February 2008 (IRIN) - Nutrition experts say governments are not investing enough to prevent and treat malnutrition in women and children in poor countries. The amount donors have given to combating malnutrition is lamentable, Saul Morris, one of the authors of a series of reports on child survival published
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 22, 2008
MAUN, 22 February 2008 (PlusNews) - Small charter planes fly tourists from all over the world to safari camps in Botswana s Okavango Delta, where they view wildlife by day and pay up to US$1,000 a night to stay in luxury lodges or rough it in five-star tents. The safari camps are mainly expatriate owned and managed, bu
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 22, 2008
CAIRO, 22 February 2008 (PlusNews) - Eight Egyptian men who were arrested and forced to undergo HIV tests, and the subsequent torture of the two who tested HIV-positive, has unleashed a storm of controversy in a country where people still know very little about the virus. You can find people who know what you are talki
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 21, 2008
MAUN, 21 February 2008 (PlusNews) - The nondescript town of Maun in northern Botswana is often no more than a way-station on the road to the luxury safari camps of the Okavango Delta, a haven for wildlife and one of Africa s most popular tourist destinations. For Hilary Fairclough, a former nurse from England, a visit
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 20, 2008
MBABANE, 20 February 2008 (IRIN) - The hubbub generated by the 70-odd children tearing around a sunny three-room building belies their vulnerability: most of them have been orphaned as a result of Swaziland s AIDS pandemic, but here they have found safety and support. Ngwane Park Care Point, set in a large yard, was th
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 19, 2008
DHAKA, 19 February 2008 (PlusNews) - Insufficient data, coupled with the lack of a coherent HIV prevention policy, are undermining Bangladesh s national AIDS programme, say health experts. We need to gather stronger empirical data and relate all problems faced by HIV/AIDS, with a special emphasis on the use of condoms
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 19, 2008
BANGKOK, 19 February 2008 (IRIN) - As avian influenza continues to surface in poultry farms across northern Thailand , health officials say they are fully prepared. Right now we are ready for the pandemic virus, Thawat Suntrajarn, director-general of the Disease Control Department, told IRIN. We are sure the pandemic
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 19, 2008
NAIROBI, 19 February 2008 (PlusNews) - Blood donation drives held in Kenya in recent weeks to meet the need created by post-election violence have highlighted the shortage of regular blood donors and the problem this creates in public healthcare, say officials from the national blood transfusion service. We realis
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 18, 2008
MAPUTO, Between counselling HIV-positive people and being a leading member of the Xirilu Xa Kudumba (Tears of Hope) association of those living with AIDS, Sousa Domingos Chilaule spends most of his time encouraging others to be open about their status. It s a far cry from the days where even his closest friends avoided
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 18, 2008
NAIROBI, 18 February 2008 (PlusNews) - To avoid the pain of being rejected, many HIV-positive Kenyans are choosing to exclusively date other infected people. But does this make things any easier? When I meet someone I like, there is always an argument in my head about how I will tell them about my status. It has turned
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 18, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 18 February 2008 (PlusNews) - The first microbicide candidate to reach the final phase of testing has failed to prevent HIV transmission, researchers announced on Monday. Testing of the microbicide, Carraguard, was carried out over a three-year period on 6,000 women in South Africa , and was complete
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 15, 2008
MAE SOT, 15 February 2008 (IRIN) - Ka Lae Min holds up his colourful drawing of a tree. The three roots are myself, my family and my ethnicity, he said, and the flowers are my achievements - I finished high school; am now free from the military junta in Burma [ Myanmar ]; and am on my way to America.
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 15, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 15 February 2008 (IRIN) - Swaziland s increasing vulnerability to a seemingly endless string of manmade and natural disasters has prompted a new approach to improving the speed and effectiveness of the response. We are really suffering. We are trying everything we can but we need help - it [disaster] seem
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 15, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 15 February 2008 (PlusNews) - Inadequate patient tracking at one of South Africa s largest antiretroviral (ARV) distribution sites, has led to many patients disappearing from the clinic before treatment starts, a new report has found. The report by the Reproductive Health & HIV Research Unit (RHRU) of
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 15, 2008
NAIROBI, 15 February 2008 (PlusNews) - Children across Africa are emerging from conflicts in which they have served as soldiers or the wives of rebel commanders and find themselves in a new, unfamiliar world. Usually poor and often without family, many resort to coping mechanisms that put them at risk of contracting HI
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 14, 2008
NAIROBI, 14 February 2008 (PlusNews) - Condom resistance remains a real problem among HIV discordant couples in Uganda , new research has found. The study, whose results were presented at the 15th conference on retroviruses and opportunistic infections in Boston, Massachusetts, found that of 36,000 couples tested, 96
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 14, 2008
NAIROBI, James is a single 30-something executive in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. He recently met a girl he really liked, and told IRIN/PlusNews that although she was really good people , he couldn t bring himself to ignore her HIV status. She is really pretty, really hot. I had met her about a year before, but we met
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 13, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 13 February 2008 (PlusNews) - The dating scene is often compared to a jungle: a rough, complex environment where only the strong survive. But when you re HIV-positive and looking for love, the map s even harder to decipher, the journey fraught with esteem-threatening decisions and nagging uncertainty. To
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 13, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, Tender Mavundla, 26, is an aspiring singer about to release her first album. She was diagnosed with HIV almost seven years ago and knows what it feels like to be constantly rejected by men after disclosing her status. But she s finally found someone who s accepted her and her virus, and this is how it hap
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 13, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, Johanna Ncala, 40, has been seeing the father of her 2-year-old daughter for four years, and admits that distance isn t the only thing complicating her love life. Since she was diagnosed positive in 1993, Johanna has had to rethink relationships and what her status might mean to the men in her life. I m i
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 12, 2008
MAPUTO, 12 February 2008 (PlusNews) - I don t know why you had to go to the hospital, the woman s husband yells furiously. His pregnant wife defends her decision to go to the hospital instead of just trusting the traditional healer. But I had to know about my health and the health of my baby, she argues. At the hospita
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 11, 2008
PRINCIPE, 11 February 2008 (PlusNews) - Bars, restaurants and stores in the archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe now have a new attraction: small brown wooden boxes containing 144 condoms each, placed in highly visible locations. Condoms have traditionally been distributed at healthcare centres, but under the governmen
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 11, 2008
ADDIS ABABA, 11 February 2008 (IRIN) - Ethiopia s new national nutrition strategy will target children younger than two years of age because a significant number suffer chronic malnutrition, a senior official said. We must fight malnutrition, Addisu Legesse, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Rural and Agriculture D
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 8, 2008
MAPUTO, 8 February 2008 (PlusNews) - She has been mesmerizing fans for three decades. Singer Elisa Domingas Jamisse, or Mingas, is one of Mozambique s most famous celebrities. Her music, a mixture of Afro sounds that gives prominence to the rhythms of the Chope people of southern Mozambique, has thrilled audiences the
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 7, 2008
NAIROBI, 7 February 2008 (IRIN) - Health officials are concerned about the long-term impact of Kenya s political crisis on healthcare, especially in areas hardest hit by violence since the end of December 2007. The most worrying issue is that of drug resistance among patients of chronic diseases, Ian van Engelgem, the
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 7, 2008
CONAKRY, 7 February 2008 (IRIN) - After the sun sets on the streets of the Guinean capital, Conakry, children drift by darkened storefronts and settle into nooks between buildings, curling up to sleep on the pavement. Residents in the city told IRIN they had noticed more and more children living on the streets in recen
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 7, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 7 February 2008 (PlusNews) - MACHINGA, Gilbert Momola, 37, is the only pastor in Malawi s Evangelical Baptist Church who has declared his HIV-positive status. Despite the divisions it caused, his move prompted many to examine the stigma they attach to HIV. He lost his wife and child to AIDS-related illnes
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 7, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 7 February 2008 (PlusNews) - As developing countries scale up their antiretroviral (ARV) treatment programmes, more and more people living with HIV are expected to develop resistance to their drug regimens and will need second-line medicines. Many second-line drugs are either unavailable or prohibitively
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 6, 2008
DHAKA, 6 February 2008 (PlusNews) - Mohana Rosario is like many people living with HIV in the world today. The 30-year-old mother of four from Manikganj District, 75km from the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, faces an uphill battle caring for herself and her family. But her story is also one of intense tragedy. In Septembe
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 6, 2008
MBABANE, 6 February 2008 (IRIN) - Thamie Simelane, 12, is among hundreds of thousands of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in Swaziland who might not be going to school, despite government assurances that the tuition fees of these children would be covered. Headmasters rely on school fees to run their institutions,
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 5, 2008
JAKARTA, 5 February 2008 (PlusNews) - Tanjung Priok District, where the port is located in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia , is said to have three suns above it instead of one because of its extreme heat in an already hot city. Aside from the climate, the district is also known for its high levels of crime, especially dr
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 4, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 4 February 2008 (PlusNews) - South African police are denying detained undocumented HIV-positive migrants access to the crucial food needed to continue antiretroviral therapy, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). At least five hundred people, most believed to be Zimbabwean, were arrested during a
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 4, 2008
LUSAKA, 4 February 2008 (PlusNews) - A public health scare sparked by allegations that batches of the injectible contraceptive, Depro-Provera, contained the HI virus has exposed deep mistrust and high levels of misinformation about the safety of imported drugs. Health department spokesperson Dr Canisius Banda said the
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - February 1, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 1 February 2008 (PlusNews) - Swiss HIV experts have said that HIV-positive individuals who follow their antiretroviral (ARV) treatment consistently and who do not have any sexually transmitted infections (STIs), cannot infect their sexual partners. Four of Switzerland s leading HIV experts made the contro
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 31, 2008
NIAMEY, 31 January 2008 (IRIN) - A hugely beneficial nutritious snack called Plumpy nut should be commercially available and marketed much more aggressively if it is to have a significant impact on malnutrition in Niger , according to Steve Collins at the consultancy Valid International in Dublin. The sole factory
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 31, 2008
BUJUMBURA (PLUSNEWS) - Burundi s teachers are calling for more HIV/AIDS education in schools, to ensure that older primary school pupils and secondary school students, many of whom are sexually active, are properly equipped with the facts about the pandemic. Ernest Mberamiheto, deputy minister in charge of primary and
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 30, 2008
BUJUMBURA (PLUSNEWS) - Devote Barajenguye is a secondary school teacher and the mother of two teenagers. After her husband s death from an AIDS-related illness and the discovery that she was also HIV positive, she decided to put aside self-pity and encourage others living with HIV to adopt a more optimistic outlook on
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 29, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 29 January 2008 (PlusNews) - The long wait is over. South Africa s HIV-positive pregnant women will now have access to medication that could further reduce the risk of passing the virus to their babies after the health department released guidelines for administering more effective dual therapy instead of
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 29, 2008
NAIROBI - Jane Wangui an HIV-positive mother-of-four, is living in Nairobi s Jamhuri Park, where a camp has been set up for internally displaced persons who fled the violence that erupted across the country after controversial December 2007 elections. She explained to IRIN/PlusNews how the displacement has affected her
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 28, 2008
NAKURU, 28 January 2008 (PLUSNEWS) - At least 250,000 Kenyans have sought refuge in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) since violence broke out after a controversial national poll in December 2007, but many women find the risk of sexual attack in the camps just as great as outside. Last night, when violence
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 28, 2008
BISSAU (PLUSNEWS) - A pig, half a sack of rice, black corn and five litres of sugarcane brandy are the ingredients a traditional healer in the West African country of Guinea-Bissau uses to perform a ritual many believe will prevent a woman who has given birth from getting HIV. If the ritual, known as tarbessadu, is not
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 25, 2008
MBABANE (PLUSNEWS) - The widowed Gogo (SiSwati for granny ) Thwala, 72, lives a life that relies heavily on her survival skills as she single-handedly raises three grandchildren, but not a trace of resignation or despair clouds her smile. Yes, when the Lord took my son and his wife, and I was left with two little girls
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 23, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 23 January 2008 (PlusNews) - South African AIDS activists have called on doctors and nurses to act in the best interests of HIV-positive pregnant women and their unborn children by not waiting any longer for an official directive to switch from single antiretroviral (ARV) treatment to more effective dual
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 22, 2008
PORT SUDAN, 22 January 2008 (PlusNews) - No sign advertises the availability of voluntary HIV counselling and testing (VCT) at the Family Planning Centre in Port Sudan , a busy transportation hub in Sudan s Red Sea State. It is one of only three sites in town offering these services, but the waiting room is deserted.
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 22, 2008
KAMPALA, 22 January 2008 (PlusNews) - Tuberculosis infection rates in Uganda have increased due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the country, but the scarcity of health centres and over-crowding in camps for the displaced are also to blame, officials said. The Ugandan health ministry said it had recorded an increase of almo
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 21, 2008
SAO TOME, 21 January 2008 (PlusNews) - Night falls early along the equator. When darkness creeps across the bay of Santa Ana and sets over the town of Sao Tome , the girls appear in twos or threes, or alone. They wait for clients behind the Farol bar and the Dolores disco, the hubs of evening buzz in the capital of the
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 18, 2008
KASSALA, 18 January 2008 (PlusNews) - Fadia Awad offers us sweets, a traditional Sudanese gesture of hospitality, and then asks if we are going to refuse them, as all her neighbours do. She belongs to the Rashaida tribe, a traditionally nomadic people who migrated to eastern Sudan from the Arabian Peninsula in the nine
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 18, 2008
HARARE, 18 January 2008 (PlusNews) - A new five-year initiative is set to improve access to HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention services for pregnant mothers in Zimbabwe . The scheme, launched in Murewa District 86km northeast of the capital, Harare, on Wednesday will allow the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 17, 2008
NAIROBI, 17 January 2008 (PlusNews) - After a fortnight of political violence during which an estimated 250,000 Kenyans were displaced, health workers are scrambling to ensure that HIV-positive people on life-prolonging anti-retroviral (ARV) therapy continue to receive their drugs and adequate food supplies. As of last
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 16, 2008
WINDHOEK, 16 January 2008 (PlusNews) - Emma Aina Nulimba is a Red Cross home-based care volunteer in Namibia . HIV-positive herself, she knows the difficulty of living with the virus in communities marked by poverty, and in which stigma remains powerful. In this new radio report, she takes PlusNews on her rounds to mee
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 15, 2008
COTONOU, 15 January 2008 (PlusNews) - Rosalie Salako, 38, a mother of three, meets every week with pregnant women from the district of Pobè, 120km east of Cotonou, the main coastal town in Benin , to encourage them to be tested for the HI virus. She became involved in the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMT
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 15, 2008
KASSALA, 15 January 2008 (PlusNews) - Since the introduction of a prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) programme in August 2007 at Port Sudan Hospital in Sudan s northeastern Red Sea State, 1,620 pregnant women have received information about HIV and the offer of an HIV test; only 24 have taken up the
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 15, 2008
NAIROBI, 15 January 2008 (PlusNews) - As Kenya counts the human and material cost of the political violence, hospitals are reporting an increase in reported rapes during the immediate post-election period, spurring the government and health organisations to find ways to treat these cases as well as protect the displace
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 14, 2008
HARARE, 14 January 2008 (PlusNews) - HIV-infected women living in rural areas are finding it increasingly difficult to access life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) and tend to be more marginalised than those living in urban areas, non-governmental organisations say. Rural women who need ARVs find themselves in a
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 11, 2008
ADDIS ABABA, 11 January 2008 (PlusNews) - Emebet Meshsha, 26, and Azalech Abdisa, 25, are the kind of health workers the World Health Organisation is banking on to beat the AIDS epidemic in Africa. They have only one year of health training each, yet have been a godsend to the about 5,000 people in the Ethiopian villag
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 11, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, 11 January 2008 (PlusNews) - Condom sales in South Africa have climbed by as much as 55 percent in the last year, pointing to increased condom usage - but does this mean that behaviour has changed? Health officials and researchers said it was too soon to tell if HIV-prevention messages had really filtered
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 9, 2008
KASSALA (PLUSNEWS) - In a market square just outside the town of Kassala, near the border with Eritrea in eastern Sudan , every plastic chair is filled and there is standing room only when the two men come on stage to perform their songs and skits about HIV and AIDS. In much of the African continent such events hav
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 8, 2008
PORT SUDAN (PLUSNEWS) -- It takes 36 hours to drive a heavily laden truck from Port Sudan , a major transportation hub on Sudan s eastern Red Sea coast, to the capital city of Khartoum. Ramshackle truck stations have sprung up along the dusty, rubbish-strewn route where drivers can catch a few hours sleep and buy food
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 7, 2008
KASSALA (PLUSNEWS) -- Fadia Awad lives with her son, Hamid, 8, in a small settlement outside Kassala in eastern Sudan . She belongs to the Rashaida tribe, a traditionally nomadic people who emigrated from the Arabian Peninsula in the nineteenth century. She and her son have both been shunned by their community because
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - January 4, 2008
MTHATHA (PLUSNEWS) - The monthly Improvement Meeting at Qumbu Health Centre, 50km from the Eastern Cape province town of Mthatha, is supposed to start at 9am, but rarely starts before 10am. Many of the nurses attending work at remote rural clinics scattered across Mhlontlo District and have to travel along rudimentary
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