04 July 2018
Women who survived the war in Northern Uganda are almost twice as likely to be living with HIV compared to their male peers, and are also disproportionately impacted by trauma and depression, reveals new research. Conflict in Northern Uganda in the 2000s between the government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) resulted in widespread atrocities, human rights violations and death, and saw millions flee to internally displaced…
29 June 2018
In the rolling green hills of the uMgungundlovu district in KwaZulu-Natal lies Vulindlela, a rural community often seen as the epicentre of the HIV and AIDS pandemic in this country. South Africa has the highest number of HIV-infected people in the world, with teenage girls and young women being the hardest hit. For perspective, South Africa’s HIV infection rate is almost 19% of adults. In Vulindlela it is 40%. High…
5 June 2018
Tanzania's Ministry of Health, Community, Development, Gender, Elderly and Children launched a new programme to combat HIV among adolescent girls and young women in the Singida region and to raise public awareness on adolescent girls and young women just out of school.
The programme is being implemented jointly by the Ministry, AMREF, TAYOA, and TACAIDS in partnership with the Global Fund. It is a pilot project for the…
21 June 2018
Indigenous women living with HIV experience everyday incidents of racism that impede their access to care disproportionately to other groups, according to a study involving more than 1,400 women across Canada.This contributes to a loss of Indigenous women along the HIV “cascade of care” – a term used to describe clinical stages of treatment such as diagnosis, retention in care and viral suppression – at a markedly higher rate…
7 June 2018
Women living with HIV perceive many forms of stigma in addition to HIV-related stigma, according to a qualitative study published in the July edition of Social Science & Medicine. Stigma related to living with HIV intersected with stigma associated with gender, race, poverty, incarceration and obesity, according to the interviewees.
“Our findings highlight the complexity of social processes of marginalization,…
5 June 2018
Women living with HIV in the Sunyani Municipality of Ghana have expressed displeasure over high public stigmatisation and discrimination. According to them, although they have been placed on anti-retroviral therapy, they were going through what they described as serious “mental torture”. During a refresher training organized by the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), more than 15 women living with HIV serving as…
7 June 2018
Lucy Wanjiku is a young mother living with HIV and team leader of Positive Young Women Voices from Kenya. She was just 19 years old when she found out that she was living with HIV, a devastating shock for her. “It was one thing to become an adolescent mother and another to be HIV-positive,” said Lucy. “I was discriminated against by the community, my family and even at the health facility. There is no real support structure…
4 June 2018
A non-governmental organization in Abuja, Nigeria - the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) - has emphasized the need to create safe spaces to address the psycho-social needs of young women and girls in the region. Country Programme Director of AHF, Dr. Echey Ijezie, shared that girls were challenged by gaps in pyscho-social support, menstrual hygiene, low confidence and the lack of skills to negotiate safe sex. Dr. Ijezie…
17 May 2018
Women living with HIV in Rajasthan, India, have come together to lobby the State Government of Rajasthan for improved provision of social protection services. The Global Alliance for Human Rights and the Rajasthan Network of People Living with HIV organized an advocacy session in Jaipur on 15 May with more than 100 women living with HIV during which they presented their needs, including dairy booths for income generation and…
28 May 2018
South Africa has one of the biggest HIV epidemics in the world, with 7.1 million people living with the virus. There is a huge gender disparity in infection rates, with nearly four times the number of young women infected than men their age.
Sylvia, a woman that lives and breathes these statistics, is fighting to make history. Fourteen years ago, after her daughter fell gravely ill, she discovered her and her daughter…
21 May 2018
A study among pregnant women in South Africa has found many lack control over condom use – and would be willing to use pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to protect themselves and their babies from HIV. In-depth interviews with 26 South African women who were either pregnant or recently post-partum, revealed high levels of interest in PrEP. Many of the interviewees reported feeling that they did not have a say in whether they used…
15 May 2018
Around the world, HIV rates for men and women are more or less equal — except in sub-saharan Africa. This is the only region in the world where the HIV rates for women are substantially higher than that of men. Scholars call this the “feminization” of HIV and AIDS in Africa and have devoted a great deal of effort into studying why.
Some 80% of all women who live with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa. So getting to the…
8 May 2018
Although HIV rates continue to decrease in Uganda, it is still significantly more prevalent among women than men. According to a 2016-17 national survey, 7.6% of women are living with HIV compared to 4.7% of men. This disparity is particularly alarming among 15-24 years old for whom the disease is four times higher in females than males. The reasons behind this disparity are complex, but largely boil down to different forms of…
14 May 2018
The number of US women involved in the criminal justice systems (ICJS) has ballooned since 1970. In 2015, approximately 110,000 women were imprisoned in local jails, 111,000 were in state or federal prison, almost 950,000 were on probation, and 113,000 were on parole.1-3 These women are at high risk for infection with HIV. Jaimie P. Meyer, MD, MS, FACP, assistant professor of medicine in the section of Infectious Diseases' AIDS…
10 May 2018
As disruptive technologies continue to emerge in Rwanda and across the African market in general, young innovators have been challenged to create digital innovations that can help tackle health epidemics such as HIV and AIDS. This came up during an Imbuto Foundation Youth Forum held Tuesday on the sidelines of the ongoing 2018 Transform Africa Summit in Kigali. The youth forum was held under the theme, “The New Lens: Know.…
30 April 2018
Mrs Samira Bawumia, politician and wife of the Vice President of Ghana, says in the face of declining resources for development agencies, civil society organisations and regional communities need to adopt innovative approaches to end Tuberculosis, Malaria and HIV/AIDS. She said various partners need to learn from previous programmes that had been initiated and implemented globally, and replicate their successes in countries…
28 April 2018
Zimbabwe's First Lady, Auxilia Mnangagwa, signed the Barcelona Declaration on Tuberculosis (TB) and the Bulawayo Declaration on HIV and TB, emphasising the importance of health education. The First Lady, who is the Ministry of Health and Child Care’s official cervical cancer ambassador and Minister of State for the Metropolitan Province of Bulawayo Angeline Masuku signed the declarations. The Declaration is open to any…
27 April 2018
A health sciences researcher at Simon Fraser University, Canada is challenging myths around sex for women living with HIV through a new project called Life & Love with HIV. Allison Carter says over 16,000 women in Canada are living with HIV but most of the support they receive in regards to sexual heath is about how to use condoms to prevent transmission. “However, science shows that when women are on treatment and stay…
18 April 2018
University of Waterloo researchers are working on a new way to prevent women from becoming infected with HIV. After years of research, professor Emmanuel Ho and his team have finished an initial phase of testing for an implant that uses the body's own immune cells to reduce the chances of infection.
Ho said current HIV-prevention strategies include condoms and anti-HIV drugs, which "eliminate HIV that's already…
9 April 2018
Lots has changed for HIV since the 1980s, back when there was no treatment, mass fear and lots of people were dying. Today, early treatment and access to effective HIV medication means people living with HIV can be ‘undetectable’, meaning you cannot acquire HIV from them and can expect to live a long and happy life. Science has proved it!
However, people living with HIV still face stigma and discrimination, and this…