Content Type
FOUND 1342
ICW believes that when HIV positive people are involved at all levels of decision-making of an organization; it is better able to respond to the concerns of people living with HIV/AIDS. Moreover, exposure to women, men and children living with HIV has a profound impact on attitudes to people living with HIV as well as knowledge of safer sex. To promote our rights and to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic effectively, HIV positive women need to be…
Behavioral, physiological and socio-cultural factors make young people more vulnerable than adults to HIV infection. This report provides a regional overview of adolescents' knowledge of HIV/AIDS and behaviors in Sub-Saharan Africa that put them at risk for or protect them from infection. It also examines the social and economic context of adolescents' lives. All of these factors are fundamental to understanding the progression of the epidemic…
In April 1994, Rwanda suffered one hundred days of violence, targeted at the Tutsi and moderate Hutu population. Ten years later, the consequences of the violence have not been dealt with adequately, neither by the international community nor by the Rwandan government. Survivors of violence still cry out for medical care; survivors and families of victims clamour for justice that is slow in coming. Women continue to die from diseases related to…
This issue brief provides an overview of the impact of HIV/AIDS on young people around the world using a variety of sources and studies. It includes specific data on youth prevalence rates, organized by gender and region. It also predicts the future impact on youth, with a section on each youth group considered at risk. Certain sub-populations of youth have been identified as bearing a disproportionate share of HIV's proliferation and/or are…
Boon Srimai's tranquil life was shattered three years ago when death struck her family twice. Within a space of months in 2002, her 34-year-old son and his wife died of AIDS, leaving behind their young daughter Methini. Suddenly Boon, who was 60 at the time, found herself being a mother all over again, having to care for the orphaned child. She is not the only grandmother shouldering such a responsibility in her village of mostly rice farmers on…
In a community hall in Soweto, South Africa's largest township, 20 men and women try to imagine life in the other gender's shoes. The workshops are largely facilitated by volunteer "peer educators," usually young black men motivated by their own exposure to domestic violence and HIV/AIDS and convinced of the need for change.
Participating in the morning panel discussion of the Commission on the Status of Women, Louise Arbour, High Commissioner for Human Rights said nothing illustrated more starkly the disastrous effects of gender discrimination than the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Since the founders of the United Nations noted their faith in "the equal rights of men and women" on the first page of the UN Charter 60 years ago, studies have shown that "there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women," Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.
Every year, HIV/AIDS causes the death of an increasing number of women. In 2002 over one million women around the world died of AIDS. Access to antiretroviral treatment (ART) could reduce this figure drastically. ART has turned HIV into a much more manageable chronic condition which may no longer be a death sentence. However, ICW is keen to point out that treatment is not just about providing ART; care, support and other medications are also…
Of the estimated 42 million people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) at the end of 2002, 19.2 million-or about 45 percent-were women (UNAIDS and World Health Organization [WHO], 2002). In many countries around the world, the majority of new infections are occurring in women, particularly adolescents and young adults. Developing appropriate responses to the gender issues that continue to make both women and men vulnerable to HIV is critical to all…
This fact sheet addresses how women need methods to protect themselves from HIV that they can control. One of the most promising prevention options on the horizon is microbicides. Women would be able to control the use of protection for themselves and their partners from HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
In Thailand, a national program to prevention mother-to-child HIV transmission began in 2000. Elements of the program included voluntary counseling and HIV testing of pregnant women, a short course of zidovudine for HIV-infected women and their infants, and formula feeding for infants. Research, monitoring and evaluation of pilot projects, training and policy-making provided an essential foundation for the program. The authors estimate that…
UNFPA's annual AIDS report discusses the agency's HIV/AIDS-related work in several regions, including sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America. UNPFA works in three key areas to reduce HIV infections as well as other sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies: young people, condom programming and pregnant women.
The Kenya Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMCT) Project, in partnership with Horizons/Population Council, UNICEF, and the Regional AIDS Training Network and with financial support from USAID, has developed a training manual for health providers on the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. The course was developed by many different experts including an obstetrician, pediatricians, lactation management specialists,…
As the AIDS epidemic continues to ravage communities across the developing world, households affected by HIV/AIDS face difficult choices as their limited resources are increasingly diverted to the costs of care and treatment. This paper seeks to examine the link between HIV/AIDS and women's property rights - if women's lack of rights increases household poverty and women's own vulnerability to infection, and if securing these rights can mitigate…
Increased condom use and premature deaths from AIDS-related diseases might be playing more of a role in declining HIV prevalence in Uganda than abstinence and fidelity, according to a study presented Wednesday at the 12th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
A conference on HIV/AIDS among women and girls in the Middle East and north Africa has heard a call for more to be done to help this vulnerable group. Although incidence rates are still low compared to the rest of the world, health practitioners warned that this would not be the case in a year's time.
A large, multisite trial designed to examine the safety and preliminary effectiveness of two candidate topical microbicides to prevent HIV infection has opened to volunteer enrollment. The trial, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, represents a partnership among various research institutions in Africa and the United States.
In Ghana, the Gender Studies and Human Rights Documentation Centre otherwise known as the Gender Centre recently organised a workshop for various women's groups in the country to deliberate on how to deepen local efforts at empowering women to negotiate safe sex. This article is dedicated to examining some of the striking statistics and issues about women, their sexual rights and HIV/AIDS around the globe, in Africa and in Ghana.
This report focuses on the plight of the women in Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo who have contracted HIV/AIDS as a result of rape during conflict in those countries. It argues that under international human rights and humanitarian law, these women have the right to reparations for their suffering, including guaranteed access to antiretroviral drugs to fight HIV / AIDS. The first part of the report…