Current Issues

 Prevention is a word that draws considerable controversy among AIDS experts. Billions of dollars have been poured into treatment programs and vaccine research, but prevention strategies - things like condoms, education, and clean needle exchanges - rarely receive comparable attention. Prevention does not require vast research capabilities. Its success is not dependent on feats of technical ingenuity such as refrigeration in remote, off-grid villages. But in Africa, prevention has nonetheless baffled the medical establishment. Meanwhile, the most recent in a long string of research disappointments have caused scientists to forecast a long wait for a vaccine breakthrough. In its absence, it is increasingly apparent that prevention will have to be at the forefront of any HIV/AIDS response.

Women entrepreneurs are now a key focus in many developmental issues as a way to amply their numbers in the business world. The International Finance Corporation plans to help at least 400 women owned enterprises in Kenya to access credit by 2011.

In a partnership deal with the African Development Bank formalised in 2006, the private leading arm of the World Bank through the Growth Oriented Woman Enterprise programme, Gowe has so far approved 28 loan applications.

"Gowe helps women owned businesses grow by providing financing guarantees of up to $ 400,000 about Sh 32 million. Under the programme, 117 women entrepreneurs have been trained," said Ms Makena Mwiti, Senior Gender Co-ordinator-Africa Gender Enterprise Markets GEM.

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 Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where bar staff told the gathering they often had to deal with sexual violence and harassment.

"People don't respect you as a bar worker; they treat you badly and expect that you are an easy target for sex because of your job," Catherine Wacira, a bar hostess in Nairobi, told the conference on 27 October.

"Our managers rarely take our side when we are being harassed because the customers are paying a lot of money; they prefer to keep them happy rather than defend us."

Participants at the conference on preventing HIV and sexual violence among bar hostesses said their working conditions sometimes made it difficult for them to refuse punters' sexual advances.

The Minister of Education Naledi Pandor and 23 public higher education institutions have adopted a policy which will guide schools and tertiary institutions to improve their current HIV and AIDS prevention programmes.

Young people in South Africa face the highest rate of HIV infection.

The Policy Framework on HIV and AIDS for Higher Education Institution in South Africa, adopted at an event in Johannesburg on Thursday, recognises that institutions must act to prevent new HIV infections and provide access to treatment, care and support for staff and students infected or affected by the pandemic.

Adopting the policy, Minister Pandor said South Africa was a country with one of the highest HIV and AIDS rates, and therefore there was a need to support those infected and affected by the disease.

Young people in higher education institutions are facing peer pressure, alcohol and drug abuse, said the minister, adding that she was hoping to see chancellors taking a leading role in the implementation of the framework.

"We can do no less if we were to save young people to this serious threat, I'm looking forward to the concrete plans to the framework which will see the reduction of the epidemic," she said.

Teens gathered at Islamic Center Nyamirambo, a city suburb for a one day Anti-AIDS competition organised by the international organisation Right to Play on Tuesday, asked their parents to talk about issues surrounding HIV/AIDS in their homes.

Teens that spoke to The New Times yesterday say that one of the reasons HIV/AIDS is still high among youth is that parents shy from speaking to their children about relationships and the pandemic.

"Few of us have tried to join and form anti-AIDS clubs at our schools but those are disadvantaged because most parents don't want to talk about relationships, issues surrounding sexuality," Moses Habimana, a student a from Ecole secondary de Kanombe, said at the competition venue.

Social networks could complement, and in some cases replace, services provided by government.

That's according to analyst house Gartner that says government organisations could benefit from social networking technology if they approach it in the right way.

Gartner analyst Andrea Di Maio told silicon.com the public sector could exploit social networking communities which improve on services already provided by the government, and could work with online communities to support or even replace certain online services government provides.

At least 300 women are victims of sexual violence every year in Bamako, according to local police records, but the actual figure is much higher said the president of the Bamako-based non-profit, Women in Law and Development in Africa.

"Victims and their families rarely denounce rapists in order to preserve the family's dignity and honour," said the group's president Sidibe Djenba Diop, "Rape cases are on the rise, yet neither the [Malian] culture nor its laws recognise, yet, that rape is an act of violence against women."

The account by Beatrice Tonhodzayi of the experiences of an HIV positive man raises a lot of issues which l feel should be discussed more than is done in the diary. I will start by saying upfront that in this critique l am taking a woman centred approach to the issues raised. In particular, I have always been concerned that in a lot of the discourse around infection within a marital relationship, there seems to be an inordinate amount of emphasis on people not seeking to blame their sexual partners, rather being exhorted to "just accept the result and move on".

The move by the SABC to go to digital signals by 2011 has caused some confusion in the marketplace, with many consumers who believe it will be HD broadcasting and they will need to buy HD-capable televisions in future.

"The SABC's digital move makes no difference to the picture quality," said Brad Buchanan, group buyer at Game. "Broadcasters benefit because digital signals make better use of their bandwidth, enabling more channels to be viewed."

It's an argument unlikely to win many friends among gender equality campaigners, but men earn more money than women not because they are inherently favoured in the workplace but because they work longer hours, put in the overtime, go out of their way to seek higher pay and promotion and don't stop working to have families.