HIV & AIDS

30 vulnerable women from Tombo Village and its environs over the weekend received their certificates including start up kits and seed money, to embark on self reliance projects in their respective communities, after completing six weeks of training at the Lumtubum skills training center in Tombo.

The skills training program was organized by the Society for Women and Aids in Africa Sierra Leone Chapter (SWAASL) in collaboration with their funding partners Global Fund for Aids that focuses on vulnerable women who need empowerment to control and prevent the spread of HIV/ AIDS in Sierra Leone.

Speaking at the graduation ceremony Sister Monica Green of the Marie Stopes Society who chaired the program expressed thanks and appreciation to SWAASL, the funding agency Global Fund for Aids and the trainees for completing 6 weeks of skills training in Gara tie dying, Batik, and soap making.

She highlighted the role of women in fighting to alleviate hunger and poverty which is a recipe to get infected with HIV/ AIDS; she noted that it was against this backdrop that SWAASL deemed it fit, to identify with the vulnerable women of Tombo so that they can be empowered with skills to generate income.

The media are awash with news of defilement. Defilers traumatise and predispose their victims to the risk of HIV infection. Last year 12,230 defilement cases were reported to the Police, while in 2006, 15,385 cases were reported. Many more cases go unreported for fear of shame.

Much as the Government should be applauded for the Presidential Initiative for AIDS Strategy Communication to Youth programme which has expanded HIV prevention education to primary schools, more needs to be done to eliminate defilement in schools and other predisposing factors like exposure to pornography.

It is cynical that a nation whose motto is For God and my country has its print media flooded with tabloids. Furthermore, the advertising media industry has exposed the nation to unprecedented levels of pornography and obscenity.

Pornography refers to any graphic (pictorial) or any other forms of communication that is intended to incite sexual feelings. It has spread to schools, universities and offices.

In rural areas, video shacks operating battery-controlled equipment show pornographic movies.

Rising food prices around the world are likely to drive poor women to trade sex for basic goods like fish and cooking oil, raising the risk of new AIDS infections, U.N officials said on Monday.

Delegates at a major AIDS conference in Mexico cited the cases of fisherwomen in the Pacific and women in Kenya desperate for food being forced to sell their bodies, adding to concerns of a new twist in the spread of the deadly pandemic.

"Food is such a basic need that you can see people really going to great lengths," said Fadzai Mukonoweshuro of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization in southern Africa.

Climbing food prices -- due to increased use of biofuels, the growing demand for grains to feed a booming Asia, droughts and market speculation -- caused 50 million more people to go hungry last year compared to the year before, the United Nations said.

This link provides a useful list of organisations that work with HIV/AIDS related issues.

The female condom - currently the only female-controlled method of preventing HIV - is rarely available to women who need it. Blaming poor marketing and insufficient investment, activists at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City said failure to promote the female condom had hurt global HIV prevention efforts.

"When the female condom first came to us, it was marketed to sex workers, women in bars, and other women thought to be at high risk of HIV or to have loose morals," said Gladys Chiwome, of Zimbabwe's Women and AIDS Support Network, which promotes the use of the female condom in the southern African nation. "As a result, women who thought they were safe, such as married women, were, and still are, reluctant to use it."

Coverage of the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City has once again pointed to Botswana as a "success story" in the fight against HIV/AIDS.  Reporting on new data from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Brenda Wilson of National Public Radio said:  "Take Botswana, which had one of the highest rates of HIV in Southern Africa.  And the government and international organizations put in strong prevention and treatment programs. Prevalence among teen girls dropped from 25 percent to 18 percent."

I have another side of the story to tell. 

Botswana is a mid-income country and so, was one of the first to provide antiretroviral treatment and institute programs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. This is one fundamental reason that we can claim some success. But Botswana continues to have one of the highest HIV rates in the world, and most of the new infections are among women and young people. Today, if you meet 20 young women between the ages of 15 and 24 in Botswana, it is likely that at least 3 of them are living with HIV. The situation in Botswana is controversial because some organizations working in the country have very little understanding of how the rights of women living with HIV/AIDS are being violated.

Early in the epidemic, HIV infection and AIDS were diagnosed for relatively few women and female adolescents (although we know now that many women were infected with HIV through injection drug use but that their infections were not diagnosed).  Today, women account for more than one quarter of all new HIV/AIDS diagnoses. Women of colour are especially affected by HIV infection and AIDS.

This toolkit originally evolved out of a two-year research project on stigma conducted in Zambia, Tanzania, and Ethiopia and was originally published in 2003. The toolkit contains over 100 participatory exercises which can be adapted to fit different groups and contexts. There are different sets of pictures which can help to identify stigma, discuss the rights of positive people and help to stimulate discussions around gender and sexuality and morality issues linked to stigma.

The toolkit was developed with the involvement of staff from more than 50 non-governmental (NGOs) from these countries. They shared stories and their experiences, developed exercises, and tested some of the tools. It is a collaborative work of International HIV/AIDS Alliance, International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), Academy for Educational Development (AED), and PACT Tanzania.

This revised edition (2007) builds on the original toolkit and includes experience of the Alliance's Regional Stigma Training Project. New modules now address stigma as it relates to ARV treatment, children, youth, and men who have sex with men.

This policy seeks to contribute towards promoting effective prevention and care within the context of the public education system.It was developed by the South African Department of Education in August 1999.