IRIN HIV/AIDS Weekly - 82
Africa
07 June 2002


NEWS:

SOUTH AFRICA: Wednesday at Somkhele Clinic
AFRICA: Challenges in HIV/AIDS vaccine research
MALAWI: HIV/AIDS makes food crisis worse
MALAWI: Conservative Malawi grapples with sex education
NIGERIA: Antiretroviral scheme draws poor response
ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: UN peacekeepers in AIDS awareness training
ETHIOPIA: More funds needed to tackle AIDS
EAST AFRICA: IFRC explores health, politics, partnership

LINKS:

1. International AIDS Economic Network
2. AIDS Consortium
3. International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care

CONFERENCES/EVENTS/RESEARCH:

1. Gender and HIV/AIDS Satellite Session
2. Research Initiative on HIV-Related Stigma in Africa
3. Request for Information
4. Essentials of HIV/AIDS Programme Planning Course
5. Training course for journalists

SOUTH AFRICA: Wednesday at Somkhele Clinic

Situated among the rolling hills and valleys of South Africa's picturesque
KwaZulu-Natal province, Somkhele clinic is one of 14 outlying clinics
serving the 5,000 km square area of Hlabisa district - a region among
those worst hit by HIV/AIDS.

The simple pink building is along a taxi route and is one of the most
easily accessible health care facilities in the district. On this
Wednesday, however, the open-air waiting area was relatively empty and
filled mostly with women.

Wednesdays at Somkhele clinic are set-aside for pregnant mothers'
antenatal care.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSReport.ASP?ReportID=1332

AFRICA: Challenges in HIV/AIDS vaccine research

An HIV/AIDS vaccine offers the best hope of controlling the pandemic in
Africa, leading scientists said on Monday at the opening of a two-day
meeting of the African AIDS Vaccine Programme (AAVP) in Cape Town, South
Africa.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSReport.ASP?ReportID=1325

Despite optimism about the development of an HIV/AIDS vaccine in Africa,
researchers still face many hurdles, scientists said.

Dr Pontiano Kaleebu, a leading researcher with the AAVP and the Uganda
Virus Research Institute, said at the launch of the AAVP, that only two
phase one trials had been completed in Africa to date.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=1328

MALAWI: HIV/AIDS makes food crisis worse

Malnutrition and hunger in Malawi is more than not having a plate of food
to eat. It's a volatile mix of social, health and economic factors - and
HIV/AIDS has added a dangerous dimension to the country's food crisis.

This is borne out in a recent Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
report which said that HIV/AIDS is hitting the Southern African farm
sector hard, with stricken families struggling to produce enough food to
survive.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSReport.ASP?ReportID=1329

MALAWI: Conservative Malawi grapples with sex education

The Malawi Censorship Board has ordered the removal of a controversial
condom advertisement that it has declared offensive and pornographic.

The advertisement, for the Chishango brand, features a couple smiling
shyly at each other in a market. But the photograph of the condom's
packaging at the bottom right of the billboard has caused an outcry. It is
an image of a scantily-clad woman's torso, one hand on her revealed thigh,
the other suggestively hovering below her navel.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSReport.ASP?ReportID=1323

NIGERIA: Antiretroviral scheme draws poor response

A programme to provide subsidised treatment for people living with
HIV/AIDS in Nigeria got underway in April after a months-long delay, but
so far it has had a poor response from the over three million people
infected nationwide, hospital sources said.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSReport.ASP?ReportID=1331

ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: UN peacekeepers providing AIDS awareness training

The UN peacekeeping mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) has taken the
lead in providing training on how to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic sweeping
Africa.

It has trained troops from both countries, as well as its own
peacekeepers, to instruct fellow soldiers and civilians on how to combat
the virus and prevent its spread

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSReport.ASP?ReportID=1326

ETHIOPIA: More funds needed to tackle AIDS

Ethiopia needs at least US $166 million a year to fight the HIV/AIDS
crisis that is devastating the country, a government official has said.

It also needs food aid for orphans and victims of the virus, Abebe Kebede
from the metropolitan HIV/AIDS secretariat, told PlusNews.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSReport.ASP?ReportID=1327

EAST AFRICA: IFRC explores health, politics, partnership

Delegates and volunteers from the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement met
in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, this week to analyse the impact of the
political and socio-economic environment on their work in eastern Africa.

Africa hosts two-thirds of the world's population living with HIV/AIDS,
and the disease is "an unavoidable reality" in eastern Africa, the
Federation said on Monday. With the Red Cross Red Crescent movement also
directly affected, it needed to explore the consequences for national
societies as employer and volunteer organisations.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSReport.ASP?ReportID=1324


LINKS:

1. The International AIDS Economic Network (IAEN)  provides data, tools
and analysis on the economics of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in
developing countries, for cost-effective responses to the global epidemic.
http://www.iaen.org/

2. The AIDS Consortium is a network of over 300 South African
organisations, many community-based, and over 200 individuals. The
Consortium provides access to information on any aspect of HIV/AIDS and
lobbies for a human rights-based response to the epidemic.
http://www.aidsconsortium.org.za/

3. International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care Online provides
cutting-edge HIV clinical management updates and timely public health
policy information
http://www.iapac.org/


CONFERENCES/EVENTS/RESEARCH:

1. Gender and HIV/AIDS satellite Session, 2-4pm, 7 July, Barcelona

The Atlantic Centre of Excellence for Women's Health (ACEWH) from Halifax,
Nova Scotia, Canada and their partners invite you to attend a satellite
session on gender-based health policy and HIV/AIDS. Discussions from this
interactive session will help to inform the design of curriculum modules
for a proposed International Institute on Gender Mainstreaming and
HIV/AIDS.

The proposed Institute will serve to increase the capacity of programme
managers and policy makers to incorporate gender-based perspectives into
their HIV/AIDS work.

To register for the satellite, send an email to:
aideen.reynolds@dal.ca

For more information about ACEWH:
http://www.medicine.dal.ca/acewh

2. The International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) is leading a
research initiative in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zambia to investigate the
causes, manifestations, and consequences of HIV/AIDS-related stigma and
resulting discriminatory acts. ICRW and its in-country partners hope to
gain an understanding of those factors that perpetuate or mitigate stigma
and how they affect access to HIV prevention, care, and support efforts.

The CHANGE Project/Academy for Educational Development (AED) will use the
research findings to develop pilot interventions that minimise the
influence of HIV-related stigma on the use of prevention, care, and
support programmes. Preliminary findings will be published in the coming
weeks.

For more information:
http://www.icrw.org/docs/Stigma_Africa_InfoBulletin_302.pdf

Updates about the study and preliminary findings will be posted at:
http://www.icrw.org/projects/hivrelatedstigma/hivrelatedstigma.htm

3. The HIV/AIDS Research Group at the University of Natal in
Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in collaboration with the Health Systems
Trust, is currently researching voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) in
Africa, and conducting a national study of VCT services in South Africa.

The general aim of this project is to provide an audit of the current
status of VCT in South Africa such that recommendations to further inform
VCT implementation at a national level can be made.

As part of this broad aim, a specific component of this project is the
review of all literature (both published and unpublished) on VCT in
Africa. The researchers are looking for information regarding any research
that has been conducted in the area of VCT in any African country. This
would include any discussion documents, review articles, policy documents
or research reports that deal with the issue of VCT.

The names of any key organisations that do research in this area would
also be welcome.

Please direct your replies to: HIVCORE@nu.ac.za
SOURCE: AF-AIDS

4. Essentials of HIV/AIDS Programme Planning Course 3-7 August 2002 -
Seattle, USA

This course will assist HIV/AIDS programme managers from developing
countries in formulating HIV/AIDS and STI intervention strategies,
addressing priorities for rapid scale-up, using research to practice
approaches to inform programming decisions, and establishing systems for
performance monitoring and evaluation.

For more information
http://www.comminit.com/events_cal/2002/1042-event.html
Contact: essentialscourse@tvtassociates.com

5. Fighting the HIV/AIDS Pandemic Through Information and Strategic
Communication: An Integrated Training Course for Programme Teams and
Journalists

6 June - 16 July 2002 - Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia  - via
distance learning

Integrated training programme to build the capacity of HIV/AIDS prevention
programme teams and journalists to engage in informed dialogue about the
HIV/AIDS pandemic to improve the design and implementation of behavior
change interventions, strengthen the impact of community outreach efforts,
and improve the quality of media coverage to help slow the spread of
HIV/AIDS.

For more information:
http://www.comminit.com/events_cal/2002/1117-event.html
Contact:  Cecilia Verzosa Cverzosa@worldbank.org or Timothy Carrington
tcarrington@worldbank.org


IRIN-SA
Tel: +27 11 880-4633
Fax: +27 11 447-5472
Email: IRIN-SA@irin.org.za

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