IRIN HIV/AIDS Weekly - 140
Africa
1 August 2003


NEWS:

ZIMBABWE: Feature - A health system on the edge
SWAZILAND: Dying tradition, as funeral customs abandoned
SOUTH AFRICA: Nevirapine use for mothers and newborns under threat
SOUTH AFRICA: Teaching teachers about gender violence
SOUTH AFRICA: Impact of HIV/AIDS on teachers
LIBERIA: Strong donor commitment urged amid ongoing war
AFRICA: Reusing the female condom

LINKS

1. Communities Responding to the HIV/AIDS Epidemic
2. Foundation for Hospices in sub-Saharan Africa
3. Uganda AIDS Commission
4. Female Condom Reuse

CONFERENCES/EVENTS/RESEARCH RESOURCES

1. Webcast of South African AIDS Conference
2. Conference on Healthcare Resource Allocation for HIV/AIDS
3. Call for Abstracts
4. Who cares about the carers?

VACANCIES

1. Country Directors
2. Coordinator: Good Practice


NEWS

ZIMBABWE: Feature - A health system on the edge

Zimbabwe's main public hospital, Harare central, does not inspire
confidence. Its shabby exterior is dotted with broken windows and leaking
pipes. The wards themselves are little better, epitomising the decline of
this country's once proud health system.

Outside visiting hours the relatives of the patients wander the grounds.
Many spend all day at the hospital, simply because they cannot afford the
bus fare to make more than one journey.

Chido Rugare is typical of those whiling away the time before she can
again visit her sick daughter, Maria, in the ward. A round-trip bus ride
from her home in the high-density suburb of Mufakose is far too expensive,
so each day she walks the 17 km to be with her daughter.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=2332

SWAZILAND: Dying tradition, as funeral customs abandoned

Dead bodies left unclaimed by their families in city mortuaries, the
desecration of cemeteries and the abandonment of customary funeral rites
are new trends marking a change in the reverence Swazis have traditionally
had for their ancestors.

Last year, a national soul-searching ensued when over 60 corpses where
unearthed from shallow graves, all women and children who had gone missing
without raising widespread alarm from their families. They were the
alleged victims of Swaziland's first mass-murderer, who confessed to the
killings and led police to the graves in the Malkerns forest.

This week over 200 unclaimed bodies, some of which had been kept for more
than two years, were given paupers' funerals by the local mortuaries in
Swaziland's largest town, Manzini, 35 km east of the capital, Mbabane.

"Mortuary space is at a premium because of the AIDS epidemic in Swaziland.
We hoped the families would come to claim their loved ones, and give them
the customary burials. But we just ran out of room," an official at one
mortuary told PlusNews.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=2327

SOUTH AFRICA: Nevirapine use for mothers and newborns under threat

The use of nevirapine to prevent mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of
HIV in South Africa has come under threat after the country's drug
regulatory body gave pharmaceutical company Boehringer-Ingelheim 90 days
to provide new data on the safety of the drug.

The Medicines Control Council (MCC) has been conducting its own
investigations into the Ugandan HIVNET 012 clinical trials of nevirapine
after procedural flaws in the Ugandan project last year led to
Boehringer-Ingelheim withdrawing an application to have it approved in the
United States.

The Uganda trials, the first to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of
nevirapine in preventing MTCT of HIV, began in 1997 and the results were
published two years later.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=2326

SOUTH AFRICA: Teaching teachers about gender violence

In a country long-sickened by the level of sexual violence, South African
teachers have been encouraged to provide students with skills to cope with
the dual threat of gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS.

The University of Western Cape's (UWC) School of Public Health recently
embarked on a project focused on identifying and challenging teachers' own
knowledge of, and attitudes to, gender and sexual violence, with a view to
including these issues in the primary school curriculum.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=2333

SOUTH AFRICA: Impact of HIV/AIDS on teachers

The high rate of teachers leaving the profession in South Africa's
KwaZulu-Natal province has been accelerated by HIV/AIDS, a study has
found.

KwaZulu-Natal has one of the largest provincial education systems in the
country, with 2.6 million pupils and 76,000 teachers in over 6,000
schools.

But the pandemic, at an estimated antenatal HIV prevalence rate of 35
percent, was now threatening to "explode the scale of existing systemic
and management problems" in the education department, a study by the
Health Economics and AIDS Research Division at the University of Natal has
found.

The study findings, however, were not meant to describe a "doomsday
scenario", but rather signalled that AIDS-related deaths were eroding the
capacity of the education system and would have dramatic consequences for
the training and recruitment of teachers, the report warned.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=2315

LIBERIA: Strong donor commitment urged amid ongoing war

Non-governmental organisations have appealed to donors to continue
supporting HIV/AIDS programmes in Liberia, despite reports that rebels had
looted hospitals and clinics in the capital, Monrovia.

"The success of our existing pilot prevention of mother-to-child
transmission (PMTCT) project and expansion of it to parts of rural Liberia
depends solely on the goodwill of our donors," president of the US-based
Nduaka Educational Foundation (NEF) Chudy Nduaka told PlusNews.

NEF is one of the few NGOs dealing with HIV/AIDS in Liberia and is the
only one focusing on PMTCT.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=2322

AFRICA: Reusing the female condom

The high cost of the female condom has led to the controversial practice,
particularly in developing countries, of reuse.

But soon-to-be launched World Health Organisation (WHO) programmatic
guidelines for reuse will provide helpful information to programme
managers who need to make decisions regarding reuse.

In July 2002 WHO published a clinical protocol which stated that a new
condom is always preferable. But in situations where they are not
available or affordable, evidence suggests that the female condom can be
used safely at least five times if the WHO guidelines are followed.

More details:
http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=2320


LINKS

1. Communities Responding to the HIV/AIDS Epidemic - the CORE initiative -
is a programme providing strategic assistance to community- and
faith-based groups in developing countries. The main approach of the CORE
Initiative is to leverage existing efforts, while encouraging new efforts
through partnerships in the areas of community-based prevention, stigma
reduction, and care and support to people living with HIV/AIDS and their
families. The online resource centre provides various training manuals,
curricula, tool kits, guidelines, bibliographies and health communication
materials that can be downloaded and used for HIV/AIDS prevention, care
and stigma activities, or simply for inspiration.
http://www.coreinitiative.org/

2. The vision of the Foundation for Hospices in sub-Saharan Africa is that
people living with HIV/AIDS will have access to dignified end-of-life
care, and support for their families. Their mission is to support
organisations providing hospice and palliative care in the region. They
offer a bi-weekly African Hospice email newsletter and their website
contains a list of available hospice and palliative care services with
links to providers.
www.fhssa.org/

3. The Uganda AIDS Commission provides leadership in coordinating HIV/AIDS
programmes and the activities of all stakeholders in Uganda through
advocacy, joint planning, monitoring and evaluation to curb the spread of
HIV/AIDS in Uganda.
www.aidsuganda.org

4. The Female Health Foundation and John Snow International (UK) have
launched a website to address issues around reuse of the female condom.
This website aims to assist programme managers in deciding whether or not
to support reuse of the female condom within their programme/client base.
An online discussion of the WHO programme guidelines is planned for August
2003.
www.reusefemalecondom.org

CONFERENCES/EVENTS/RESOURCES

1. Health-e News Service, in conjunction with the Henry J Kaiser Family
Foundation, will host an exclusive webcast of the opening and closing
ceremonies as well as the plenary sessions of the 2003 South African AIDS
Conference in Durban from 3 to 6 August 2003.

The webcast will also be archived, allowing visitors to the Health-e
website after the three-day conference to replay and analyse the addresses
delivered at all four plenary sessions.

For more information: www.health-e.org.za

2. The Sixth International Conference on Healthcare Resource Allocation
for HIV/AIDS: Healthcare Systems in Transition will be held from 13 to 15
October 2003, in Washington DC, USA.

There is no registration fee for this conference. Registration is open to
physicians, allied health professionals, academicians, economists, public
health experts, government officials, NGOs, and people living with
HIV/AIDS. Due to funding constraints, scholarships are not currently
available.

This year's conference promises to contribute to global policy around the
reform and expansion of HIV care and treatment. The conference programme
is dedicated to exploring the various successes/failures of 30 national
health care systems in responding to their respective AIDS epidemics. The
conference will be a key opportunity for governments, NGOs, and donor
agencies to discuss broad health system needs as access to HIV treatment
is scaled up.

Among the featured speakers are Dr Leslie Ramsammy, Minister of Health,
Guyana; Stephen Lewis, United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in
Africa; and Dr Catherine Hankins, UNAIDS Associate Director for Strategic
Information/Chief Scientific Advisor.

For more information:
Email: lholland@iapac.org
www.iapac.org

3. The Third International Conference of the International Society for
Equity in Health (ISEqH) will be hosted by the Health Systems Trust (HST),
a South African-based NGO, the Southern African Regional Network on Equity
in Health (EQUINET) and the Global Equity Gauge Alliance (GEGA), an
international consortium of initiatives to support health equity. The
meeting will be held in Durban, South Africa, from 10 to 12 June 2004, and
will bring together researchers, policymakers, practitioners and others
concerned with equity in health to develop an international health agenda.

There is a special interest in abstracts that reflect a multidisciplinary
conceptualisation of health equity; analyse or compare rather than just
describe; are not limited to one measure of health, one age group, or one
population subgroup; include and compare different age groups and both
genders; address access, utilisation or suitability of health services for
meeting different levels of need within and across populations. There is
also interest in abstracts that provide evidence of an analysis of
determinants of impact on equity outcomes.

Abstracts can be submitted by email: mailto:leslie.nunez@utoronto.ca or by
regular mail to:

International Society for Equity in Health
256 McCaul Street, Second Floor
Toronto, Ontario M5T 1W5, Canada

4. ProCAARE will be hosting an online structured discussion over the next
few months in preparation for the 6th International Conference on Home and
Community Care, to be held in Dakar, Senegal from 8 to 11 December 2003.
Four topics will be discussed from now until the end of November.

The first topic -"Who cares about the carers?"- will be launched soon.

The objectives of the structured discussion are:

- To increase awareness of the 6th International Conference Home and
Community Care (HCC)
- To facilitate and enhance deliberative dialogue regarding home and
community care issues that will feed directly into the conference
programme
- To integrate themes, lessons learned and resolutions adopted at previous
conferences into the structured discussion and the conference itself
- To ensure that as many voices as possible are heard and have the
opportunity to participate in the conference, especially those who cannot
attend in person.

The discussion themes are as follows:

Theme 1: "Who cares about the carers?"
Theme 2:  "Vulnerable children as caregivers, as orphans, as HIV+... as
children."
Theme 3: "Palliative care in the era of ARV."
Theme 4: "PWHA and community involvement in HCC."

Each discussion will last approximately one month and will be launched
with an introductory letter and a set of questions to guide the
discussion.

To send a message to ProCAARE, write to: procaare@healthnet.org. To
subscribe or unsubscribe, write to: majordomo@healthnet.org and in the
body of the message type: subscribe procaare OR unsubscribe procaare


VACANCIES

1. Family Health International (FHI) is dedicated to improving lives,
knowledge, and understanding worldwide through a highly diversified
programme of research, education, and services in family health and
HIV/AIDS prevention and care.

FHI is looking for dynamic, results-oriented country Directors for two
countries in the southern African region.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

- Provide senior-level expertise in the development, management,
implementation, and evaluation of HIV/AIDS prevention and care programmes.
- Direct and manage a project team composed of technical experts
- Ensure fulfilment of programmatic, administrative and managerial
responsibilities as outlined in project plans and strategies, with
particular focus on PMTCT, VCT and provision of Care and Support Services
- Manage relationships with external partners (including USAID, Ministry
of Health officials, international development agencies, in-country
counterparts, private sector and other key stakeholders)
- Ensure project accountability, including proper financial accounting and
reporting as well as monitoring and evaluation.
- Develop collaborative working relationships with government and NGO
counterparts
- Lead strategic design in ensuring quality implementation of
multi-faceted health project.

REQUIREMENTS:

- Master/PhD in public health or related field
- Minimum of 15 yrs experience managing large international donor-funded
programmes, which includes 5 yrs senior-level project management
experience
- Experience in high-level policy dialogue with a multitude of different
stakeholders
- Experience in HIV/AIDS, RH, maternal and child health, NGO
sustainability, decentralisation, and familiarity with USAID-funded
programmes highly desirable
- Ability to motivate staff and produce results in difficult circumstances
- Proven ability to deliver sustainable results within a short timeframe

FHI is offering a competitive compensation package. Interested candidates
are encouraged to send cover letter and resume to: FHI HR, 2101 Wilson
Blvd., Suite 700, Arlington, VA  22201; fax: + 1 703 516-9036 or e-mail:
humanresources@fhi.org.

2. The Southern African AIDS Training Programme (SAT) is a regional
collaboration that supports community responses to HIV/AIDS through
in-depth partnerships in five countries (Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania,
Zambia and Zimbabwe) and wider networking, skills exchange and lesson-
sharing throughout the region.

SAT is recruiting for the new post of: Coordinator: Good Practice, based
in their regional office in Harare, Zimbabwe. The coordinator is a member
of the management team, together with the director, deputy director and
coordinator of finance and administration.

Good Practice is a continuous and empowering process of information
exchange between SAT and its partners, stakeholders and specific peer
intermediary organisations. The process focuses on learning and sharing
appropriate lessons, identifying and transferring relevant skills,
tracking and reporting on progress, promoting positive change in policy,
and building and maintaining support for relevant approaches and
resources.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

- Leading the Good Practice Team
- Direct supervision and support of senior staff in M&E, Communications
and Publications, and School Without Walls (skills exchange and
lesson-learning)
- Advising the SAT management team on strategic issues relating to
communications, research, advocacy, monitoring and training
- Playing a leading role in delivering the SAT Good Practice Strategy.

REQUIREMENTS:

- Masters degree in relevant area (such as development studies,
communications, public health, social research).
- At least five years' experience in a senior management position, ideally
in an international NGO or similar agency, or relevant public sector body.
- Practical experience of working to support community responses to
HIV/AIDS and training are important. Skills and experience in
participatory facilitation (meetings, workshops, etc) an advantage.
- Excellent supervisory skills and the ability to motivate staff and
maintain a spirit of team work.
- Excellent interpersonal and negotiation skills.
- Understanding of the social, political, and economic environment of
Southern Africa, specifically in relation to gender, HIV, and Human Rights
issues.
- Sound knowledge of the MS Office package - WORD, EXCEL, OUTLOOK and
POWERPOINT. Excellent computerised word processing skills essential.
- An excellent standard of written English, strong oral communication
skills in English; knowledge of local languages in Southern Africa and
Portuguese is considered an asset.
- Strong editing skills in English (Portuguese an advantage).
- Ability and availability to travel internationally.

Candidates MUST be in possession of a valid passport

For further details on the position and how to apply:

Nesta Manyuchi
SAT
Harare
Zimbabwe
Email: manyuchi@satregional.org
http://www.satregional.org


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

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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2003


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