IRIN HIV/AIDS Weekly - 271
Africa
17 February 2006


NEWS:


ZAMBIA: ARV rollout - quality not quantity?
SWAZILAND: Youth website appeals for help for AIDS orphans
NAMIBIA: Inheritance rights still a thorny issue
SENEGAL: HIV-positive gays face double stigma
SOUTHERN AFRICA: Armed forces to tackle impact of HIV/AIDS


EVENTS

1. Access to Justice Conference
2. PEPFAR Annual Meeting - Call for Abstracts

JOBS

1. Monitoring and Evaluation Senior Advisor - Rwanda



NEWS:

ZAMBIA: ARV rollout - quality not quantity?

As the Zambian government takes stock of its progress in providing 
treatment to its HIV-positive citizens during 2005, activists and health 
officials agree that more emphasis should have been placed on quality, 
and not quantity.

Having failed to meet its target to treat 100,000 HIV-positive people by 
the end of 2005, the Zambian government is now providing antiretrovirals 
(ARVs) to about half that number.

More details:
http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=5681


SWAZILAND: Young heroes website appeals for help for AIDS orphans

The web page is as brightly coloured as a primary school text book, but 
the images conjure the anxiety of abandonment and uncertainty that any 
child would feel at the loss of their parents.

"Imagine that you're 12 years old. Your father died five years ago. Two 
years ago, your mother got sick. You left school to help tend to her, 
and to care for your little brothers and sisters. You've tried to grow 
corn on your family land, but there's a drought and you haven't learned 
enough yet to be a good farmer. Now, your mother has died, too. In the 
midst of your grief and your fear for the future, questions keep you 
awake at night: What will happen to us now? How will we live?"

More details:
http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=5683


NAMIBIA: Inheritance rights still a thorny issue

When Barakias Shangheta, 17, heard that his father had died at the local 
hospital in Okakarara, a village northeast of the Namibian capital, 
Windhoek, he ran to the cattle pastures and rounded up some of the herd 
for "safekeeping".

"I knew that my father's relatives would target these and leave me and 
my mother with nothing," Shangheta told PlusNews.

As elsewhere in Africa, Namibian tradition still allows relatives to 
take land, livestock, furniture and other possessions from bereaved 
widows and their children. "They still took all that was left, leaving a 
few goats and five cattle out of 230 for my mother," Shangheta said.

More details:
http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=5689


SENEGAL: HIV-positive gays face double stigma

Twenty-four-year old male sex worker Doudou (not his real name) was 
forced to turn to Senegal's leading gay NGO, when his family members 
threw him out for being a homosexual.

When he discovered he was HIV-positive a year later, Doudou was faced 
with a double whammy: gay and HIV-positive in a predominantly Muslim 
country where homosexuality is illegal.

More details:
http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=5696


SOUTHERN AFRICA: Armed forces to tackle impact of HIV/AIDS

The impact of AIDS on the military has been a topic African armed forces 
have preferred to keep under wraps, concerned with issues of national 
security.

But in a step towards greater openness, military and civilian experts 
from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) gathered last 
week in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, as part of an advisory group to 
discuss a regional response to AIDS in the defence sector.

More details:
http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=5682



EVENTS:

1. South Africa has taken important steps by putting in place a range of 
progressive laws that prohibit HIV discrimination.  Yet thousands of 
people living with HIV/AIDS who are discriminated against in the 
workplace or in their communities, or who cannot access basic social 
services, are unable to take their matters to court because of either 
the cost or the unavailability of legal services.

To address this crisis, the AIDS Law Project, the Centre for the Study 
of AIDS, Street Law and the Wits Acornhoek Advice Centre are hosting a 
conference on access to legal services.  The conference will be held at 
Wits University, Johannesburg, 17 - 18 February 2006. Over 150 delegates 
are attending, including many important stakeholders in the field of 
human rights and access to justice.

For more information on the conference and access to justice issues, 
please contact Anneke Meerkotter at +27 11 717 8636 or Chloe Hardy at 
+27 11 717 8628.

2. Registration is now open for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS 
Relief (PEPFAR) Annual Meeting - the 2006 HIV/AIDS Implementers' 
Meeting. The meeting is scheduled for 12 - 15 June 2006 in Durban, South 
Africa. The focus of this year's meeting is on HIV/AIDS implementers. As 
such, a significant number of meeting attendees will be from 
organisations implementing HIV/AIDS programmes and services with funding 
from sources beyond PEPFAR. These attendees are being selected through 
an open application process.

This year, abstracts can only be submitted online. The final deadline 
for abstract submissions is 3 April 2006. Guidelines and eligibility 
criteria are available on the meeting website: 
www.blsmeetings.net/implementhiv2006.



JOBS:

1. Social Impact, a partner of CHF International, is seeking a 
Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Senior Advisor for the Community 
HIV/AIDS Mobilization Programme (CHAMP), headquartered in Kigali, 
Rwanda. The USAID-supported programme focuses on improving and expanding 
the delivery of community-based services focused on HIV/AIDS prevention, 
palliative care, and orphans and vulnerable children. It also includes 
strengthening the capacity of organisations providing and supporting 
such services and improving linkages. The M&E Senior Advisor will work 
to advise and manage the M&E component of a Rwanda based Community 
Service Project. The position is also structured to provide mentoring to 
a local Rwandan M&E expert who would assume the responsibilities of 
Senior M&E Advisor over time.

For more information: http://www.comminit.com/vacancy2597.html or email: 
kbuban@socialimpact.com


IRIN-SA
Tel: +27 11 895-1900
Fax: +27 11 784-6759
Email: IRIN-SA@irin.org.za


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