Churches, Faith Groups Speak Up About HIV in Black Communities

Two stories reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation today highlight the efforts of church leaders and faith-based groups to confront fear, stigma, and other challenges facing HIV/AIDS efforts among African American communities.

>> Baptist Conference Addresses HIV/AIDS In Black Community
“Fear, religious beliefs and cultural differences are among the reasons why blacks do not get tested for HIV, participants of the National Baptist Convention USA’s annual Congress of Christian Education conference being held in Detroit, said on Monday, the Detroit Free Press reports. As part of the five-day conference, religious leaders discussed ways to address the high rates of HIV and AIDS among the black community.”  (Read more)

>> Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky Religious Groups Join Efforts To Encourage HIV Testing
“A Christian-theater troupe and other area religious leaders are participating in HIV testing efforts targeting the black community in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky as part of National HIV Testing Day, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.”  (Read more)

New U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Confirmed

The following press release is available on the official website of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR): http://www.pepfar.gov/press/releases/2009/125246.htm.

For Immediate Release
June 23, 2009

Media Contact: Jennifer Peterson, (202) 663-2708

Washington, DC – Today, Eric Goosby, MD, assumed the role of Ambassador at Large and Global AIDS Coordinator with the U.S. Department of State. In this role, Ambassador Goosby will lead all U.S. Government international HIV/AIDS efforts. Ambassador Goosby will oversee implementation of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), as well as U.S. Government engagement with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Ambassador Goosby served as CEO and Chief Medical Officer of Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation from 2001 to June 2009. At present, he is also Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Ambassador Goosby has played a key role in the development and implementation of HIV/AIDS national treatment scale-up plans in South Africa, Rwanda, China, and Ukraine. He focuses his expertise on the scale-up of sustainable HIV/AIDS treatment capacity, including the delivery of HIV antiretroviral drugs, within existing healthcare systems. Ambassador Goosby has extensive international experience in the development of treatment guidelines for use of antiretroviral therapies, clinical mentoring and training of health professionals, and the design and implementation of local models of care for HIV/AIDS. He has worked closely with international partners on the development of successful HIV/AIDS treatment and treatment-based prevention strategies for high-risk populations.

Ambassador Goosby has over 25 years of experience with HIV/AIDS, ranging from his early years treating patients at San Francisco General Hospital when AIDS first emerged, to engagement at the highest level of policy leadership. As the first Director of the Ryan White Care Act at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Ambassador Goosby helped develop HIV/AIDS delivery systems in the United States.

During the Clinton Administration, he served as Deputy Director of the White House National AIDS Policy Office and Director of the Office of HIV/AIDS Policy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Ambassador Goosby has longstanding working relationships with leading multilateral organizations, including UNAIDS, the Global Fund and the World Health Organization.

Click, Give

Quick, look to the right.  See that new badge?  Click the button!

WordPress just added a SocialVibe widget, and I’m very excited about it.  This program allows you to pick a cause (mine is the World Food Programme), display it, and support the cause … for free.  You choose a corporate sponsor from a list of options, and that sponsor will donate to your charity whenever a site user interacts with the badge.

The corporate motivation here is obviously advertising — surprise, surprise.  But I’m willing to give away a little ad space to someone who’s willing to donate food to kids who need it. 

So, please click that button.  You’ll be doing something great, and it will cost you precisely nothing.  Not so hard, right? :)

Dance against AIDS

This report, from IRIN/PlusNews, is very cool.

NAIROBI, 18 June 2009 (PlusNews) – An initiative that uses music and dance to convey HIV prevention messages to young people, dance4life, has won an award for Excellence in HIV/AIDS Communication in Africa from the African Network for Strategic Communication in Health and Development (AfriComNet).

“Adults are still guessing but dance4life has already taken a giant step,” their press release quotes one young man, Mugalu, from Uganda, as saying. “[...] dance4life has become my hope and I pray it grows bigger.”

dance4life won in the category, ‘best multi-channel strategy, campaign or tool’, for its innovative use of local dancing in re-energizing existing responses.

Read the whole article: http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=84902

I love hearing about how people put all different kinds of skills, talents, and interests to work in the support of a cause.  When I was working with the Student Global AIDS Campaign in college, one thing we were always struggling to get across to people was the idea that anyone can get involved with HIV/AIDS advocacy.  (I was especially gung-ho about this because I was an English / History double-major with no obvious link to the issue.)  You don’t have to be an expert in medicine, or politics, or some obviously “relevant” field to make a difference.  A little creativity and willingness to learn can go far.

I think the biblical concept of spiritual gifts is helpful here.  In his letters, Paul often writes about how God gives people many different abilities, but all can be used to serve him.  And if we are engaged in HIV/AIDS advocacy as a service to God, it makes sense that many different abilities are useful — and, indeed, needed — here as well.  Stories like this one about dance4life can remind us that there is room for everyone in efforts of such importance.

AP reports: World hunger reaches the 1 billion people mark

By ALESSANDRA RIZZO, Associated Press Writer Alessandra Rizzo, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jun 19, 11:13 am ET

ROME – More than a billion people — a sixth of the world’s population — are now hungry, a historic high due largely to the global economic crisis and stubbornly high food prices, a U.N. agency said Friday.

Compared with last year, there are 100 million more people who are hungry, meaning they consume fewer than 1,800 calories a day, the Food and Agriculture Organization said.

Almost all the world’s undernourished live in developing countries, where food prices have fallen more slowly than in the richer nations, the report said. Poor countries need more aid and agricultural investment to cope, it said.

Read the whole article: World hunger reaches the 1 billion people mark – Yahoo! News

Health? Care?

I’m beginning to notice something odd about the discussions of health care reform legislation in the United States.  There’s a lot of talk about money, what should be spent, what should be saved.  There’s a lot of talk about government, and corporations, and ”freedom” (which, in some circles, apparently means the freedom to get sick and/or die without treatment if you happen to be less than wealthy).  I have not, on the other hand, heard much about health — as in, “what would be the best way to help people be healthy?”  I’ve heard still less about care — as in actually caring for human beings and making it a priority to minimize pain and suffering.

Sex, food, and desperation

A new article from BBC News highlights one of the many heartbreaking aspects of reality in the beleaguered country of Zimbabwe:

Growing numbers of children in Zimbabwe are turning to prostitution to survive, the charity Save the Children says.

The aid agency says increasing poverty is leading girls as young as 12 to sell their bodies for as little as a packet of biscuits.

It also claims that the coming football World Cup in neighbouring South Africa could soon make things worse.

Unemployment in Zimbabwe is thought to top 90% and many cannot afford to pay for food, medical care or school fees.

Read the full article: BBC NEWS | Africa | Zimbabwe girls trade sex for food
 

Where to begin?  The tragedy of the story itself is obvious.  Even sadder — if possible — is the fact that this isn’t such an extraordinary situation.  “Survival sex” (transactional sex undertaken out of desperation and necessity, ie. for food, resources to care for children, etc.) is a terrible reality for many, many women and girls around the world.  And, as if the circumstance wasn’t bad enough in itself, this type of interaction often plays a major role in the transmission of HIV/AIDS.

More on HIV demographics in South Africa

Following up on yesterday’s post quoting a BBC report on a recent study on HIV demographics in the country of South Africa, here’s some more detail from an article produced by IRIN/PlusNews.

In recent years, researchers have identified intergenerational sex, particularly between younger women and older men, and having multiple sexual partners at the same time, as major drivers of the HIV epidemic in southern Africa.

The HSRC survey found that prevention efforts in South Africa were having little or no impact on either of these risky behaviours [...].  Worryingly, since 2005 accurate knowledge about how HIV is transmitted had decreased significantly in all age groups. One researcher noted that “There seemed to be an acceptance of multiple partners, especially among the youth,” and that respondents found it hard to grasp the link between multiple partners and increased HIV risk.

Shisana said these disturbing trends were somewhat offset by a significant uptake in condom use, particularly among young men, 87 percent of whom reported using a condom at last sex. “I think young men have made a decision that they’re going to run around, but that they’re going to use a condom,” she said.

Read full article:  SOUTH AFRICA: A mixed bag of new HIV figures | HIV/AIDS (PlusNews) Prevention – PlusNews | Breaking News

BBC News: HIV in South Africa “levels off”

South Africa’s HIV epidemic has levelled off at an infection rate of 10.9% for those aged two or older, according to a new study.

The survey also suggests the rate of infection in children and teenagers could be falling.

This could be partly attributed to increased use of condoms, it says.

But the survey warned that the overall situation remained “dire”. South Africa has the world’s largest HIV-positive population, at 5.5 million.

Women aged between 20 and 34 continued to be the worst affected, with 33% carrying HIV, the report by the Human Sciences Research Council said.

Read the whole article:  BBC NEWS | Africa | HIV in South Africa ‘levels off’

Two days ago the Kaiser Network released a fairly detailed article (”Majority of HIV-Positive Pregnant Women In Developing World Lack Access to PMTCT Services, Report Says“) about a scathing new report on lack of access to treatment for prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV in the developing world. 

Two-thirds of HIV-positive pregnant women in the developing world do not have access to treatment to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission, which could lead to 370,000 new HIV cases annually among infants, according to a study released Thursday by the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, Bloomberg reports (Chase, Bloomberg, 5/21). Of the 1.5 million HIV-positive pregnant women each year in the developing world, about one-third receive any kind of drug therapy at all, the report said, adding that most of the treatment is inadequate and fails to prevent MTCT. [...]

The report cited poor government and donor coordination, as well as funding gaps, as the main reasons many women do not obtain the treatment, Stephen Lewis, founder of AIDS-Free World and a co-author of the report, said (Bloomberg, 5/21). [...]
 
The report found that in 61 countries — such as Cameroon, Ethiopia, India and Nigeria — more than three-quarters of HIV-positive pregnant women do not receive any drug treatment for PMTCT. It said that the world is tolerating a “shameful example of double standards” because MTCT has been virtually eliminated in wealthy nations, where most HIV-positive pregnant women have access to the complete drug regimen (Globe and Mail, 5/22). [...]

Officials from UNAIDS, the World Health Organization and 20 international groups are expected to meet this week in Nairobi, Kenya, to launch a campaign aimed at improving access to PMTCT services, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe said.

It seems scandalous that progress is lagging so much in this area.  If you think about the best ways to get ahead of a pandemic, surely keeping babies from being born with the disease must be near the top of the list!  I will hope to hear good news out of the Nairobi meetings next week.

Hidden Hunger and How to Fix It

Great new column from Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, talking about malnutrition and some cheap and simple steps for alleviating it by enriching basic food products with additional nutrients.

The World Bank has estimated that United Nations goals for overcoming global poverty have been set back seven years by the global crisis. It calculates that increased malnutrition last year may have caused an additional 44 million children to suffer permanent physical or mental impairment.

Yet one of the great Western misconceptions is that severe malnutrition is simply about not getting enough to eat. Often it’s about not getting the right micronutrients — iron, zinc, vitamin A, iodine — and one of the most cost-effective ways outsiders can combat poverty is to fight this “hidden hunger.”

via Op-Ed Columnist – The Hidden Hunger – NYTimes.com

This is fascinating stuff — it’s astonishing that something so simple as a vitamin here, a mineral there, could have such a huge impact on so many people.  And if it’s so easy to deal with…why haven’t we dealt with it?  Let’s hope this article helps get the word out to people in the best positions to do something.

Sexual violence and HIV/AIDS in Swaziland

According to the UN’s IRIN/PlusNews,

One in three Swazi girls has experienced some form of sexual violence before the age of 18, which often leads to serious social and health problems including HIV and unwanted pregnancies, a new study has found.  [...]

An estimated 22 percent of Swazi women aged between 15 and 24 are infected with HIV; the authors noted that sexual violence could be an important route of HIV transmission in high-prevalence countries like Swaziland. [...]

Disturbingly, researchers found that in three-quarters of cases, the perpetrators of sexual violence were men or boys related to or known to the girls.

The results of this study — supported by the UN Children’s Fund and the US CDC, and published in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet — are shocking, and deeply tragic.  Not surprisingly, in addition to its links to HIV transmission, sexual violence increased girls’ risk of “ever feeling depressed, thoughts of suicide, attempted suicide, unwanted pregnancy, pregnancy complications or miscarriages, sexually transmitted diseases, difficulty sleeping, and alcohol consumption.” 

May God help them.

Vigils protest imprisonment of Iranian HIV/AIDS doctors

The past week saw numerous protests against Iran’s continued imprisonment of two doctors and HIV/AIDS advocates (see this post for background):

Health professionals on Tuesday held vigils in several cities worldwide to protest the imprisonment of Iranian brothers Kamiar and Arash Alaei — physicians and leading HIV/AIDS advocates in the country — following the release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, the Albany Times Union reports. Vigils were held in cities such as New York City and Washington, D.C., as a day of global protest against the brothers’ imprisonment. Vigils also were held in cities across Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, according to the Times Union.
- Vigils Held Worldwide To Protest Jailing Of Iranian Physicians Who Addressed HIV/AIDS

Obama appoints new CDC head

Big health news: according to the New York Times,

President Obama announced on Friday that he has chosen Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the New York City health commissioner, as the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Frieden, a 48-year-old infectious disease specialist, has cut a high and sometimes contentious profile in his seven years as New York’s top health official under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. He led the crusade to ban smoking in restaurants and bars, pushed to make H.I.V. testing a routine part of medical exams, and defended a program that passes out more than 35 million condoms a year.

As part of his announcement, President Obama described Frieden as  “an expert in preparedness and response to health emergencies, and has been at the forefront of the fight against heart disease, cancer and obesity, infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and AIDS, and in the establishment of electronic health records.”

According to a Kaiser Network article,

Several HIV/AIDS and health care advocates praised the appointment, according to the Times. Dennis deLeon, president of the Latino Commission on AIDS in New York City, said that Frieden is “willing to challenge the status quo in an effort to make a difference.” Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the not-for-profit group Trust for America’s Health, said that Frieden is a “transformational leader” who “can take public health to a new place” (Harris/Hartocollis, New York Times, 5/15).

Prior to taking his most recent job in New York, Frieden worked on tuberculosis control in India for the World Health Organization.  Before that, he directed New York’s Bureau of Tuberculosis Control (see the New York Times’ expanded coverage on  Friedman).

Fair Trade: Learn More

World Fair Trade Day 2009 Video:

 

“What Is Fair Trade?”:
http://www.fairtraderesource.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/what-is-fair-trade-v3.pdf:

“Top 10 Reasons to Support Fair Trade”:
http://www.fairtraderesource.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/top-10-reasons-to-support-fair-trade-v4.pdf

from Lutheran World Relief:
http://www.fairtraderesource.org/downloads/WFTD-One-Page-Handout-2008-CLR.pdf

from Catholic Relief Services:
http://www.fairtraderesource.org/downloads/WFTD-One-Page-Handout-2008-CLR.pdf