Media Coverage of HIV/AIDS and TB: Issues in Ethiopia

A study commissioned by Panos Eastern Africa for the Panos Global AIDS Programme found that a well-informed, reliable and vigilant media that enhances the flow of HIV and AIDS/TB information needs active collaboration from the government, NGOs and health professionals.  The study recommends, among other things, the sensitizing  of media managers and owners to the idea that health is part of development and to the value of establishing health desks in their newsrooms.

The Jan 12, 2010 earthquake that struck near Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, destroying much of the island's infrastructure and killing tens of thousands of people, did not leave Panos Caribbean  untouched.  The wife of a staffer was killed. And the building housing the Panos office is near total collapse.  Jan Voordouw, Executive Director of Panos Caribbean, says Panos Haiti staff sleep outdoors - partly from necessity and partly from fear as aftershocks continue to rock the island.

http://www.panos.org.uk/?lid=30797

Panos Pakistan’s initiative, ‘Positive Voices’, aimed at empowering women living with HIV and AIDS in South Asia to communicate their life stories through oral testimonies, involved training 12 individuals from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal - with varied experience in media, training and reproductive health issues including HIV/AIDS - to collect oral testimonies and train others to do the same.

David Musengeri and Elvis Basudde , Ugandan journalists living with HIV,  are an inspiration to those infected by the virus and  the condition it is responsible for -  AIDS.  PANOS Eastern Africa and others who stood by the two  scribes believe they can serve as an inspiration  to others to come out, disclose their status and avail of help and treatment.  Both have just been nominated by the “New Vision’’ newspaper, acting in conjunction with a parliamentary committee on HIV and AIDS, for the remarkable roles they play fighting HIV in their communities. ...More»

Survey results : In Dec. 2008 Panos Canada took a group of 10 AIDS practitioners from Haiti to Vancouver on an exchange visit that produced encouraging results. A good 69 percent of British Columbian participants surveyed soon after the exchange said it would affect the way they thought or acted on AIDS. And 70 percent of respondents rated the survey 8-10 in a scale of ten. In all, 49 of the 95 exchange participants surveyed responded.
Read from Panos Canada...More»

An oral testimony (OT) training session conducted by PANOS South Asia in Patna, Bihar state, brings out the fact that women are the worst victims of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. If detected positive then in-laws may blame them for the “ill fate” - even though it may have been the husband who had passed on the virus. Women also end up spending a lot of time caring for and nursing sick husbands. Many have to cope with the death, not only of the husband but also of their children. People talk behind their backs and treat them like “untouchables” even within their own homes. One of the women said: ‘’Everyone mistreated and turned their backs on us, but there is one person you can always go back to, one person who will accept you unconditionally despite everything and that person is our mother’’....More»

Media coverage of HIV/AIDS in the Great Lakes Region of Africa leaves much to be desired according to the report of a monitoring effort mounted in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda in 2008 by Institut Panos Paris....More»

A story on the plight of wives of migrant workers,  commissioned by Panos Pakistan as part of GAP’s 2010 features, has prompted UNAIDS to conduct  a series of workshops in all the four provinces of Pakistan aimed at highlighting the special vulnerability of the group  to HIV/AIDS....More»

With their overcrowded cells, filthy environment, and rampant multi-partner sex, Haiti’s prisons are ideal settings for the spread of tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS.  Neither the penitentiary administration nor the Haitian Ministry of Health have statistics on how many inmates are infected with HIV/AIDS and/or TB. Inmates are not screened upon admission in the prisons and their condition is discovered only when they become very ill. ...More»

Punjab is listed as a low-risk state for HIV according to India’s National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO). But talking to people and meeting experts suggests that NACO’s figures are very conservative. The group at greatest risk for HIV in Punjab are truck drivers. There's also a growing number of injecting drug users.  What happens to widows  and survivors in forgotten towns, remote border villages and small towns once their sole earning members are incapacitated or dead can be heart-breaking.

Link to video: http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/86026/punjabs-forgotten-women-a-lonely-war-against-aids.html ...More»

Institut Panos Paris (IPP) has published a detailed qualitative and quantitative, of the coverage of HIV and AIDS by the media in  three countries of the Great Lakes region, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – where the conflicts, of yesterday and today, have contributed and continue to contribute widely to its exponential development. As a result of this, three national reports and one regional report (synthesising the findings of the three national reports) has been produced....More»