ARVs FOR ALL... BUT ZIMBABWEAN WOMEN Harare, Zimbabwe (2010 Features): When Zimbabwe’s prevention of child transmission (PCT) programme was renamed prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT), men who felt excluded from the intervention are becoming vindictive and taking the drugs themselves. Some are of the mistaken belief that their wives are receiving the life-saving antiretroviral drugs while they are not. ...More»
SEX WORKERS RISK IT ALL IN LESOTHO Maseru, Lesotho (2010 Features):
Most sex workers in Lesotho are forced by economic circumstances to offer their
services without the use of condoms. “For one round, it is Loti 50
(approximately US$7) with a condom or Loti 100 without,” says Pinki Mafane, an
18-year-old sex worker in Maseru. According to a 2007 UNAIDS report on HIV,
Lesotho is among nine countries in which life expectancy has dropped to below 40
years....More»
CONFIDENTIALITY: A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD Mutare, Zimbabwe, 2010 Features: Stakeholders in Zimbabwe are lobbying for the amendment of laws to allow medical personnel to disclose the HIV status of their clients to either spouses or close relatives providing home-based care. In a country where poverty forces people to prefer home-based care over hospitalisation, caregivers are informed of their kin’s HIV status, and not informed to take precautions every time they handle their dear ones’ bodily fluids, to prevent being infected. ...More»
SRI LANKA RETURNS WORLD BANK’S HIV AND AIDS PREVENTION FUNDS Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2010 Features: Unlike many countries that received World Bank assistance to curtail the impact of HIV, Sri Lanka was fortunate to receive a grant rather than a loan. The island nation’s usage of the World Bank funds has been sluggish from the beginning. A few months ago, the grant ran into troubled waters. The World Bank funding period came to an end and they requested the Health Ministry to return a colossal sum of money – US$5.6 million or 45 per cent of the total funding granted under the project....More»
SWAZI GOVERNMENT DRAGS ITS FEET ON TB Mbabane, Swaziland, 2010 Features: For over the past two years, the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare has failed to complete a $20-million TB hospital that is being constructed just a kilometre outside Swaziland’s commercial capital of Manzini. Tents then become the alternative accommodation. This is a serious issue in communities where three generations - from grandmothers to their grandchildren live in one small hut and where a TB patient would still share a hut with family members if there is no alternative shelter. ...More»
