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A ‘positive’ effort for women living with HIV in South Asia

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. ...More»

Oral Testimony Training Session Highlights Women’s Vulnerability

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’’.

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Daily coverage of the Third STOP-TB Partners’ Forum, Rio De Janeiro, 23-25 March 2009 from the perspectives of the most marginalised

Panos’ editorial team of ten journalists from selected countries with a high TB burden will produce Panoscope, a daily bilingual conference newspaper in English and Portuguese during the Third STOP- TB Partners’ Forum. The Forum is the biggest gathering of people working on TB issues. Panos GAP will also be uploading interviews with key policy makers, NGO representatives, and groups of most affected including people living with TB participating in the Forum.

Click at www.panosaids.org to access Panoscope and live coverage from the Forum from 23-25 March, 2009. For a text-only email version of Panoscope please write to geto@panosaids.org.

Oral testimonies project highlights impact of HIV on wives and widows of injecting drug users in North East India

As a part of the Panos Global AIDS Programme (GAP), Panos India is documenting oral testimonies of women affected and living with HIV and AIDS, particularly wives and widows of injecting drug users, in two North Eastern states of the country. High levels of stigma, discrimination and limited access to HIV and AIDS care and support services are some of the issues emerging from the testimonies. ...More»

Women living with HIV and AIDS find a voice in Pakistani media, says Panos study

The faces and voices of women living with HIV and AIDS are beginning to be seen and heard in Pakistani media, although not as often as they should be, says a study analysing Pakistani media’s coverage of HIV and AIDS. In most HIV and AIDS coverage, women are represented only as commercial sex workers (CSWs), the study found. The coverage also highlights a key aspect of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in Pakistan -- the phenomenon of spousal infections. It challenges the myth that HIV is a disease brought on by sexual promiscuity. ...More»