News for 2010

UN Resident Coordinator Alberic Kacou highlighted the heightened vulnerability of women to HIV/AIDS. “In Tanzania, prevalence is more than 5 times higher among young women than it is among young men.

Charity increases access to HIV treatment in Tanzania. An innovative charity bus service that enables people living with HIV and AIDS in rural Tanzania to access life-saving treatment has announced plans to expand its routes to mark World Aids Day.

C-Change developed the Community Conversation Toolkit - a set of six materials on HIV prevention to assist communities in the southern Africa region to initiate discussions around key drivers of HIV.

Johannesburg:  When it comes to understanding what drives HIV infections among young people in southern Africa, the epicentre of the global AIDS pandemic, why not ask young people themselves?

The Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) president, Dumisani Sibanda has warned journalists to desist from viewing HIV and AIDS as only affecting other people but report on such issues with the view that they were part of the possible victims of the disease.

An African proverb asserts that it takes an entire village to raise a child. Previously, this meant that it was everyone's responsibility to socialise children well, but today it also means that children often end up being raised by other families in their communities, because HIV and AIDS leave increasing numbers of orphans and vulnerable children in its wake.

A senior United Nations Development Program (UNDP) official has said HIV/AIDS is still posing a challenge to Zambia's development efforts. Though the southern African country had managed to reduce the HIV/AIDS pandemic from 16 percent to 14.3 percent, the UNDP official said the pandemic remained unacceptably high and left no room for complacency.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that it was working with local communities in Zimbabwe to combat HIV/AIDS in the southern African country. Speaking from the remote north-western Binga rural district where the CDC was holding workshops for community volunteers providing HIV/AIDS support services, the organisation's deputy director for Zimbabwe, Gretchen Cowman, said the workshops were meant to help villagers cope with the disease.

As government implements a new HIV/AIDS treatment regimen according to latest world standards, a major grouping of non-governmental organisations are concerned that the high cost of the new medication will mean government will no longer be able provide free treatment to as many people as before.

Washington, D.C.:  The International Organization of Migration (IOM) has released the results of an eight-country 2009 survey into the health risks and needs of migrants and mobile populations.