AFRICA: IRIN PlusNews Weekly Issue 299, 28 August-1 September 2006

September 1, 2006

AFRICA: AFRICA: IRIN PlusNews Weekly Issue 299, 28 August-1 September 2006

NEWS

ZAMBIA: Bridging the gap between traditional and western medicine

SWAZILAND: Turning the corner on AIDS by using the youth

KENYA: Religious leaders spread HIV message

CAMEROON: Stigma helps charlatans selling AIDS cures to flourish

SWAZILAND: Critics slam findings on female sexual activity

COTE D´IVOIRE: Fear and silence impede services for rape survivors

UGANDA: Poor working conditions slow ARV rollout in war-ruined north

UGANDA: HIV rates still high in northern camps

SOUTH AFRICA: Government pressured to review HIV/AIDS communication strategy

EVENTS/RESOURCES

1. Launch of 'Are Your Rights Respected?' a comic book aimed at deaf youth.

2. Conference: Imagined Futures: student leadership in a time of AIDS, 27-28

September, Pretoria, South Africa.

VACANCIES

1. Global Programmes Manager - World AIDS Campaign (WAC), Cape Town, South

Africa

2. Programme Manager - African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF), Pretoria,

South Africa

NEWS

ZAMBIA: Bridging the gap between traditional and western medicine

Zambia's HIV/AIDS pandemic is helping to bridge the divide between traditional

healers and practitioners of western medicine.

Earlier this year the government commissioned the first clinical trials of

remedies dispensed by traditional healers who claimed to have found an AIDS

cure, fostering closer relations between the two groups of practitioners.

National AIDS Council spokesperson e Mwiinga told IRIN that the results

would be published soon. " The three herbs passed all the tests and we have just

concluded the six-month clinical observation period, after having successfully

administered the same herbs to 30 people living with HIV/AIDS.

More details:

http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=6320

SWAZILAND: Turning the corner on AIDS by using the youth

In the past four months Gerald Ndwandwe, 22, has buried three friends he has

known since primary school. He does not want to lose any more.

" So many of my friends have HIV. They won't admit it, and that makes my job

harder, " the peer educator told PlusNews. " But if I don't intervene now, they

will suffer later, and they will die early. "

Ndwandwe works in rural areas, where 80 percent of the roughly one million

population live, teaching people about HIV/AIDS and how to prevent transmission

of the disease. Testing is rare outside of urban centres, although UNAIDS puts

the country's prevalence at 33 percent, the highest in the world.

More details:

http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=6317

KENYA: Religious leaders spread HIV message

In the crowded shantytowns of Eastlands in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, a new

voice has emerged in the fight against HIV/AIDS: Catholic, Protestant and Muslim

religious leaders are now educating their members about the disease instead of

condeming those who have contracted it.

" The church is strategically positioned to fight AIDS. Most people in Kenya

place a lot of trust in their pastor or Imam, " said Reverend Gilbert Ayiera of

the Eastlands Pentecostal Pastor's Fellowship. " We have decided to use that

influence positively to prevent our people from dying more. "

The Archbishop of the Anglican Church, Nzimbi, issued a public apology

for having shunned HIV-positive people, saying, " Our earlier approach in

fighting AIDS was misplaced, since we likened it to a disease for sinners and a

curse from God. "

More details:

http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=6311

CAMEROON: Stigma helps charlatans selling AIDS cures to flourish

Many Cameroonians view HIV/AIDS as a shameful disease. Reluctant to disclose or

accept their HIV positive status, they consult charlatans claiming to cure the

disease, who not only fail but often worsen their clients' health by encouraging

them to interrupt ARV treatment, causing them to develop resistance to future

ARV medications. Christy's belief in miracle cures almost cost her her life.

She discovered her positive status soon after the death of her husband, a

magistrate, in 2001. " I had shingles [a subcutaneous disease often found in

HIV-positive people] for the second time. A cousin advised me to be tested for

HIV/AIDS. "

After the test, Christy, 35, finally understood what had killed her husband and

two of her three children. " I had always been faithful to my husband - I thought

that AIDS only affected women who did not behave as they should; people who were

not responsible. The sky fell on my head. "

More details:

http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=6303

SWAZILAND: Critics slam findings on female sexual activity

Swazi women have more sexual partners than men, a new study has found, but

critics of the controversial report say this is driven by poverty.

Sixty percent of sexually active women said they had had at least two sexual

partners in the past three months - 18 percent higher than men.

Although the survey tested the assumption that male sexual behaviour was the

primary cause for Swaziland having the world's highest rate of HIV/AIDS

infections, it did not absolve men, HIV/AIDS advocacy groups said in reaction to

the report.

More details:

http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=6300

COTE D IVOIRE: Fear and silence impede services for rape survivors

When soldiers are responsible for sexual violence, fear of reprisal largely

explains the culture of silence that prevents families and communities from

reporting them. The most difficult task for humanitarian workers in Man in

western Cote d'Ivoire is identifying the victims of sexual violence so they can

be protected from unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections

(STIs), including HIV.

A failed coup in September 2002 sparked months of civil war in Cote d'Ivoire,

eventually splitting the country into a rebel-held north and government-run

south. In the west, where several thousand militias helped the army fight the

rebels, many women and girls experienced sexual violence by soldiers.

" Sexual violence was not as rife before [the war]. The rape of minors started

with the crisis, " said Albert Seu, chairman of IDE Afrique, an NGO that supports

750 people, especially children and widows from Man and Danané, a small town

80km to the west.

More details:

http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=6298

UGANDA: Poor working conditions slow ARV rollout in war-ruined north

Health workers in northern Uganda have warned that treatment of HIV-positive

people will be jeopardised unless working conditions for medical staff improve.

Qualified and committed staff are crucial to ensuring that patients understand

and adhere to complicated antiretroviral drug regimens, but few like the idea of

working in war-torn northern Uganda's refugee camps.

" There are skilled, knowledgeable staff in this country but they aren't willing

to work in the camps, " said Schmitt, Head of Mission at international

relief charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)-Holland.

More details:

http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSReport.ASP?ReportID=6299

UGANDA: HIV rates still high in northern camps

Health officials have expressed concern about high levels of HIV among people

displaced by war in the northern Ugandan district of Lira, where tests in some

camps have revealed infection rates of up to 30 percent.

According to Ochama, a clinical officer at the government-run health

centre in the Aleb Tong camp, which houses more than 22,000 internally displaced

people, 35 of the 131 adults tested in June were HIV-positive, while 45 of 146

adults tested in July were infected.

Two decades of war between the Ugandan government and rebels of the Lord's

Resistance Army has forced an estimated two million people to seek refuge in

government camps protected by the army. Some have lived in camps for over a

decade, but protection often comes at a cost: the social structure of

communities is in tatters, and alcoholism and sexual violence have become

commonplace.

More details:

http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSReport.ASP?ReportID=6294

SOUTH AFRICA: Government pressured to review HIV/AIDS communication strategy

In a response to the recent barrage of criticism directed at its HIV/AIDS

policies, the South African government announced plans yesterday to set up a

task team to review its HIV/AIDS communication strategy.

A number of prominent speakers at the recent International AIDS Conference in

Toronto lambasted Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and President Thabo

Mbeki for displaying a lack of leadership and committment to addressing South

Africa's HIV/AIDS crisis.

, the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, noted that South

Africa was the only country on the continent whose government remained " obtuse,

dilatory and negligent about rolling out treatment " . He also singled out the

South African government for promoting theories about the virus " more worthy of

a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state " .

More details:

http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSReport.ASP?ReportID=6295

EVENTS/RESOURCES

1. An innovative new comic book, 'Are your rights respected?' has been developed

by the Gay and Lesbian Archives (GALA), an independent project of the South

African History Archives, located at the University of the Witwatersrand,

Johannesburg. The comic was developed to help outreach endeavours in the deaf

community about HIV/AIDS, sexuality, sexual diversity, rights and empowerment.

Illustrated by South African artist Tommy Motswai, who is also deaf, the comic

tells the story of a group of friends at a deaf school as they seek to learn

about sexual health, and lobby for their right to information. As deaf learners

often have lower literacy abilities than their hearing counterparts due to

limitations in deaf education, the comic uses images and illustrations of South

African Sign Language (SASL) to communicate the storyline.

An exhibition of artwork and storyboard sketches from the comic book will open

at 1p.m. on Saturday 2 September, at the Adler Museum of Medicine, Faculty of

Health Sciences, University of Witswatersrand, 7 York Rd, Parktown,

Johannesburg. Judge Edwin Cameron will be the guest speaker.

For more information and to access copies of the comic book contact: Dr Ruth

, Gay & Lesbian Archives (GALA), Tel: +27 11 717-4239, Email:

morganr@...

2. CONFERENCE

Imagined Futures: student leadership in a time of AIDS, 27-28 September 2006,

Pretoria, South Africa. This conference, hosted by the Centre for the Study of

AIDS in Pretoria, is aimed at student leaders, peer educators, student

volunteers, HIV programme managers, researchers and academics.

The conference hopes to:

- Promote greater debate on HIV and AIDS, challenges facing young people,

institutionalising responses to HIV and AIDS in universities, the content of

programmes and student leadership between universities in the Southern African

Development Community and others.

- Create a platform for students and academics/programme managers to interact

with each other on these issues.

- Look at strategies for providing services to HIV-positive students and

university staff, and how to engage people living with HIV and AIDS in

university programmes.

- Develop a declaration of commitment on student programmes in Southern Africa

to be presented and circulated in the region and sector to ensure that the

'voices' of students and practitioners reach policy- and decision-makers.

For more information click on

http://www.csa.za.org/article/articlestatic/400/1/2/ or contact:csa@...

VACANCIES

1. Global Programmes Manager - World AIDS Campaign (WAC), Cape Town, South

Africa

The successful candidate for this position will be required to implement an

ambitious campaigning and advocacy programme in Sub-Saharan Africa and its three

sub-regions: East, West and Southern Africa; link this programme with the

efforts of campaigners in other regions beyond Africa; monitor and evaluate the

programme in Africa; help fundraise and guide relationships with donors in

specific regions, and operate as a member of the WAC management team.

The World AIDS Campaign (WAC) is a partnership-led global effort holding

policymakers to account on their promises on AIDS. It supports advocacy and

campaign activities in a range of agencies, many outside the mainstream

development sector.

Requirements:

- university degree in public health, public health administration, related

sciences or other relevant academic areas

- extensive experience at international and/or national levels in programme

formulation, design, management and evaluation, with emphasis on strategic

planning

- experience working in advocacy in a development context

- extensive knowledge of HIV and AIDS and organisational development

- proficiency in English and knowledge of at least one other UN official

language an advantage

This post is a one-year contract with potential for renewal.

To apply, email a CV and a comprehensive application letter by Friday 22

September to teresa@...

2. Programme Manager - African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF), Pretoria,

South Africa

The African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) is the largest health

development organisation based in Africa, with the mission " to improve the

health of disadvantaged people in Africa as a means for them to escape poverty

and improve the quality of their life " . The incumbent will provide management of

an Orphans and Vulnerable Children's (OVC) project. Based at the Pretoria

office, they will work closely with the project staff, government and NGOs in

Umkhanyakude in KwaZulu-Natal and Sekhukhune in Limpopo Province and USAID.

Key Responsibilities:

- manage overall programme planning, implementation and reporting on the project

- manage grant agreements with local sub-partners and provide supervision and

support for staff

- co-ordinate programme activities and resources

- plan and develop advocacy strategy

- liaise and network with government and community stakeholders

- participate in review and strategic planning of AMREF programme

- provide narrative and financial project reports to donors

Requirements:

- post-graduate degree in public health or closely related field

- at least 3 years' experience in programme management for HIV/AIDS (preferrably

OVC)

- experience in operations research and monitoring and evaluation

- knowledge and experience in advocacy

- excellent networking, communication and donor-liaison skills

- strong organisational development and planning skills

- proven experience working with and managing grant agreements with sub-partners

- proven experience of financial management and monitoring of substantial

project budgets

To apply, send detailed CV indicating your present employer and position,

day-time phone number, and names and addresses of three referees by Friday 15

September to Palesa Senkhane, email: palesas@..., fax: 012 320-1335,

tel: 012 320-1332/3.

[ENDS]

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September 1, 2006