HIV perceptions

Unite to support children with HIV

HIV Positive people exist. Stop treating them like they don't.

Very impressive and perceiving/predicting the future, so it is recommending we need to start working on it now.

One of the debates and discussions running in South Africa around the issue of HIV and AIDS. Very interesting documentary.

Dec.1st

Whenever we talk about HIV, try to look at the internet or read the news we see information in relation to Africa. The person would perceive it in two ways: 1) Africa is a country and not a continent, and 2) Anyone who is African, must or should have HIV. When we discuss research, we would reflect about Africans. I get confused about it, how we profile people? so if the person comes from Africa, whatever which place he/she comes from, this person should/would be under the HIV+ve category or..?

While reading Prof. Hans Rosling blog, I liked his sentence about politics in "HIV prevention" world "The present US administration likes to fund "less sex" and Sweden likes to fund "more condoms"" Source http://roslingsblogger.blogspot.com/

By Dudzai Mushawepwere, Zimbabwe Source: http://www.zimsculpt.com/product.php?id=89

HIV ribbon, by Victor     Source http://andrepousse.free.fr/cecherVictor.htm

HIV perception has been going around patients, treatment, sexualbehaviour, transmission, poverty and other factors surrounding thepatients.Paul Farmer called a book after a Haiti proverb "Mountains beyondmountains" which is pointing at the fact of having new problems eachtime we overcome certain problems.Today HIV is letting grand parents take care of their childrenfunerals instead of the other way round, and the grand parents wouldtake care of their grand children instead of playing with them.Ark Foundation of Africa is going to launch a new book called "Africa,AIDS Orphans and their Grandparents: Benefits and Preventable HiddenDangers" on Nov.29,2006 at Pangea Cafe, Washington.About the bookIn Africa, an estimated 14 million children under the age of 18 havelost one or both parents to AIDS and the number continues to rise.Nearly one-quarter of AIDS orphans lose a parent or both parentsbefore their fifth birthday. The book, Africa, AIDS Orphans and theirGrandparent...

Very good way to reflect the reality of information using art. Source: http://blog.realworldsystems.net/blog/_archives/2004/6/1/118354.html

Kaiser Public Opinion Spotlights provide in-depth analysis of public opinion on a variety of health care and health policy topics. Each Spotlight uses public opinion data from Kaiser surveys and other sources to examine current views and trends. The Public’s Knowledge and Perceptions About HIV/AIDS Abstract This Kaiser Public Opinion Spotlight uses data from Kaiser Family Foundation surveys and from other sources to explore the public’s level of knowledge and perceptions about HIV/AIDS, including areas such HIV transmission, prevention, and treatment, and which groups are most affected by the disease. Since the first few years of the U.S. epidemic, public knowledge about the disease has increased over time in many areas, but some significant misconceptions remain today. In 2006, more than one-third of the public (37%) thinks HIV might be transmitted through kissing, 22% think it might be transmitted through sharing a drinking glass, and one in six (16%) think it might be transmitted th...

What is new with the HIV medicines (55 min presentation) by Michael MacVeigh, MD about the last treatments for HIV/AIDS, as part of a forum given by Cascade AIDS project of Portland. What's new in HIV? 55 min 47 sec - Oct 7, 2006 Average rating: (3 ratings) Description: Presentation by Michael MacVeigh, MD about the last treatments for HIV / AIDS. (Fall 2006) Part of a forum given by Cascade AIDS Project of Portland, OR. IFARA.TV Want to see more cool videos? Go to video.google.com/ Think you have an even cooler video? Add it at video.google.com/videouploadform If you're having trouble watching the video, try copying the following URL into your browser: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6764643316313850415&q=hiv&pr=goog-sl

Last month, people in Stockholm were wearing the " rose " ribbon to advocate for breast cancer research. I checked the cost, it was around 3 US$. It was quite interesting to see how people perceive the breat cancer as a problem in the Swedish context. If we look at it from an bird's eye view, we see in a country where diagnostic tools are available to access and screen themsevles for breast cancer, the problem is still there, "how to promote people to use this service" due to different reasons. The ribbon colours have been used in different ways, I tried to search it on the internet to find the relationship between colours and messages, I found one chart showing seven different colours and their explanations. HIV was the only infectious disease related ribbon while the rest were non-communicable diseases (NCDs), or Cancer I can say, which are the problems of the high-income countries most likely. I wonder if the red ribbon can be ever perceived as a serious pro...

We had a guest lecturer to talk about "clinical trials in limited resource settings" in a PhD course on "improving drug use - specially in antibiotics". The researcher is working on Malaria in Uganda. He mentionned that he heard that HIV medicine is not a problem anymore, in compare to the last 10 years. People have access to treatment, since it is 'cheaper' now for them. A student asked him about 'food security', so he thought that "Africans" are managing themselves. I was wearing MSF shirt for the "Got pills" campaign, it felt as if I don't have to do my research work anymore and maybe the campaign is not needed anymore when a researcher is talking like this. Also he gave me new lesson in geography, that Africa is a country and not a continent, since he draw conclusions about the whole 54 countries out of one country (Uganda)!

Background to this article taken from www.naharnet.com : Religious leaders have been reluctant to promote "protected sex" among their followers, since this can contradicts with their religious principles about being faithful to the partner and to have sex in the official/religious marriage context. Article title : Christian, Muslim Clerics Establish Project to Tackle AIDS in ArabWorldFor the first time in the Arab world (Beirut, 10 Nov 06) Content Muslim and Christian clerics from 20 countries have together launched a project to tackle HIV/AIDS in their societies. Announced at the end of the four-day Regional Forum for Religious Leaders on AIDS in Cairo, the scheme aims to break the stigma attached to the disease in the Arab world as well as provide medical support and counseling for HIV patients and their families. "We have developed a plan of action to urgently respond to what is amounting to a region living on the brink of an epidemic," said Father Hady Aya, a co...

A century from now, when historians write about our era, one question will dwarf all others, and it won't be about finance or politics or even terrorism. The question will be, simply, how could our rich and civilized society allow a known and beatable enemy to kill millions of people? The enemy, of course, is…HIV ….. Sebastian Mallaby,Washington Post, October 14, 2002; Page A29

When I went first to South Africa, I was going to different HIV treatment centers in a taxi. I was chatting to the taxi driver, he asked me what I am doing so I said "I am working in HIV and I want to learn more about it", and I asked him "I heard and read that HIV is a problem in South Africa, how do you think about the reasons?" He said "well, almost each day and every week-end even, you can say, people are dying here and people would say it was pneumonia or no one knows why, but I think it is HIV, I think people are fucking too much here".

The general concept of perception is summarized in an elegant and simple way http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dcgh6qk5_1pdg33n

Since I was child I used to hear about HIV (or SIDA in French language since I did my high school studies at a Fench speaking school in Lebanon). People would talk about HIV in different ways and reflect about it in different ways. Chady, my elder brother, had a book about SIDA, written in Arabic, with cover page showing a dead skeleton. I was around 13-14 years old, so I thought it was a thriller book at that time. Well actually, a couple of times my father used to say that HIV patients have to go to the Ministry of Health in Beirut to get their medicine by themselves from a special room for drug dispencary, and of course who would go there and people and all the ministry staff would recognise patients coming into this room, and again I had no single idea what was the HIV disease about, except what I used to hear and read, it stayed as an abstract topic for me. During my undergraduate studies, I studied HIV as a virus and of course who would care at that time for the virus in a contex...