HIV perceptions

The Sowetan newspaper did publish an article this week to report about one person living with HIV (PLWH) and on treatment who get breasts enlargement. Antiretrovirals do side-effects, but they do save lives as well. I wonder how other PLWH would perceive this article. Would they stop treatment, make sure to report to their clinic staff about side effects of drugs, or no effect at all?

There has been scandal about condoms quality in South Africa and today Dept of Health (i.e. ministry of health) in South Africa released this leaflet to inform people about what condoms to return them back. It will be interesting to know how many people will get this information and will return back the condoms.

Just finished reading the new book for Prof. Nicoli Nattrass, about the leadership problems to manage HIV in South Africa. The book has nice mixture of research, advocacy and cartoons materials. Highly recommended for people interested in learning about the issues of denialism in South Africa.

I was attending a conference to present a pilot study to screen HIV among men who are having sex with men (MSM) in Lebanon last July. They had around 5 out of 225 who were living with HIV, and they showed the list of reasons why they do not use condoms and why MSM social gathering places do not offer condoms. Homosoexuality act is considered as a crime act in Lebanon, and the MSM social places are concerned to have several visits from the police if they consider distributing condoms at their place. One of the police officers, attending the conference, explained that the police is enforcing the law and they are trying to collaborate. I asked him if they screen MSMs at time of arrest and the answer was no, they only do it when they are sent to central prison in Beirut. MSMs are perceived as criminals but not their safety to be screened yet.

In addition to Hans talk to world perception, here talking about the end of poverty.

Pediatricians are assumed to perceive pediatrics immunology as taboo or complicated topic, however pediatrics HIV is becoming an important topic due to the fail of PMTCT to reduce it, due to different reasons. Immunopaedia is website targetting pediatricians and medical students with immunology pediatrics related information in South Africa www.immunopaedia.org.za The site offers free registration and it has free materials to download and case studies.

Many initiatives took place to support HIV drugs roll-out and reducing prices. Research papers always mention the effect of international donors to roll-out drugs. However, if the person looks closely who is stearing the agenda of HIV treatment plans, they are the activists who advocate for their rights and for patients' rights. It will be interesting to quantify and document the effect of each stakeholder on HIV treatment plans. This picture is my favourite one showing Zackie Achmat, chairperson of Treatment Action Campaign, with the minister of health in South Africa. Zackie is one the driving forces to support HIV patients' rights.

High life A collegue at work did share 'high life' concept among youngsters in Tanzania, because they lost hope of life when they started losing their social network due to HIV/AIDS, so they see living up to 45 or 40 with risky behavior is good to enjoy life, and what become known by High Life. 001 Concept used in Zimbabwe, which mean 0 breakfast, 0 lunch and 1 dinner. I wonder how HIV patients' life look like if they want to live on 001?

Ann, a Kenyan collegue was talking about the 'natural' male circumcision happening in the Kenyan population, among both of Christian and Muslim groups. She described them as religious versus non-religious groups in general. If I understood it well, she considered difference between the Christian and Muslim groups in their sexual behaviour, in the decision of how many partners to have etc... Ann assumes that HIV prevalence among Mulsim men group is much lower than the Christian men group although both are circumcised. Any sexual practice related reason or...? I tried to draw her discussion in the graph.

Laurie Garrett, one of the global health systems leaders, wrote in Foreign Affairs in Jan/Feb issue about how HIV/AIDS related funds are changing the development agendas. It was quite provocative article that the person can agree with her about other public health priorities, like children pneumonia, but at the same time a study in Zimbabwe showed there is three times risk for HV-ve children to die for HIV+ve mothers in compare to their peers who have HIV+ve mothers. Maybe holistic view to the problem would be the best? Summary of Garrett article Thanks to a recent extraordinary rise in public and private giving, today more money is being directed toward the world's poor and sick than ever before. But unless these efforts start tackling public health in general instead of narrow, disease-specific problems -- and unless the brain drain from the developing world can be stopped -- poor countries could be pushed even further into trouble, in yet another tale of well-intended foreign m...

Justen, is an innovative Zimbabwyan artist, who worked on doing the "balance bird", it is the symbol of Zimbabwe. We will try to sell it in US and Sweden to fund the Zimbabwe Red Cross and Zimbabwe AIDS Prevention Project (ZAPP) to support their services to HIV patients. Today, March 23rd, 2007, 1US$=250Zim$ (official rate), but people talk about unofficial market (1US$ = 6,500 - 10,000 Zim$).

It is quite interesting/sad to see how politics influence people's perceptions about different issues. In terms of HIV/AIDS, Pieter Fourier wrote in his book "The political management of HIV and AIDS in South Africa", He talked how people used to call AIDS as the "Afrikaans Invention to Discourage Aids", because it showed among two homosexuals in Cape Town in the 80's. Another article, by Marks Chabedi, talked about AIDS as the "American Invention to Discourage Sex" (State Power, Violence, Crime and Everyday Life: a Case Study of Soweto in Post-Apartheid South Africa).

>From prof. Hans Rosling blogg http://roslingsblogger.blogspot.com/2006/11/less-sex-more-condomes-stop-to-hiv.html Less sex & more condomes = stop to HIV Yesterday UNAIDS declared: " the global AIDS epidemic continuous to grow... an estimated 40 millions are living with HIV... the number with HIV has increased from 37 millions in 2004. www.unaids.org But on the AIDS day in 2004 the message from UNAIDS was that "over 41 million people are living with HIV/AIDS" http://www.un.org/events/aids/2004/ Are UNAIDS lying? No, it is led by honest and good scientists, so how come? If you dig further into the data you find that the uncertainty range of UNAIDS estimates are wide: - somewhere between 32 to 44 millions lived with HIV in 2004 and today somewhere between 34 to 47 millions. So the true number may be slowly falling. A reasonable conclusion is that the number of HIV infected in the world remains the same over the last years. But telling that may put funding for much n...

This article was found on AlertNet ( http://www.alertnet.org ) and sent to you by Ziad (ziad.khatib.hivperceptions@blogger.com). Circumcision may stop 1.4 mln S.Africa HIV cases < http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L21533533.htm > JOHANNESBURG, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Widespread male circumcision could prevent some 1.4 million new HIV infections and 800,000 AIDS deaths in South Africa over the next 20 years, a South African research ... ---------------------------------------- (c) 1998-2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. ---------------------------------------

When animals decided to discuss why and whether humans should be treated for HIV or not. Save the humans 2 min 0 sec - Dec 1, 2006 Average rating: (3 ratings) Description: Animal discussing to save humans from HIV Aids.

Male circumcision is becoming a very interesting topic which is creating emotional reactions of some scholars and new research questions by other ones. Here is a news article talking about it and advocating its importance. Dec 14 2006 01:27:57:667PM Southern African countries, the world's region worst affected by Aids, have been urged to embrace male circumcision to partially prevent the spread of HIV. Blantyre - Southern African countries, the world's region worst affected by Aids, were on Thursday urged to embrace male circumcision to partially prevent the spread of HIV. "The evidence is substantially overwhelming ... male circumcision reduces the transmission of HIV," Zambian surgeon and university lecturer Kasonde Bowa told health officials and experts from the 14 member nations of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). "SADC must make a decision and generate leadership on this issue. The HIV pandemic has gone up in the region and the key differen...