HIV perceptions

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.