HIV/AIDS

NAIROBI, 11 August 2010 (PlusNews) - By night, Viviane Muasi, 25, is a sex worker in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, but when not canvassing for clients, she spends much of her time convincing other sex workers to test for HIV and use condoms.

Muasi, a sex worker for nine years, is a peer educator with the Sex Workers Outreach Programme (SWOP) - a project run by the University of Nairobi and Canada's University of Manitoba.

"Initially when I came to Nairobi, I was employed as a house-maid," she told IRIN/PlusNews. "I was being paid little, so another woman introduced me to sex work and told me I could make more money."

For us, by us

Through the SWOP programme, Muasi and her fellow educators have enabled more than 3,000 of their Nairobi peers to get tested for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

"We know each other and where they [the sex workers] live, so you just visit them at home and ask them to create time and go to the clinic," Muasi said. "They now have skills to negotiate condom use with their clients... we don't want to be infected and we also don't want to infect anybody.

"At first, the police would just round us up and force us to go for [HIV] tests; many commercial sex workers used to hide," she added. "But today, because the call to test comes from one of their own, they have embraced it."

(Posted at Clarisse Thorn: Pro-Sex Outreach, Open-Minded Feminism)

Read review and comments to this brave documentary about the importance of dissidence in the production of scientific knowledge.

I’ve been getting a lot of very encouraging email lately; here’s some excerpts from an exchange I found particularly interesting. Posted with permission:

Hi Clarisse,

A friend showed me your blog and I just wanted to say that I think you’re fantastic.

I’m a student at Reed College in Portland, Oregon and I recently facilitated a Feminist Student Union “SexualiTea” — a discussion topic with, yeah, tea — on masculinities in society and at Reed and I used your article Questions I Want To Ask Entitled Cis Het Men, Part 3: Space For Men along with the Every Girl / Every Boy poster at the beginning to spark thoughts for the group. This event was a huge success! We had over 50 people in attendance, including 10 or 15 men. It was a really honest, vulnerable, productive, and holistic conversation. We talked about gender binary pressures as children; how can personality traits be de-gendered so that a male who takes pride in being strong isn’t intrinsically stream-rolling women as equally strong leaders or pushing them into an opposite weak category; a transman brought up what behaviors he had to lose as the result of transitioning and changing his presented gender — “I was told I’d have to tone down or lose my crude, perverted, and loud sense of humor because as a man I’d be seen as a Really Big Creep and not just a rugby dyke”; etc. The men were really forthcoming and aside from a minor terrible moment that I was able to turn around as the faciliatator (“so having seen Jackson Katz speak about gender violence, I would be interested in hearing any personal stories about rape from the women in the room” “actually, rape is a large enough burden to bear without having to educate men about rape, in public, whenever rape is brought up as a topic presumably by someone who’s never experienced it. I’d suggest reading up on your own and educating yourself and listening with respect if and when a survivor decides to tell you about their experience.”) — but really, the biggest obstacle that came up was the dynamic of female feminist students purporting 2nd wave views who obliviously steamrolled the conversation, spoke the loudest, the most frequent, tried to control the conversation with an specific end goal in mind, and took up the most space. It almost seemed like the end question for me on this topic wasn’t how to get men to be in these spaces to critically examine masculinities and let male sexualities flourish because many men were not hesitant to show up and take part and really try their best, but how to hold mainstream, second wave feminists accountable for their own oppressive dynamics and how to get them to relax, ease up, open up some space, cede some old ideology?

In Montreal this December, a case of HIV transmission between two gay men went to trial.[1]  Beyond the doubtful aspects of the case, PolitiQ – Queers Solidaires denounces the scandalous practice of revealing the name of the accused to the press despite his right to medical confidentiality and the presumption of innocence.  This public tarring is not worthy of a democracy and raises questions on journalistic ethics.

Any form of criminalization of exposure to or sexual transmission of HIV is counterproductive and impedes efforts to encourage testing, reduce prejudice against HIV-positive people, and protect public health [2].  This is exactly why the World Health Organization, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) [3], and the International AIDS Society are firmly opposed to criminalization, in particular where proof of transmission (which requires phylogenetic tests which are not always reliable [4]), clear fraud, and lack of consent are not established. We may certainly condemn malice, an active desire to harm.  But how can we criminalize behaviour of shared responsibility, mutually agreed upon, knowing the risk?  It is incomprehensible that individuals are being charged today for sexual exposure to or transmission of HIV, when nobody responsible for the contaminated blood transfusions in the 1980s and 90s was ever criminally convicted (despite some 1,200 people infected with HIV and 12,000 with hepatitis C in Canada) [5], all the more so that it is now established that people living with HIV who undergo effective treatment have their risk of transmission vastly reduced or eliminated [6].

It is not easy to tell morans to leave their girls, because they pass time talking about girls and sex, but today they know that condoms can protect them against HIV

MAGADI, 29 December 2009 (PlusNews) - Attempts to promote HIV awareness among Kenya's Maasai community have often foundered on the community's unwillingness to accept externally driven change; but a new initiative is using Maasai 'morans', or warriors, to spread the word.

"The Maasai are very traditional people and the best way to reach them is to go in without trying to dilute their culture - we give them free space to learn by using cultural systems to integrate reproductive health education," said Peter Ngura, programme manager for a nomadic youth project of the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), a health and development NGO.

"We train 'morans' as peer educators and use them to reach out to their fellow 'morans' because these are the only people culture allows them to interact freely with," he added. "'Morans' will only listen to their 'moran' chiefs and this is the reason they are the people we train to train their fellow 'morans' who are under their command."

'Morans' form an age set of male youths aged from the mid-teens to the mid-twenties; they have a duty to protect their community and livestock assets, and during this phase they are encouraged to have multiple affairs. 'Morans' spend much of their time in the bush, where they are largely isolated from the rest of their community, only interacting with girlfriends, elders and chiefs who visit them to impart traditional Maasai wisdom.

BEIRUT, 1 December 2009 (IRIN) - Four years ago, at 16, Rana's husband forced her into prostitution. Despite the risks of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), Rana, like many local sex workers - estimated to number at least 6,000 - often did not use condoms.

"It's up to the client," said Rana (not her real name). "I want to use condoms, but most of the clients don't." Asked why she ignores the risks of contracting HIV or STDs she simply says: "I don't want to lose the client."

Elie Aaraj, head of Lebanon's SIDC association, warns that the lack of condom use among local sex workers could soon become a public health issue.

"So far there are no recorded HIV cases among the country's surveyed sex workers," he said. "But once the virus gets into the community it could explode."

Human Rights Watch

(London) - Governments worldwide should take urgent action to reform punitive drug laws, disproportionate penalties, and harsh and discriminatory law enforcement practices as part of their efforts to address HIV among people who use drugs, Human Rights Watch and the International Harm Reduction Association said today, World AIDS Day. Current policies also cause needless suffering among people living with HIV/AIDS, the two groups said in a joint briefing note released today.

"The ‘war on drugs' is fueling HIV epidemics among people who use drugs around the world, and condemning millions of people with terminal cancer and with HIV/AIDS to needless suffering," said Professor Gerry Stimson, Executive Director of the International Harm Reduction Association.

In many countries, drug control efforts block lifesaving HIV services to people who use drugs, even where they are legal, Human Rights Watch and the International Harm Reduction Association said. Overly strict, complex drug laws and regulations block access to cheap, effective pain medications, like morphine, relegating hundreds of thousands of people living with HIV/AIDS, and millions with terminal cancer, to suffer severe pain.

By Miriam Temin and Ruth Levine

"The health of adolescent girls is everyone's business. We all need to step up to the plate to embrace this ambitious agenda."—Melinda Gates

Improving the health of adolescent girls in the developing world is the key to improving maternal and child health, reducing the impact of HIV, and accelerating social and economic development.

Start with a Girl: A New Agenda for Global Health sheds light on the realities of girls' health and wellbeing in developing countries, on the links between the health of girls and the prospects for their families, and on the specific actions that will improve health prospects for millions.

This report describes the most prevalent and serious health problems adolescent girls face in developing countries, linking them to a combination of specific public-health risks and social determinants of health. It highlights the diverse ways in which governments and non-governmental organizations have sought—often successfully, albeit on small scale—to break vicious cycles of ill health.  Finally, and most importantly, the report lays out an ambitious yet feasible agenda for governments, donors, the private sector, and civil society organizations—complete with estimates of indicative costs.

MANILA, 1 December 2009 (PlusNews) - On 1 December, World AIDS Day, activists in the Philippines will be wearing nothing but the red AIDS ribbon in a campaign to raise awareness about the growing threat of HIV.

Some of the activists are HIV-positive, but they all hope the daring photographs will serve as a wake-up call while HIV prevalence in their country is still below one percent. UNAIDS estimated that 8,300 people were living with the virus in 2008, but the population is almost 90 million.

The "Dare to Bare Campaign" will be featured in a leading national daily newspaper and several online magazines until 5 December 2009. Every picture is accompanied by a personal story, because either that individual or someone they care about is living with the virus.

Shame and silence

Carlos Celdran, a performing artist and one of the "models" in the campaign, told IRIN/PlusNews that his youth was marked by living a carefree life in New York. "We may have been a bit promiscuous back then, but we were careful and always used condoms. Now, there is a whole new generation of young people who no longer see HIV/AIDS as a death sentence, and are more reckless."

According to the National AIDS Registry of the Department of Health, HIV cases among young people have been increasing at an unprecedented rate: newly reported cases in the 15-24 age group tripled from 41 in 2007 to 110 in 2008.