Rights Here, Right Now
07/23/2010
IntraHealth's Karen Blyth blogs that HIV/AIDS progress is just as real as funding cuts
Global progress on HIV/AIDS is real: 5.2 million people are receiving antiretroviral therapy in middle-income and resource-poor countries, which is remarkable if you look at where we were five or 10 years ago. The United States' government's push to ramp-up treatment, started under the Bush Administration, has continued under the Obama Administration. In early 2009, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) provided treatment to 1.8 million people; today it treats 2.5 million people. Here at AIDS 2010, PEPFAR Ambassador Eric Goosby stated that PEPFAR is well on its way toward reaching the goal of offering treatment to 4 million people by 2013. This is heartening news.
Keep it Together at AIDS 2010: Moving Beyond the Pitfalls of False Dichotomies
07/22/2010
IntraHealth's Chris Penders shares lessons learned at AIDS2010
Let’s face it, we’re in one of the worst economic crises we’ve seen in decades, and HIV funding has flat-lined. In editorials and the blogoshere, we are seeing the old debates over investing precious resources once again rear their ugly, divisive heads—HIV prevention versus treatment, HIV versus other global health concerns, one type of HIV prevention versus another.
No Excuses: A living experience of the struggle for rights
07/22/2010
Jonathan Mann lecture highlights the challenges of sex workers
Sex workers are the most effective educators of both their clients and other women in sex work. They know best that top-down programs, not guided by community knowledge and participation, do not work. And, after resisting attempts by middle-class social workers in India, who knew very little about sex work, they successfully showed the social workers the way. Within six months, 5,000 Indian sex workers were reached and 350,000 condoms were distributed monthly.
Will the GHI Guarantee the Sexual and Reproductive Rights of Women and Girls?
07/21/2010
Serra Sippel, president of Center for Health and Gender Equity, says advocates must work to make it happen
The world's foremost HIV activists, advocates, policy-makers and health professionals are gathered in Vienna to answer one question: After nearly three decades of fighting HIV and AIDS, why is the virus still gaining ground? We know how to prevent HIV; we know how to treat it, why are we still choking on its dust? We are long overdue for a revised approach to this global health crisis.
Be Heard! Gay Men and Other MSM in the HIV Pandemic
07/19/2010
JSI HIV/AIDS Advisor James Robertson the urgent need for action to address the needs of MSM in the global epidemic.
...In spite of the long-understood and disproportionate vulnerability of MSM to HIV, action to address these needs still struggles to find footing in many parts of the world. This meeting highlighted the remarkable work of many community advocates and providers who have managed to build programs with little institutional support and woefully inadequate funding. While this neglect is slowly being recognized and addressed, most MSM around the world continue to have no access to services. (Fewer than 10 percent of MSM globally are estimated to receive prevention education and services.)
The “Feminization” of the AIDS Epidemic
07/18/2010
Raising awareness of the failure to make good on promises that go back as far as the first Cairo meeting
...This year for the first time in the history of the International AIDS Conference more than half the plenary speakers are women addressing women's issues, and over 80 meetings and workshops are dedicated to the concerns of women and girls. But many said this is not enough.
