Kenyan AIDS activists are demanding a full apology from a Kenyan cabinet minister who recently suggested that isolating HIV-positive people may be the way to eradicate the pandemic. At a 28 January 2011 meeting with members of parliament on HIV and AIDS, Esther Murugi, Minister for Special Programmes, put forward the option of permanently ‘locking up’ positive people to keep them out of general society. Kenya's National AIDS Control Council falls under the Ministry of Special Programmes. Nelson Otwoma, coordinator of the Network of People living with HIV/AIDS in Kenya, said her comments were highly irresponsible and only contributed to stigma surrounding the disease. She believed that the minister’s comments could prompt a wave of hatred against HIV positive people among ‘people who might hold a view like hers and who were simply waiting for a trigger’. Jacqueline Sewe, a member of local NGO, Women Fighting AIDS in Kenya (WOFAK), has called on the minister to either publicly apologise to people living with HIV or resign, highlighting the fact that HIV is not a contagious disease.
Values, Policies and Rights
"It is time to shift the debate over HIV prevention in Uganda. Rather than focusing on the precise combination of A, B, and C that contributed to the country's HIV decline, researchers should condemn censorship of life-saving HIV/AIDS information and discrimination against vulnerable populations such as lesbians and gays. It is bad enough that the USA is exporting ignorance and prejudice to countries already devastated by HIV. Researchers should not ignore these human-rights violations by focusing on the wrong issue." (requires registration)
The AIDS Law Project, one of South Africa's leading HIV and AIDS rights campaigners, has ceased to exist in its present form. Instead it has become part of Section27, a non-profit organisation that will focus on all 'the socio-economic conditions that undermine human dignity and development, prevent poor people from reaching their full potential and lead to the spread of diseases that have a disproportionate impact on the vulnerable and marginalised'. Section27 gets its name from the section in the country’s Constitution that states everyone has the right to access to health care services, enough food and water and social security. The organisation faces a potential legal battle over the right to use the name, Section27, as the Companies and Intellectual Properties Registration Organisation (CIPRO) claims that this name is the preserve of government only. Director Mark Heywood explained the change: 'To sustain the response to HIV, reduce new infections and ensure sustained access to treatment, it is necessary to campaign for equity, equality and quality in the health system.' Head of litigation services Adila Hassan said the new organisation will still focus on HIV/AIDS but also on the 'underlying determinants of health, and to do this we will be focusing on education and sufficient food as two such determinants'. Section27 will also defend the Constitution and its foundational values.
In light of the World Health Organization's declaration that non-dependent drinking contributes more to the global burden of alcohol-related disease than does drinking by those who meet diagnostic criteria for dependence, this article argues that clinicians, researchers and decision-makers need to consider microsocial and macrosocial impacts of alcohol use, not just addiction and clinical effects on individuals meeting diagnostic criteria at the extreme high end of the alcohol-use spectrum. It suggests some qualitative dimensions to further define social or low-risk drinking and proposes that all drinking beyond that be described as harmful, because of its impacts on personal, community and population health.
The Global Strategy to Reduce the Harmful Use of Alcohol has much to learn from learn from the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, according to this article. Over the years, many have called for the creation of a Framework Convention on Alcohol Control. Despite this push and despite the fact that alcohol and tobacco are relatively equal in terms of global disease burden, the international community has been less willing to be tough on the alcohol industry. The debate around alcohol is less clear in some ways than work on tobacco. In the case of tobacco, the efforts have focused on eliminating use. In terms of alcohol, the debate is about reducing the harmful level of consumption. In many countries, consumption of alcohol is acceptable and forms part of many cultural events. But the author notes that we need to pay increased attention to the harm alcohol consumption can inflict on others. Often the debate is framed in terms of the individual right to have a drink, neglecting the true extent of the level of harm others can be exposed to by the drinker.
Debate has emerged that pits health-systems support against targeted health campaigns. In classical terms, the debate may be framed as the Bismarck model versus the Beveridge model, but this dichotomy is increasingly viewed as being as false as that which seeks to pit vertical schemes of health against horizontal. In truth, development of systems capable of delivering health, generally, or specifically targeted campaigns and health initiatives, all rely on the existence of health financing mechanisms that offer universal access to health. The specific nature of such financing schemes and service delivery models will vary between nations. To assume that universal health coverage necessarily requires a single-payer government mechanism would be a mistake, and adherents to that position doom the people of the poorest nations to generations of medical deficiency. Whether a nation chooses a mixed economy model of coverage, single-payer mode, donor-issued voucher mechanism, or other innovative models of universal financing is not the issue. Provision of universal health coverage is the issue facing the entire global health construct. Sadly, for most of the world's populations universal health coverage remains a mirage, blurred further out of focus by the present world financial crisis.
All roads lead to universal health coverage—and this is the top priority at WHO, Dr Ghebreyesus the WHO director general has asserted. The key question of universal health coverage is an ethical one. Should fellow citizens die because they are poor? Or should millions of families be impoverished by catastrophic health expenditures because they lack financial risk protection? Universal health coverage is a human right. The world has agreed on universal health coverage in Sustainable Development Goal 3.8. He asserts that universal health coverage is ultimately a political choice and responsibility of every country and national government. Countries have unique needs, and tailored political negotiations will determine domestic resource mobilisation. He indicates that WHO will catalyse proactive engagement and advocacy with global, regional, and national political structures and leaders including heads of state and national parliaments. Beyond benchmarking, countries learn from their peers, especially those they see as having similar political or economic contexts. WHO will thus document best practices in universal health coverage at the country level. Once this learning has occurred, countries may request technical assistance and WHO should be prepared to provide technical assistance to countries based on their specific needs, across the full range of health-related Sustainable Development Goals. He further posits that universal health coverage and health emergencies are cousins—two sides of the same coin. Strengthening health systems is the best way to safeguard against health crises. Outbreaks are inevitable, but epidemics are not and strong health systems are the best defence to prevent disease outbreaks from becoming epidemics. Achieving universal health coverage will require innovation. Given that what is measured is managed, data matters and WHO will track progress on how the world is meeting the health-related Sustainable Development Goal indicators. Finally he observes that universal health coverage is not an end in itself: its goal is to improve all health-related Sustainable Development Goals.
Two years after it was signed in August 2014, SATUCC reports that no Member State has ratified the SADC Employment and Labour Protocol as of June 2016. The SADC Employment & Labour Protocol was developed to serve as legal framework for the cooperation of SADC Member States on matters concerning employment and labour in line with Article 22 of the SADC Treaty which provides as follows: “Member States shall conclude protocols as may be necessary in each area of cooperation, which shall spell out the objectives and scope of, and institutional mechanisms for cooperation and integration”. This Protocol was then finally endorsed by nine Member States during the SADC Heads of States Summit held in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe in August of 2014. These are: DRC, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. However, for this Protocol to enter into force, it is required that at least 10 Member States representing two-thirds ratify it. Since then, no single Member State has ratified the Protocol. It is against this that the SADC Ministers of Labour and Social Partners during their meeting on 12th May 2016, directed the SADC Secretariat with support of the ILO to conduct a study to establish the problems and challenges underlying the non-ratification of the Protocol and further explore ways how to promote its ratification by Member States. SATUCC is conducting a regional campaign on the ratification and implementation of the SADC Employment and Labour Protocol.
Members of public interest civil society organisations and social movements, some of whom are participants at the Global Conference on Primary Health Care, produced this statement to re-affirm a commitment to primary health care (PHC) in pursuit of health and well-being for all, aiming to achieve equity in health outcomes. The statement is a re-affirmation of the Alma Ata declaration, which to PHM and others remains the ultimate declaration on primary health care; the principles are clear and remain relevant. This authors invite organisations who agree with the views expressed to sign on to the statement.
The Amnesty International Report 2009 is a record of the state of human rights during 2008 in 157 countries and territories around the world. It depicts the systemic discrimination and insecurity that hinders the application of the law, where states pick and choose the rights they are willing to uphold, and those they would rather suppress. The report presents five regional overviews highlighting the key events and trends that dominated the human rights agenda in each region in 2008. It further takes a country-by-country survey of human rights, summarising the human rights situation in each country. The regional overviews reveal that, in Africa, there is still an enormous gap between the rhetoric of African governments and the daily reality where human rights violations remain the norm: violent protests and poverty continued in many African countries, exacerbated by repressive attitudes of governments towards dissent and protest. Governments have failed to provide basic social services, like health services, address corruption and be accountable to their people.