Evidence for the association between religiosity and HIV infections is limited. Sujda, the hyper-pigmented spot on the forehead due to repeated prostration during prayers and fasting to worship, involving abstaining from food, drink and sex during daytime in Ramadhan and other specified days, are measures of religiosity among Muslims In this study, researchers assessed the association between religiosity and HIV infections. They included 29 HIV positive cases and 116 HIV negative controls, from a total of 1,224 Muslims, 15-24 years. Respondents without Sujda had more HIV infections. Those with Sujda were more likely to abstain from sex and be faithful in marriage. Respondents without Sujda were more likely to have ever taken alcohol before sex and to have ever used narcotics.
Equity and HIV/AIDS
There has been a great deal of progress over the past few years in AIDS. Despite the still staggering death toll and the wave of new infections, there are now, for instance, 3 million people on antiretroviral therapy, something that would have been unbelievable 10 years ago. This modest progress is in danger though. We've entered the era of the AIDS backlash - those who say AIDS gets too much money, from those who say AIDS programmes are distorting health systems. But the backlash takes more insidious forms. This discussion reports on the progress we've made with HIV/AIDS, the innovations that we've pioneered and the need to stop the backlash.
This report and policy brief summarises the key findings and suggested policy options that emerged from rapporteur reports of conference proceedings including the following themes: (1) Orphans and vulnerable children, (2) Treatment, (3) Prevention, (4) Gender and male involvement, (5) Male circumcision, (6) People living with HIV and AIDS, (7) Food and nutrition, (8) Socioeconomics, and (9) Politics/policy. Policy frameworks which are likely to succeed in combating HIV and AIDS need to be updated to cover issues of access, testing, disclosure and stigma.
Under the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS (GCWA), the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), together with the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA) and Young Positives are developing 23 country Report Cards with the aim to strengthen HIV Prevention strategies for girls and young women. Each Report Card provides a country profile, information on HIV prevention from the legal, policy, service availability and accessibility, rights and participation perspectives and includes quotes and issues raised by young women and girls of the country. They also discuss key social and cultural issues, including the role of men and boys in HIV prevention. These form the basis for a series of recommendations aimed at increasing and improving the programmatic, policy and funding actions taken on HIV prevention for young women and girls, targeting national, regional and international decision makers. Follow- up work from these report cards has also shown that facilitating dialogue between young women and girls and national stakeholders in an open forum, can have a direct and positive influence on both policy and programmes. It also helps to develop the leadership skills of the young women so that they can take their future into their own hands.
On 3 December 2011, a meeting was held at the All-Africa AIDS Conference (ICASA) addressing the health and human rights of African men who have sex with men (MSM) and the lesbian, gay, bi and intersex (LGBTI) community in general. The meeting was attended by global agencies, including UNAIDS and the African Commission on Human Rights, but by few international non government organisations. Speakers from the United States (US) President’s Fund for Emergency AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the African Commission outlined the health needs of MSM in Africa regarding their vulnerability to HIV and AIDS. They made commitments to scale up efforts in this area. Participants called for public health and human rights approaches to be more inclusive, to take into account the full spectrum of LGBTI health issues, including violence, victimisation, psychiatric disorders and substance abuse.
This report from UNAIDS assesses the implementation of the Global Task Team (GTT) recommendations in two key areas: technical support provision to the national AIDS response as brokered by the UN system; and harmonisation and alignment of international partners. In the area of technical support, the report concludes that the UN has made significant progress in establishing joint teams on AIDS and recognises that they are beginning to enable the UN to speak and act as “one” on HIV/AIDS issues. However differences in commitment to joint working and in skills and capacity between agencies combined with high work loads are putting pressures on these teams. The harmonisation and alignment agenda needs strong leadership from headquarters about the importance of joint working.
In South Africa, numerous strong policy statements emphasise the importance of involving communities in HIV and AIDS management, yet in practice such involvement tends to be tokenistic and minimal. Social representations in the public sphere constitute the symbolic dimension within which responses to HIV and AIDS are conceptualised and transformed into action. Through an analysis of newspaper articles, the dominant representations of HIV and AIDS management circulating in the South African public sphere are examined to see how community engagement is depicted. Media representations reflect narrow understandings of HIV and AIDS as a predominantly medical problem, while depicting HIV and AIDS management as a top-down activity dominated by prominent individuals, such as national leaders, health professionals and philanthropists, thus marginalising the role played by communities, who are often depicted as passive recipients of interventions by active outsiders. These representations fail to reflect the key role played by members of grassroots communities in responding to the HIV epidemic. Such representations provide flawed conceptual tools for shaping responses to the epidemic, given that HIV-related programmes are unlikely to have optimal outcomes unless they resonate with the perceived needs and interests of their target communities. Effective HIV and AIDS management is best achieved through active participation by communities in HIV and AIDS management strategies. The paper also discusses the implications of a more ‘civic-minded journalism'.
The rapid scale-up of free antiretroviral therapy has lead to a decline in adult mortality at the population level and reduction of vertical transmission. Consequently, some couples living with HIV are maintaining their reproductive decisions; marrying and having children. This paper analyses policies and guidelines on HIV, AIDS and sexual and reproductive health in Malawi for content on marriage and childbearing for couples living with HIV. The authors report that analysis of guidelines and policies showed nonprescriptiveness on issues of HIV, AIDS and reproduction: they do not reflect the social cultural experiences of couples living with HIV. In addition, they found; lack of clinical guidelines, external influence on adoption of the policies and guidelines and weak linkages between HIV and AIDS and sexual and reproductive health services. The findings are argued to provide a strong basis for updating the policies and development of easy-to-follow guidelines in order to effectively provide services to couples living with HIV in Malawi.
Researchers speaking on the final day of the Sixth International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention, held in Rome, Italy, from 17-20 July 2011, focused on the growing interest in the scientific path to an HIV cure. Discussions around an HIV cure have been growing over the past 12 months and are now gaining momentum with the establishment of an-IAS convened working group concentrating its initial efforts on establishing a global scientific strategy. IAS hopes to unveil their new global scientific strategy at the Seventh International AIDS Conference in Washington in 2012. Researchers also highlighted the need to scale up programmes that could more effectively address both the issues of injecting drug use linked HIV transmission and the still unacceptably high mortality rates amongst pregnant women and young children in sub-Saharan Africa.
To determine differences among persons who provided blood specimens for HIV testing compared with those who did not among those interviewed for the population-based Zimbabwe Young Adult Survey (YAS). When comparing persons who provided specimens for HIV testing with those who did not, few significant differences were found. If those who did not provide specimens had prevalence rates twice that of those who did, overall prevalence would not be substantially affected. Refusal to provide blood specimens does not appear to have contributed to an underestimation of HIV prevalence.