HIV/AIDS Alliance notes AIDS Day
More than 100 000 reached by the Alliance’s MNCH programme
Programme keeps mothers living with HIV healthy
1 DECEMBER 2011 - 1 DECEMBER 2011 - Over the past 12 months (Sept 2010-11), more the 100 000 women have been supported by an MNCH programme to keep mothers living with HIV health. The programme was carried out by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance and funded the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID).
The programme sought to reduce HIV-related maternal mortality and improve health outcomes for HIV positive women in four countries: Kenya, South Sudan, Uganda and Zambia.
The four countries were identified because of their high burden of maternal mortality and HIV. The work was carried out by Alliance national Linking Organisation and Country Offices, supported by many community-based and civil society organisations.
Results include more informed communities, including chiefs and headmen and traditional birth attendants, and an increase in safe deliveries. Link below to read a summary of the results, and a case study from each country below; plus see the highlights in pictures.
Personal perspective: Poor countries are fighting for last place
Javier Hourcade Bellocq is the Latin America and Caribbean regional representative for the International HIV/Aids Alliance and a member of the Communities delegation of people living with and affected by Aids, TB and malaria to the Global Fund board.
The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria recently made headlines after suspending its latest round of funding. Ninety countries have been left hanging after months working on their funding proposals. For developing countries in the G20, the news gets worse: the Global Fund has decided they will no longer be eligible for any future funding. I tested positive for HIV in November 1988 in Buenos Aires. The epidemic had started five years earlier in Argentina, but there was still little information on the subject. I remember traipsing around bookstores across the city to hunt down the only available book on HIV/Aids, which I have to this day. Since then, I have worked on national, regional and global HIV/Aids initiatives....
...Today the world invests more in bank and currency bail-outs, as well as defence, than in health. A few days ago at the Fund´s meeting, tensions were high among representatives of implementer countries. They were fighting to be granted the dubious recognition of being the poorest among the poor in order to guarantee their access to the few resources still left. During these discussions we tend to forget that people have a right to live regardless of where they were born. Losing a currency or a bank is tough, but it will be much harder to recover the value of global solidarity, a priceless good for our future.