Botswana has one of the world's highest percentages of people living with HIV/AIDS. Latest figures from UNAIDS suggest more than 35 percent of Botswana's adult population carry the virus. Stigma and denial remain huge impediments to fighting the disease. A recent government report found that many Batswana still believe that HIV/AIDS was a foreign disease, which is not in Botswana or is only found in urban areas. Head of the National AIDS Coordinating Group (NACG), Babu Khan, spoke to IRIN about the challenges associated with tackling the epidemic.
Equity in Health
Curbing the Epidemic:
Governments and the Economics of Tobacco Control
A World Bank study on tobacco in developing countries. "Developing countries can prevent millions of premature deaths and much disability if they adopt measures to reduce the demand for tobacco" according to the study. "To effectively reduce demand, governments can raise cigarette taxes, ban the advertising and promotion of tobacco products, and provide information on the health risks smoking causes directly or through research."
Developing Countries See Increase in Birth Defects
More Women Use Misoprostol in Effort to End Pregnancies
Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa and the Philippines are experiencing a "minor epidemic of birth defects" because poor women are taking misoprostol in an attempt to end their pregnancies, the New Scientist reports.
Discrimination Against People With HIV/AIDS
In the first half of 2000, the German national AIDS organization Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe e.V. (DAH) in Berlin presented the results of a study into international entry and residence regulations and the availability of medical treatment for people with HIV infection and AIDS. DAH had succeeded in collecting information from 166 countries. The results are disturbing.
Drug firm is to supply AIDS drug free in South Africa
As the legal campaign against the South African government’s decision not to provide antiretroviral drugs grows apace, it has emerged that the manufacturer of one of the drugs is about to supply the drug free of charge.
Ghana: Government Plans to Manufacture HIV/AIDS Medicine
Ghana hopes to begin manufacturing generic versions of HIV/AIDS drugs soon, the Accra radio JOY FM reported Minister of Health Richard Anane as saying. Two local pharmaceutical companies have been short-listed but the government plans to contract only one.
PAARL AIDS PROGRAMME A WORLD-BEATER
A programme being run in Paarl in the Western Cape to reduce the risk of babies contr!acting HIV from their mothers during birth is setting standards not only for the rest of South Africa, but for the world. The programme is offered at the provincial administration's TC Newman health care centre, one of 18 sites countrywide designated by the national health ministry as pilots for testing "operational issues" around the use of the anti-retroviral Nevirapine.
South African Government Sued
\'Refusal\' to Provide HIV-Positive Pregnant Women With Access to Nevirapine
The South African AIDS advocacy group Treatment Action Campaign and two other parties filed a lawsuit Tuesday against South African Health Minister Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and nine provincial health ministers in an effort to require the South African government to provide nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women cared for in the public health sector, Reuters/South African Broadcasting Corporation reports.
TANZANIA: Prostitutes Press For Legalization Of Trade
A Tanzanian prostitute who addressed an International Labor Organization-sponsored conference in Tanzania described the dangers faced by sex workers and demanded the immediate legalization of prostitution. It was the first time in Tanzania that a woman publicly described the experiences of prostitutes, African Eye News Service reports.
Telephone Hotlines Provide HIV/AIDS Information in Africa
Two African nations struggling to cope with the HIV/AIDS epidemic have launched telephone hotline systems to provide the most up-to-date and accurate information about the disease. Callers in Nigeria and South Africa concerned about such basic questions as how the virus is transmitted, where to get tested, and how effective condoms are in preventing HIV/AIDS now have the answers at their fingertips.