The paper describes the effects of HIV and AIDS on each of the MDGs in turn. This approach does not attempt to capture all the interactions among these development outcome measures.
Equity and HIV/AIDS
Putting it together: AIDS and the Millennium Development Goals
Southern Africa assessment: food security and HIV/AIDS
Institute for Security Studies (ISS), South Africa (2005)
This publication identifies HIV/AIDS and food insecurity- particularly in the rural areas- as the two most severe and interrelated humanitarian issues currently facing southern Africa. It is argued that the current situation must be contextualised as an "entangling crisis" of climatic factors, chronic poverty, the failure of economic and political governance, and the impact of HIV/AIDS on the ability of individuals to respond independently.
Expanding access to HIV prevention
AIDS Research and Therapy 2006
The expanding HIV/AIDS epidemic represents one of the greatest threats to human health and international development today, and strengthening the global response is imperative. Despite recent progress in expanding access to HIV/AIDS treatment, the world continues to severely under-invest in efforts to fight HIV/AIDS, missing a tremendous opportunity to change the course of the epidemic by bringing proven treatment and prevention interventions to scale. Nowhere is the need for an expanded response more apparent – and the potential impact greater – than in efforts to prevent the spread of new infections.
HIV/AIDS advocacy guide
By the end of 2000, over 36 million men, women and children around the world were living with HIV or AIDS and nearly 22 million had died from the disease. The same year saw an estimated 5.3 million new infections globally and 3 million deaths, the highest annual total of AIDS deaths ever. Currently, there are 15,000 new infections every day. AIDS is now the number one killer in Africa. This Guide, which is intended to supplement IPPF’s Advocacy Guide, describes what advocacy can do, often at little cost, in the prevention of HIV/AIDS.
On a never-ending waiting list: Toward equitable access to anti-retroviral treatment? Experiences from Zambia
Universal access to anti-retroviral (ARV) medication for HIV/AIDS is the clarion call of the WHO/UNAIDS 3 by 5 Initiative. Treatment coverage, however, remains highly uneven. This sharpens the question of who exactly is accessing ARVs and whether access is challenging inequality or reinforcing it. Issues of distributive justice have long been debated in health policy, but the practical challenges of ARV distribution are relatively new. In exploring what a more equitable process of ARV distribution could involve, this article draws on a human rights framework using case study material from Zambia.
Scaling-up ART and the health system in southern Africa
This note, prepared for a UNAIDS workshop on Vulnerability and AIDS, provides a number of observations and opinions on the feasibility of scaling up anti-retroviral treatment (ART) in sub-Saharan Africa. The document reviews lessons learned from various hospitals and health centres delivering ART in southern Africa, and highlights considerable human resource constraints. For instance, in South Africa, it is estimated that for every 500 ART patients, they need as many as 10 permanent staff. Other pilots have similar staff/patient ratios.
Global Fund withdraws support for loveLife in South Africa
The Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has pulled the plug on financing loveLife, a controversial South African youth-targeted HIV/AIDS campaign. In a statement the Global Fund board said it had found that loveLife "was deemed to not have sufficiently addressed weaknesses in its implementation". Global Fund spokesman Jon Liden said it had become difficult to measure how the prevention campaign was contributing to the reduction of HIV/AIDS among young people.
New drugs urgently needed in Africa
The lack of newer AIDS drugs in Africa could jeopardise the lives of people already receiving the treatment, medical humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has warned. With many countries on the continent embarking on national programmes to provide antiretrovirals (ARVs), the first-line drug regimen has become cheaper and widely available. But as resistance to the basic drugs inevitably builds up, there will be a need for a second generation of drugs within a few years.
South Africa: The impact of AIDS - new report
An AIDS epidemic as severe as the one plowing through South Africa will change society. But how and along what lines? Buckling: The impact of AIDS in South Africa, a new publication by Hein Marais, tackles the question in distinctive and critical-minded fashion – and arrives at disquieting and surprising conclusions. A detailed, multidisciplinary review of research evidence, this short book adopts a unique perspective which reveals more clearly the contingency and complexity of the epidemic's effects. It shows how conventional conceptions of AIDS impact (and programme responses) tend to reflect dominant ideological fixations – particularly the overriding emphasis on productive processes and economic growth, governance and security – and how the wellbeing of humans typically is refracted through those preoccupations.
Further details: /newsletter/id/31245
Steady progress as ARV rollout gathers momentum in Mozambique
When Maria (last name withheld), 35 years old and HIV-positive, reflects on the past year she gives an answer that a growing number of Mozambicans living with HIV/AIDS would probably echo. "The year 2005 has been good for my health. It has got so much better because this year I started taking ARVs (antiretroviral drugs)," she told PlusNews. Maria is one of 17,000 people now accessing ARVs of a national target to treat 20,000 people by the end of 2005.