PHA-Exchange> GLOBAL: IRIN Webspecial on World AIDS Day

[George(s) Lessard]

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From:           	IRIN <IRIN at irinnews.org>
Date sent:      	Fri, 29 Nov 2002 12:34:16 GMT
Subject:        	GLOBAL: IRIN Webspecial on World AIDS 
Day

U N I T E D  N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

GLOBAL: IRIN Webspecial on World AIDS Day

JOHANNESBURG, 29 November (IRIN) - AIDS threaten our very 
raison d'etre; our ability to live and our instinct to create life. Little 
wonder, therefore, that HIV and AIDS are so feared.

As the articles in this IRIN World AIDS Day web special 
[http://www.irinnews.org/webspecials/aids/] illustrate, fear is at the 
heart of much of the stigma and discrimination that surrounds HIV 
and AIDS: fear of death, fear of the unknown, fear of rejection, and, 
as Eric Nachibanga, an HIV-positive Zambian points out, "fear of 
helplessness".

"Overcoming the stigma and the discrimination against people living 
with AIDS is one of the chief ways of being able to respond 
adequately to the (AIDS) pandemic," Stephen Lewis, the UN 
Secretary-General's Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS, argues in an 
exclusive interview.

"Because the stigma and discrimination are paralysing, they prevent 
programmes from taking place, they prevent issues from being 
discussed openly, they prevent open talk of sexuality," says Lewis.

The AIDS epidemic has reached different stages in Africa and 
Central Asia - the two regions featured in the articles that follow.

In sub-Sahara Africa, the AIDS epidemic is in full throttle. UNAIDS 
estimates that 3.5 million more Africans became infected with HIV 
during 2002, a year in which an estimated 2.4 million others died of 
AIDS. Now famine is threatening to add to the epidemic's toll, 
particularly in southern and parts of eastern Africa, by further 
weakening and ultimately killing people whose immune systems are 
already compromised by HIV infection.

By global standards, HIV prevalence in the five Central Asian 
countries featured in this special edition - the three former Soviet 
republics of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, along with 
Pakistan and Iran - remain relatively low. The total number of 
people living with HIV/AIDS in Central Asia is estimated to be about 
90,000. However, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention 
has forecast that by the year 2005 the number will rise to 1.65 
million without concerted efforts to target interventions.

As economic and social conditions deteriorate in the former Soviet 
republics, the number of intravenous drug users is expected to grow 
at a rapid pace, fuelling HIV infection from contaminated needles. 
The epidemic is also growing exponentially through so-called 
"bridge" populations: sexually active drug users and drug injecting 
commercial sex workers.

In Iran, well over 20,000 people are estimated to be HIV positive, 
the vast majority as a result of intravenous drug usage. Officially, 
neighbouring Pakistan has less than 2,000 reported cases of HIV. 
But the actual number of HIV-positive people is thought to be closer 
to 80,000.

Widespread HIV infection throughout all sections of society is likely 
to follow in Central Asia, just as it has elsewhere in the world, if the 
situation remains unchecked.

Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa may be at different stages of 
the AIDS epidemic, but people's responses to AIDS-related stigma 
and discrimination are similar in both regions.

Mohammad, a tailor in Lahore, Pakistan, and Winnie, a widow from 
rural Swaziland both know how it feels to be shunned by their 
families and neighbours. Qadir Maqsodov, Brett Anderson-Terry, 
and Noe Sebisaba, HIV-positive activists in Uzbekistan, South 
Africa and Tanzania respectively, have experienced similar 
challenges, heartaches and triumphs as a result of being open 
about being HIV positive.
 
The prejudice experienced by these and other HIV-positive 
pioneers has made others think twice about being open about being 
HIV positive. Many of the HIV-positive people interviewed for this 
edition did not want to be identified. One, a Zambian university 
student, remains silent about being HIV positive because she does 
not want to be pitied. "I would prefer to be sent to the village to die, 
and people would believe it was witchcraft."

At least these people know they are HIV positive. Last year, 
UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot estimated that about 99 per 
cent of people infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa were 
unaware of their HIV status.

In Zambia, where AIDS emerged almost two decades ago, still only 
six percent of the population has tested for HIV. HIV counsellor 
Justina Bwalya believes that many people avoid finding out their 
HIV status in order to remain in a "comfort zone" that allows them to 
believe that they are unaffected.

Incentives for people to find out and to accept their HIV status are 
distinctly lacking in the countries featured in this edition. And yet 
their governments have backed measures designed to break the 
vicious cycle of stigma, discrimination and denial that fuels the 
AIDS epidemic.

For example, the Declaration of the July 2001 UN General 
Assembly's Special Session (UNGASS) on HIV/AIDS commits UN 
member governments to providing care, support and treatment for 
those affected by HIV and AIDS. Much of the groundwork outlined 
in the Declaration is supposed to have been completed by 2003. 
But as the following articles illustrate, much still has to be done 
before those at the sharp end of the AIDS epidemic realise the 
benefits of these commitments.

Even where progressive and anti-discriminatory legislation exist, 
their application is often flawed, as this edition's article on labour 
practices in South Africa illustrates.

Meanwhile, health care – or the lack of it - can be the source of, 
rather than the panacea for the kind of stigma and discrimination 
that drives HIV and those living with it underground.

"Patients in the advance stages of AIDS are told to go home," says 
Agnes Kunene, a nurse in the article on stigma and discrimination 
in Swaziland. "There is nothing we can do for them, so it is up to the 
families to provide care."

Both the UNGASS Declaration, as well as the African Consensus 
and Plan of Action on HIV/AIDS agreed to by African heads of state 
in Abuja, Nigeria, in April 2001, call on national leaders to act as 
role models. However, former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda 
remains one of the few statesmen in the world to have openly taken 
an HIV test and publicised the result.

Like the people they govern, most leaders choose instead to keep 
quiet about the impact HIV and AIDS are having on their own lives.


[ENDS]

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2002



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