Other external News

President Mrs Joyce Banda Calls Upon The Elite To Join Forces in the Fight Against HIV and AIDS

Her Excellency Mrs Joyce Banda, President of Malawi and Minister responsible for HIV and AIDS has called upon the elite to join forces in the national response to HIV and AIDS.

The President made the call at Sanjika Palace in Blantyre on Wednesday, 5 December 2012 during an audience with people living with HIV.

Kenyans with HIV join activists in call for unused US Aids money to be spent

Scores of Kenyans living with HIV sang and chanted outside a hotel in central Nairobi on Wednesday, demanding that $500m of unspent funds from the US government's Aids programme be freed to provide life-saving antiretroviral treatment in Kenya.

The protesters' shouts were meant to reach the ears of US officials, including ambassador Scott Gration and the country head of the US President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), who were attending a conference at the hotel with Kenyan health officials. Protesters also waved placards featuring pictures of President Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan.

East African HIV Bill passed without criminalization clause

East Africa's Legislative Assembly has passed a regional HIV/AIDS Bill that seeks to protect the rights of people living with HIV and harmonize regional legislation and policy on the prevention and treatment of HIV.

Activists have welcomed the passing of the Bill, which, unlike some of the laws in the region's individual member states, does not criminalize the deliberate transmission of HIV.

"Criminalization impedes rather than promotes the fight against HIV, because it violates the rights of people living with HIV on many fronts," Nelson Otuoma, the coordinator of the Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS in Kenya (NEPHAK), told IRIN/PlusNews.

US envoy rejects activists’ demands

The US has said Kenya should increase its spending on HIV because donors may not absorb future costs of treatment and prevention. Ambassador Scott Gration said the US President's Emergency Programme on Aids Relief is already absorbing the bulk of this cost yet it was started as a stopgap measure. “This was an emergency programme and we'd not want to make the abnormal normal,” he said. Pepfar is the single largest contributor to Kenya's Aids programmes.

Gration said the programme will spend Sh40.9 billion ($487 million) in Kenya this year. “We have an obligation to help Kenyans but the government also has to take responsibility,” he said in Nairobi on the sidelines of a review conference on contribution of health to Vision 2030.

Building the capacity of Senegalese people living with HIV

People living with HIV/AIDS [in Senegal] received training on human rights through their network. This was with the support of the Senegalese Women Lawyers’ Association. This training session enables them to cope with any form of discrimination and stigma. Presided over by the Chairwoman of the Senegalese Lawyers’ Network, a training session in human rights was conducted yesterday, Monday, for women living with HIV, aiming above all at fighting any form of discrimination and stigma.