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Resource | Publications,
Factors such as stigma and discrimination, poverty, criminalization of drug use, sex work and homosexuality, limited antiretroviral therapy (ART) service facilities and lack of trained healthcare professionals on HIV treatment have all been cited as barriers to HIV treatment access for people living with HIV (PLHIV). Although studies have also provided the frameworks for understanding and addressing how gender and sexuality, employment and drug use-based social status have impeded our goal of delivering treatment, care and support to marginalized communities; progress in achieving equitable access on essential HIV healthcare services remains disappointingly slow.
In 2008, the Asia Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (APN+) conducted a network-based research project aiming to explore the experience of women, men who have sex with men/transgender people (MSM/TG) and injecting drug users (IDUs) living with HIV in accessing ART and other HIV-related healthcare services.
Resource | Publications,
This book aims to inform networks of people living with HIV (PLHIV) and concerned civil society organisations about how patents can make their medicines more expensive and what they can do about it. It provides a step-by-step basic guide to enable these stakeholders to minimise the number of medicines that are patented in their country, and still ensure that medicines are affordable even if they are patented. The book also explains how some free trade agreements and other treaties can make medicines even more expensive.
This book gives concrete examples of how PLHIV networks in partnership with key partners have reduced the impact of patents on medicines, including for medicines for the wider population in Thailand and India. It provides a clear illustration of how small local and national actions led by PLHIV can generate tremendous global impacts in today's borderless and inter-connected world.
Resource | Publications,
There is an urgent need to address the emerging and re-emerging epidemics of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender people. Strengthening strategic information systems and implementing interventions for the prevention and treatment of HIV and other STIs among MSM and transgender people should be considered a priority for all countries and regions as part of a comprehensive effort to ensure universal access to HIV prevention, care and treatment.
A meeting held on 15–17 September 2008 in Geneva brought together participants from the World Health Organization (WHO) and its United Nations (UN) partners along with representatives from 26 countries to discuss the role that the health sector can and should play in addressing prevention, treatment and care of HIV and other STIs among MSM, transgender people and their sexual partners.
Resource | Publications,
The newly established Islamic Republic of Afghanistan faces many challenges: pockets of instability around the country, low literacy levels, high levels of opium production, and a lack of basic infrastructure. But what is known about the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in Afghanistan? Is Afghanistan at risk of a Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) epidemic, and if so what can be done? The looming potential of an HIV epidemic in Afghanistan has motivated academics, donors, the Government of Afghanistan, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to undertake research, create policies, and implement programs for the prevention of HIV spread in Afghanistan. Although HIV has been explored to varying degrees by several agencies, data on HIV in Afghanistan remains sparse and information sharing has been largely ad-hoc and uncoordinated.
This report aims to synthesize available information on the HIV epidemic in Afghanistan. The report explores regional HIV transmission patterns, the prevalence of risk factors for HIV in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan’s current programmatic and policy responses for HIV prevention.
Resource | Publications,
ADB Regional Technical Assistance (RETA 6247) was financed by the Poverty Reduction Cooperation Fund from the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, with parallel financing from UNESCO. This RETA 6247 was, in part, a continuation of the previous RETA (RETA 6083, ICT and Preventive Education in the Cross-border Areas of the Greater Mekong Sub-region). However, it also built and expanded on the lessons identified from the previous project. The earlier RETA, jointly carried out by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), UNESCO and SEAMEO, was implemented during the period April 2003 to September 2004. Under it, ADB/UNESCO pioneered the use of linguistically and culturally appropriate materials in the form of radio soap operas (dramas) for transmitting HIV/AIDS, drug and trafficking prevention information to highly vulnerable ethnic minority populations often living in remote areas in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS). It further established the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for mapping, tracking and monitoring the spread of HIV/AIDS in Thailand, as well initiating the UNESCO-based Clearing House (CH) on Preventive HIV/AIDS education in the GMS.
Resource | Publications,
The overall goal of the National Strategic Plan (NSP) for HIV/AIDS and STI in Bhutan is to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reversing and halting the spread of HIV and AIDS by 2015. Five priority strategies have been developed:
1. Enhancing the prevention of STI and HIV transmission,
2. Enhancing access to treatment, care and support for people living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA),
3. Creating a supportive environment for women and men living with or affected by HIV and AIDS,
4. Creating and enabling environment for successful implementation of the national response to HIV, AIDS and STI,
5. Generating strategic information for evidence-based action.
Resource | Publications,
Research from around the world has suggested that married women’s greatest risk for contracting HIV is from having sexual intercourse with their husbands. On the basis of 6 months of ethnographic research in Hanoi, Vietnam, this paper argues that the contemporary nature of the HIV epidemic in Hanoi is shaped by 3 interrelated policies implemented in 1986 as part of the government’s new economic policy, Doi Moi (Renovation). Together, these policies structure men’s opportunities for extramarital sexual relations and encourage wives to acquiesce to their husbands’ sexual infidelity, putting both at risk of HIV. The study proposes 4 structural intervention strategies that address the policies that contribute to men’s opportunities for extramarital liaisons and to marital HIV risk.
Resource | Publications,
According to Vietnamese policy, HIV-infected women should have access at least to HIV testing and Nevirapine prophylaxis, or where available, to adequate counselling, HIV infection staging, ARV prophylaxis, and infant formula. Many studies in high HIV prevalence settings have reported low coverage of prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) services, but there have been few reports from low HIV prevalence settings, such as Asian countries. We investigated the access of HIV-infected pregnant women to PMTCT services in the well-resourced setting of the capital city, Hanoi.
In a setting where PMTCT is available, HIV-infected women and children did not receive adequate care because of barriers to accessing those services. The results suggest key improvements would be improving quality of counselling and making PMTCT guidelines available to health services. Women should receive early HIV testing with adequate counselling, safe care and prophylaxis in a positive atmosphere towards HIV-infected women.
Resource | Publications,
Myanmar is experiencing an HIV epidemic documented since the late 1980s. The National AIDS Programme national surveillance ante-natal clinics had already estimated in 1993 that 1.4% of pregnant women were HIV positive, and UNAIDS estimates that at end 2005 1.3% (range 0.7–2.0%) of the adult population was living with HIV. While a HIV surveillance system has been in place since 1992, the programmatic response to the epidemic has been slower to emerge although short- and medium-terms plans have been formulated since 1990. These early plans focused on the health sector, omitted key population groups at risk of HIV transmission and have not been adequately funded. The public health system more generally is severely under-funded.
By the beginning of the new decade, a number of organisations had begun working on HIV and AIDS, though not yet in a formally coordinated manner. The Joint Programme on AIDS in Myanmar 2003–2005 was an attempt to deliver HIV services through a planned and agreed strategic framework. Donors established the Fund for HIV/AIDS in Myanmar (FHAM), providing a pooled mechanism for funding and significantly increasing the resources available in Myanmar.
Resource | Fact Sheets,
These fact sheets are intended for use by people recently diagnosed with HIV infection or those who are considering starting HIV treatment. The fact sheets are designed as a series, but can also be used as stand-alone documents. Information in these fact sheets is based on Guidelines for the Use of Antiretroviral Agents in HIV-1-Infected Adults and Adolescents, developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents, which is convened by the HHS in conjunction with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
The Guidelines, which is a "living document," provides updates on new advances in the treatment of HIV.