Publications

In Asia, HIV prevalence among women and girls is increasing; 40% of HIV-positive young people in south and south-east Asia are women and girls. According to UNESCO, over one million youth between the ages of 15 to 24 in south Asia are infected with HIV, and more than half (62%) are young women. In Cambodia, half of all new infections occur in married women and another one third occurs via vertical transmission from mother to child; since 2006 more women than men in Cambodia are reported to have AIDS. Many women diagnosed as HIV-positive are mothers and it is important to keep them healthy in order to have optimal health and well being outcomes for themselves and their children. This research study aims to examine the challenges that these increasing numbers of HIV positive women and children face in getting access to antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) and HIV services in Asia. The study was designed and conducted by women living with HIV in six Asian countries. It was carried out throughout 2008, under the direction of the women’s working group of the Asia Pacific Network of people living with HIV (APN+).

Pacific youth are central to the HIV response in the region. As of 2007, 4,103 new cases of HIV were reported in the region. The majority of these cases were people between the ages of 15 and 29. Even though the number of reported HIV cases is relatively low, other indicators of risk and vulnerability such as STIs are high among youth aged 15 to 24. Whilst education on sexual health including HIV has improved over the past 10 years, getting young people to recognise their risks for HIV and STI infection and to adopt safe behaviour remains a challenge. The development of the 2009 Pacific Youth Festival Safe Festival campaign primarily stemmed from lessons learned during the 1st Pacific Youth Festival–Safe Festival Campaign, which resulted in the following recommendations: • Involvement of the target group at all stages of the campaign – planning, development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation • Use of the peer to peer approach to disseminate information and products and provide services and support • Development of BCC materials that participants wear or use • Distribution of both male and female condoms

Many women and girls face domestic violence not only in their homes and in relationships, but also in public spaces due to poor choices in urban design and poor management of those spaces. In practical terms this can relate to factors such as inadequate street lighting, unsafe underpasses, ineffective community policing and lack of rehabilitation programmes for those involved in antisocial use of public spaces. During times of conflict or social unrest, those factors can further exacerbate the risk of gender-based violence. UN-HABITAT takes an active role in the documentation and exchange of best practices and lessons learned to improve safety and security in cities. To this end, UN-HABITAT has collaborated with the Huairou Commission, Women in Cities International and Red Mujer y Habitat to conduct this Global Assessment on Women’s Safety, which is an extensive review of tools and strategies promoting women’s safety on the global, regional, national and local levels. This has resulted in the creation of a database of over 200 institutions, local authorities and grassroots initiatives working on women’s safety. This helps with information sharing and building of global and regional networks.

Cases of HIV/AIDS in Indonesia Reported through 31 December 2009.

Hong Kong, located in Asia the new burning place of HIV infection, is still having a relatively low prevalence of HIV infection. While sexual transmission is the predominant route of transmission in Hong Kong, an upsurge of infection in injecting drug users is a concern from the experience in other Asian localities. Various public health measures in Hong Kong have kept the HIV prevalence of drug users at low level, as compared with neighbouring cities. This annual surveillance report on HIV/AIDS is an initiative of Special Preventive Programme (SPP), Centre for Health Protection of the Department of Health. This report serves to provide information for strategic planning of services and intervention activities for the prevention, care and control of HIV/AIDS. Following a commentary, data collected from the four main components of our surveillance programme (the HIV/AIDS voluntary reporting system, serosurveillance studies, Social Hygiene Service caseload statistics and risk behaviour studies) are presented as tables and graphs.

Cook Islands are located between French Polynesia and Fiji Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. In 2006, the resident population of Cook Islands was estimated at 11,800 persons. The residential population has been decreasing since 1996, and there has been a population shift from the outer islands to the main population centres in Rarotonga and Aitutaki. In 2005 and 2006 the Cook Islands Ministry of Health, with technical assistance from the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, conducted second generation surveillance (SGS) surveys of antenatal women and youth. This report summarizes the results of the SGS surveys in the two population groups.

This study used household survey data from Cambodia, Thailand and Viet Nam to examine the situation of orphans relative to children in poverty regarding access to essential needs and services, focusing on basic material needs and education outcomes. This study made use of summary statistics and multivariate regression analysis to determine whether poverty accounts for the education gap between orphans and non-orphans, or whether other factors also contribute to the lower education outcomes of orphans. A similar analysis was done on children’s possession of basic materials – namely a blanket, a pair of shoes and two sets of clothes - which exemplify the capacity of families to protect and care for children.

Since the adoption of the Millennium Declaration, total development assistance for health (DAH) has more than doubled and has saved the lives of millions of individuals and protected the livelihoods of their families. But most low-income countries are failing to make much progress towards the child and maternal mortality MDG targets, and the financial crisis threatens to increase infant deaths in developing countries by 200,000-400,000. Progress towards all the health MDGs is impeded by insufficient funding, poor use of resources, and fragmented financing flows. 

This assessment of HIV prevalence among people injecting drugs in the four cities of Mandi Bahauddin, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala and Sheikhupura was conducted in July-August 2009. This assessment includes city wise mapping for size estimates of people injecting drugs, identification of sites where injecting is prevalent, estimates of HIV prevalence among people injecting drugs through provision of VCCT services (confirmation of reactive samples in the Public sector laboratories) and collection of relevant behavioral data.

The process evaluation of the Stepping Stones (SS) program in Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Kiribati was conducted throughout June 2009 to January 2010 period. The aims of the evaluation were to; 1) describe and share the lessons learnt on the different processes used to deliver the program in current countries, 2) make recommendations on the future sustainability and strategic direction of the program and 3) to make recommendations on the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) methodologies to ensure accurate and reliable collection of SS data for future outcome orientated evaluations.