Published on Nov 28, 2012 by AsianDevelopmentBank
Preventing HIV and AIDS in Asia and the Pacific remains a priority for the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Accurate and accessible information is critical for an effective and successful response. Here ADB and UNAIDS highlight the importance of continuing our joint efforts in fighting the disease.
Burma’s AIDS epidemic mostly affects marginalized groups, such as the gay community. In a country where homosexuality remains illegal, finding and treating gay patients is a challenge for the few health workers devoted to their treatment. VOA News reports that an annual religious event called a Nat festival, however, is one time when the gay community can network – and talk to health workers about treatment.
The video first shows a young woman deciding to not get an abortion and running out of the hospital. Her child is born a girl and lives through tough times with her single mother, due to her father being in jail. When the girl is an adolescent, her mother’s boyfriend molests her. When she becomes a teenager, she is promiscuous. When she became an adult, she has two children and soon becomes a stripper. A customer from the strip club pays her to have sex with him and she is diagnosed with HIV. She runs out of the hospital, like her mother at the beginning of the video. The music video then rewinds and shows a different life that the girl could have lived. Her mother would move into her own mother’s house and even marry a better man, with her little daughter as flower girl. In the end, the daughter grows up to be smarter and more mature, and graduates from high school, making her mother and grandmother proud. When she becomes an adult, she is in the same hospital again awaiting a test result and the doctor tells her she is pregnant, she is happy and hugs her mother, thanking her for teaching her “how to love.”
A new study finds that the use of a hormonal contraceptive popular with women in eastern and southern Africa doubles their risk of becoming infected with HIV. And when it is used by HIV-infected women, it doubles the risk they will infect their male partners. The large study was conducted in sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV – the virus that causes AIDS – has been spread mainly through heterosexual sex.
Twenty million of the world’s 30 million people living with HIV/AIDS are in Africa. So what better place to experiment with ways to make them more self-sufficient, improve their diet, and help overcome the social stigma of AIDS? VOA’s Peter Heinlein in Addis Ababa reports one promising solution involves growing vegetables.
A private boarding school connected with the Hershey chocolate company says it was trying to protect other students when it denied admission to a Philadelphia-area teenager because he is HIV-positive. (Dec. 2, 2011)
Male circumcision is now being embraced even by communities that never used to culturally practice the procedure, after it was proven to drastically reduce the chances of getting infected with HIV/AIDS. But access to quality medical service for this cut still remains a huge hurdle, especially in the far-flung areas of the country. But as NTV’s Ouko Okusah found out, medics have devised new ways to tackle the problem and are now fishing in unfamiliar waters.
they won’t let you hear the truth at school
if that person says “fuck”
can’t even talk about “fuck”
even though a third of your senior class
is pregnant.
I can’t teach an 18-year-old girl in a public school
how to use a condom that will save her life
and that of the orphan she will be forced
to give to the foster care system—
“Carlos, how many 13-year-olds do you know that are HIV-positive?”
“Honestly, none. But I do visit a shelter every Monday and talk with
six 12-year-old girls with diagnosed AIDS.”
while 4th graders three blocks away give little boys blowjobs during recess
I met an 11-year-old gang member in the Bronx who carries
a semi-automatic weapon to study hall so he can make it home
and you want me to censor my language
“Carlos, what’s genocide?”
your books leave out Emmett Till and Medgar Evers
call themselves “World History” and don’t mention
King Leopold or diamond mines
call themselves “Politics in the Modern World”
and don’t mention Apartheid
“Carlos, what’s genocide?”
you wonder why children hide in adult bodies
lie under light-color-eyed contact lenses
learn to fetishize the size of their asses
and simultaneously hate their lips
my students thought Che Guevara was a rapper
from East Harlem
still think my Mumia t-shirt is of Bob Marley
how can literacy not include Phyllis Wheatley?
schools were built in the shadows of ghosts
filtered through incest and grinding teeth
molded under veils of extravagant ritual
“Carlos, what’s genocide?”
“Roselyn, how old was she? Cuántos años tuvo tu madre cuando se murió?”
“My mother had 32 years when she died. Ella era bellísima.”
…what’s genocide?
they’ve moved from sterilizing “Boriqua” women
injecting indigenous sisters with Hepatitis B,
now they just kill mothers with silent poison
stain their loyalty and love into veins and suffocate them
…what’s genocide?
Ridwan’s father hung himself
in the box because he thought his son
was ashamed of him
…what’s genocide?
Maureen’s mother gave her
skin lightening cream
the day before she started the 6th grade
…what’s genocide?
she carves straight lines into her
beautiful brown thighs so she can remember
what it feels like to heal
