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HIV/AIDS training in Bwiam

Concern Universal, through its Excel project and in collaboration with St Joseph’s Farm Centre, recently ended a two-day stakeholder training for staff of the Sulayman Jukung Jammeh General Hospital in Bwiam, St Joseph’s Family Farm Centre as well as teachers and community representatives on HIV and gender. The program was held at the St Joseph’s Family Farm Centre (SJFFC) grounds in Bwiam, Foni Kansala. The training was aimed at enhancing the awareness level of the participants on HIV and the...

Have Confidence in Women

It was Kofi Anan, then UN Secretary General, that posited that "no other policy can raise economic productivity, reduce child and maternal mortality, prevent HIV/AIDS and increase the chances of education for the next generation like the empowerment of women". We in The Gambia have absolutely no reason to doubt the ability of women, do we? Since the beginning of the second republic, there has been a major turn in the prospect and level of contribution of the women folk in national development,...

SOUTHERN AFRICA: A winning recipe for PMTCT but few follow it

A success story, at last: Botswana has lowered the rate of mother-to-child transmission of HIV to less than four percent, coming close to developed countries that have almost eliminated paediatric AIDS. In Europe and the USA, fewer than two percent of babies with HIV-positive mothers are born with the virus; without intervention, the risk of an HIV-positive pregnant woman passing on the virus to her baby is between 30 percent and 35 percent, according to health specialists. In Lesotho,...

KENYA: Slow response to high HIV rates in prisons

The problem of HIV in Kenya's prisons - where prevalence is about twice the national average - will remain unsolved as long as homosexuality is illegal, and prevention efforts remain out of reach, experts have warned. "We know homosexuality exists in the prisons, but our hands are tied because of the illegal nature of sodomy under our laws," Mary Chepkong'a, head of the Kenya Prisons Service AIDS Control Unit, told IRIN/PlusNews. "Because of the law, we cannot provide them with condoms to...

AFRICA: Overview - At the Cutting edge - male circumcision and HIV

Is mass male circumcision the new big thing in HIV prevention, or is it a risky social experiment that threatens to divert funding from tried and tested interventions? UNAIDS is careful in its assessment: "Without question, we absolutely have to ensure that men and women are awarbe that male circumcision is not a 'magic bullet'; it doesn't provide total protection and it doesn't mean people can stop taking the safe sex precautions they were already using." The caution is a response to the...

LIBERIA: New programme to prevent mother-to-child transmission gains momentum

Thousands of pregnant women have been tested for HIV since Liberia introduced a programme to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmissions (PMTCT) eight months ago, according to the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP). "The turnout of pregnant women at hospitals and clinics where we are doing this programme has been very impressive; records have shown that hundreds of women a month go through the test at each of the health centres," said Josephine Freeman, National Coordinator of the Prevention...