ICW NEWS NOW ONLINE
ICW NEWS 34: The July/August 2006 Issue available online
HIV Positive Women Telling Truths at the AIDS Conference in Toronto AND A Special Focus on Inclusion/Exclusion.
Inside ICW News 34:
ICW’s 5 Key Challenges at the International IAS AIDS Conference in Toronto
ICW is again a co-sponsor of the largest international AIDS conference in the world. This summer over 23,000 people will congregate in Toronto to present new research, listen to the experts, and learn from each other. In Toronto, ICW is determined that the voices of HIV positive women will be heard loud and clear. Our ‘5 Key Challenges’ pinpoint the real-life stories behind the slogans.
What do the following mean to HIV positive women?
1. Sexual and reproductive health
2. Access to care, treatment and support
3. GIPA – the greater involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS
4. Breaking Taboos – around injecting drug users, sex workers, migrants, young women, HIV positive women living with disability
5. Act Now!
‘We want policy makers, health professionals, government bodies, and grass root organisations to take on the complexity of our lives. We want the AIDS conference in Toronto to make a genuine and deep attempt to listen to us, learn from us, work with us.’
ICW News 34 reproduces the ‘5 Key Challenges’ for Toronto. These will form the basis of our work at the conference and tell the world what ICW is striving for. At the end of each day’s message are examples of questions to ask around each subject. ICW says: ‘In every session at the conference, stand up and ask a question!’
UNGASS
Beri Hull, ICW’s Global Advocacy Officer on Access to Care Treatment and Support, reports from New York and gives us the low down on what really happened in the United Nations recent deliberations on its members responses and responsibilities to HIV/AIDS in their countries. Although some member states, including the United States, opposed progressive language around drug use, sex work, condoms, young women’s sexual and reproductive rights, civil society did influence some outcomes, especially to do with women.
Inclusion/Exclusion
Inside the pages which explore this special focus, almost all are to do with ‘exclusion’. Yet all is not gloom and doom because each article contains clear and positive ways to end exclusion.
My Story of Motherhood
In this moving and personal account of having an HIV positive daughter with a disability, Sthembiso explores her changing emotions and reality around motherhood. Over the years she has moved from feeling as if she would never want another child and as an HIV positive woman that she couldn’t have one anyway, to the realisation that now she would desperately like to have another child. She is a mature woman now, in good health with access to excellent care and treatment. But, how to go about this when she was sterilised a number of years ago and does not have a willing partner?
Caring in Conditions of Poverty
In this article, Luisa Orza takes us on a journey with Jeni Gatsi, to a rural area of Namibia. Jeni is the project officer for the Namibian arm of the Parliamentarians for Women’s Health Project. They visited a community in which even the most basic resources for life are scarce. How does a community like this deal with HIV? They discover through meetings with village women that although the word AIDS is never overtly spoken of, and no one is ‘out’ about their status, that it is still a ‘caring’ community. Everyone works together to respond to the needs of the people who are ill.
Involving Men – working together on care, treatment and support
Alice Welbourn, chair of the London based ICW Board of Trustees, recently travelled to Kenya where she participated in a series of meetings in a rural setting which was aimed at men. Allowing different groupings of men - young, old, leaders, religious figures – to discuss HIV and their roles in the epidemic led to a more honest approach in their relationships with their families and communities.
Women Living with Disabilities and HIV in Tanzania
Lydia Rwechungura introduces us to Specioza, an HIV positive woman living with disability. Specioza describes the virtual silence which exists about women in her position. Not only does she have to deal with the stigma of HIV, she has also to carry the weight of stigma and discrimination around disability. She argues that only when this stigma has ended will women like her be able to protect themselves and live life fully.
Silent Voices – HIV positive women and Injecting Drug Use
After the successful completion of the ICW project of the same name, Carmen Tarrades and Liz McKay report on the outcome of the Silent Voices. For ICW it means that positive women who have in the past or still inject drugs or use alcohol are no longer ‘silent’. The project concludes that although the work was carried out in the UK, it has resonances in many other countries.