An end to AIDS is within our reach

via The Washington Post, by Desmond Tutu

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month has demonstrated that antiretroviral treatment can prevent the spread of HIV, in addition to saving those infected from sickness and death.

Armed with this new data, President Obama should lead the world in a massive effort to expand access to treatment and rid humanity of AIDS — the most devastating disease of our time.

But just as the end of AIDS has finally come within reach, we are witnessing an unprecedented drop in financial and political support for the cause.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and the Kaiser Family Foundation reported in August that donor funding for HIV/AIDS leveled in 2009 and then declined — 10 percent — in 2010 for the first time ever. The United States, which accounts for more than half of global contributions to fight the disease, disbursed $700 million less in 2010 than in 2009. And projected U.S. funding in 2011 is roughly $28 million less than in 2010.

This is a great shame, as millions of people receiving treatment worldwide depend on these funds to stay alive.

Our support should be increasing. AIDS remains the leading cause of orphanhood and of death among women of reproductive age. It is a major driver of opportunistic infections — particularly tuberculosis — and keeps tens of millions of Africans mired in poverty.

Read the rest.


[If an item is not written by an IRMA member, it should not be construed that IRMA has taken a position on the article's content, whether in support or in opposition.]

Meet a Friendly Rectal Microbicide Advocate: Zoe Duby

via IRMA

“There is a need to provide people with choices about how to prevent the transmission of HIV. From what we know, condom use for anal sex, particularly between men and women, is very low. Rectal microbicides may provide a safe, feasible and user-friendly answer to preventing HIV transmission through anal sex." -Zoe Duby

Zoe Duby hails from Cape Town, South Africa, and is a social science and public health researcher specializing in the social context of HIV, high risk sex and most-at-risk-populations (MARPs). Duby has found IRMA to be a great resource for her Master's and PhD research, which focuses on heterosexual anal sex and HIV.

Through work with the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation, Duby organizes and facilitates the MSM Sensitivity Training for Health Care Workers in Africa. With the Foundation, she has successfully trained over 160 health care workers in South Africa, and distributed 500 MSM Sensitivity Manuals. A second edition of the manual is currently being developed, and 400 more health care workers will be trained over the next year.
Duby is also an active advocate for bringing anal sex and anal health (heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual) onto the HIV Prevention and Treatment agenda. Much of her work aims to highlight anal sex (especially between men and women) as a neglected vector for HIV transmission.

When she's not spurring social change, Duby is outside surfing, climbing, running, hiking and cycling.

Read about other friendly rectal microbicides advocates

Learn more about IRMA membership

[If an item is not written by an IRMA member, it should not be construed that IRMA has taken a position on the article's content, whether in support or in opposition.]

Meet a Friendly Rectal Microbicides Advocate: Andrew Scheibe

Andrew Scheibe, from Cape Town, South Africa, works as a clinical investigator and programmes manager for Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation's Men's Division. He first got involved with IRMA before the Pittsburg 2010 Microbicide Conference.

Scheibe believes that the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation has the experience and potential to conduct rectal microbicide trials and advocate for their development in Africa. He also believes that effective HIV prevention will allow individuals to choose from an array of strategies in order to keep themselves healthy. The Foundation recognizes that safe and effective rectal microbicides would be an invaluable technology for use in combination with condoms and other relevant behavioural prevention strategis by individuals who engage in anal sex, and recognizes the potential benefit which could be derived from rectal microbicides in all prevention messaging, at all times.

In keeping with IRMA's mission to advocate for safe, effective, acceptable and accesible rectal microbicides, Scheibe is actively disseminating the CAPRISA results in order to stimulate discussion around microbicide development and educate the community about developments in biomedical prevention technologies.

When he's not working with the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation, Scheibe spends his time walking in the mountains around Cape Town and surfing in the ocean.

Read about other friendly rectal microbicides advocates

Learn more about IRMA membership

[If an item is not written by an IRMA member, it should not be construed that IRMA has taken a position on the article's content, whether in support or in opposition.]

Tutu Fabulous - The Archbishop's Top 5 LGBT Quotes

via change.org

In honor of Archbishop Desmond Tutu who officially resigned yesterday, here are 5 great quotes that speak to his commitment to LGBT human rights.

Here is an especially great one:

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are part of so many families. They are part of the human family. They are part of God's family. And of course they are part of the African family.

- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, March 2010

Read the rest.

Desmond Tutu: In Africa, a step backward on human rights

By Desmond Tutu, via the Washington Post

Friday, March 12, 2010

Hate has no place in the house of God. No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity -- or because of their sexual orientation. Nor should anyone be excluded from health care on any of these grounds. In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights. We knew this was wrong. Thankfully, the world supported us in our struggle for freedom and dignity.

It is time to stand up against another wrong.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are part of so many families. They are part of the human family. They are part of God's family. And of course they are part of the African family. But a wave of hate is spreading across my beloved continent. People are again being denied their fundamental rights and freedoms. Men have been falsely charged and imprisoned in Senegal, and health services for these men and their community have suffered. In Malawi, men have been jailed and humiliated for expressing their partnerships with other men. Just this month, mobs in Mtwapa Township, Kenya, attacked men they suspected of being gay. Kenyan religious leaders, I am ashamed to say, threatened an HIV clinic there for providing counseling services to all members of that community, because the clerics wanted gay men excluded.

Uganda's parliament is debating legislation that would make homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment, and more discriminatory legislation has been debated in Rwanda and Burundi.

These are terrible backward steps for human rights in Africa.

Our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters across Africa are living in fear.

And they are living in hiding -- away from care, away from the protection the state should offer to every citizen and away from health care in the AIDS era, when all of us, especially Africans, need access to essential HIV services. That this pandering to intolerance is being done by politicians looking for scapegoats for their failures is not surprising. But it is a great wrong. An even larger offense is that it is being done in the name of God. Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God.

"But they are sinners," I can hear the preachers and politicians say. "They are choosing a life of sin for which they must be punished." My scientist and medical friends have shared with me a reality that so many gay people have confirmed, I now know it in my heart to be true. No one chooses to be gay. Sexual orientation, like skin color, is another feature of our diversity as a human family. Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people? Does God love his dark- or his light-skinned children less? The brave more than the timid? And does any of us know the mind of God so well that we can decide for him who is included, and who is excluded, from the circle of his love?

The wave of hate must stop. Politicians who profit from exploiting this hate, from fanning it, must not be tempted by this easy way to profit from fear and misunderstanding. And my fellow clerics, of all faiths, must stand up for the principles of universal dignity and fellowship. Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

The writer is archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.