Poverty & AIDS

A response to the blog-post “HIV thrives on poverty.” Overwhelmingly, it is women who are victimized by HIV/AIDS.

The young volunteers who are involved in the fight against HIV get nothing in return.

Diamonds: Stories of Women from the Asia Pacific Network of People Living with HIV, a book and documentary, tells the stories of ten women and one girl who are all HIV-positive.

Japan appears to be the only developed country where the number of HIV positive and AIDS infected people is growing. These statistics about the spread of HIV and AIDS in Japan are particularly alarming because cases of infection are decreasing in rest of the developed world (according to UNAIDS), and because the government has done little to combat the problem.

To combat the spread of AIDS, to make people aware of the disease and protective measures, many organizations and activists worldwide are engaged with innovative and localized campaigns and initiatives. Today we will discuss some of them who use ICT and citizen media to augment their cause.

In some Arab countries, more than half of the population lives in hunger and want. In this post we hear from bloggers writing about poverty and development around the Arab world.

Changing the HIV/AIDS prevention paradigm to reduce and eliminate, as a central priority, girls’ and women’s vulnerability to HIV requires three priority actions.

An epidemic has hit the Indian farmers. Increasingly farmers are resorting to extreme measures like taking their own lives to bail them out of miseries due to a complex problem consisting of poverty, crop failure and growing indebtedness. Indian bloggers analyze the situation.

Some of the most wretched suffering is caused not just by low incomes but also by unwise spending by the poor — especially by men.

HIV/AIDS is a taboo topic in much of the Arab world. While some bloggers in the region report encountering ignorance about HIV/AIDS, others are impressed at the progress being made in destigmatising the disease.

A growing number of HIV-positive bloggers around the world are using citizen media to express how they live with the virus. Busi, a blogger and poet from South Africa found out she had HIV in April 2006, six months after she was raped.

For the 51 million of girls around the world who were married off as children, marriage is risky sexual behavior.

The notion that chronic poverty and crisis have a deep impact on population, especially women, is more than an economic axiom, but a crude, often overwhelming reality.

It is not correct to say that HIV risk is primarily associated with severe poverty (which is also concentrated in rural areas), although the poor are also at risk.

People who are infected with HIV around the world often suffer terribly from stigma, in that people who have HIV are somehow thought to be ‘dirty’, or to have ‘brought it on themselves’ by ‘immoral practices’. They often experience discrimination in terms of housing, medical care, and employment.

If you look at global national data, the fact is that the world’s poorest nations do not have the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates. While true that two-thirds of the people living with HIV/AIDS are in sub-Saharan Africa – the poorest region in the world – the rates by African country do not neatly match up to the poverty index.

HIV thrives on poverty, is spread by poverty and produces poverty in its turn. The relationship isn’t simple.

In many parts of the world women and girls are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, particularly poor women in marginalized communities. Discrimination, poverty, and marginalization are drivers of the HIV epidemic as much as the specific social behaviors that typically lead to infection.
From the onset of the AIDS epidemic, stigma and discrimination have been recognized [...]

Don’t get me wrong. I am not even implying that the Internet can replace a relief package, neither am I suggesting that the Internet can compensate for the social and personal losses that follow poverty. I am rather suggesting, similar to Mr. Gordon Brown, that the Internet can provide a platform where we can be ourselves and have a global conversation with each other on important topics, such as poverty and AIDS.