As a young person, I am interested in seeing a situation where all young people know their HIV status and can openly declare their status without fear of discrimination and stigmatization. One sure way of achieving this is for all young people to do get tested. From my video, you will lean about my passion about HIV and Voluntary Counseling and Testing facilities available in health centres and youth centers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I have been working on HIV since I was 11years. 14 years down the line, I believe HIV has taken a youthful face. As a young boy, I visited the Fevers Unit of the General hospital in Ghana (which is also responsible for people living with HIV) and I was amazed at the level of neglect and discrimination that people living with HIV face. I was motivated to use my media access (radio) to draw attention to this injustice and create a platform for young people to be a part of the campaign to stop HIV/AIDS related stigma.

I have four questions I’d like to ask you

Next week, from July 18 to July 23, a conference on HIV/AIDS will be hosted in Vienna. This conference will be attended by policy makers, people working in the field, and people living with HIV. I am writing this blog-post from Vienna. Even though you can’t participate physically, you can participate and have your say online.

• Do you know your HIV status?
• If not, would you like to know your HIV status?
• What do you think are the three most important reasons why most young women and men do not know their HIV status in your country? (Is it that they do not think it is important? Are they embarrassed to get tested? Are there no services? Are services are expensive? Lack of confidentiality? Because they aren’t allowed to get tested?).
• What is the one thing that should be done in your country to encourage young people to get tested for HIV?

During the conference, there will be an interactive discussion hosted by UNAIDS, UNICEF, UNESCO, UNFPA, and WHO entitled: “Right For You! Creating Game Changing Strategies for HIV and Young People.” Please leave a comment below and reply to the four questions. We want to know what issues, comments and questions young people have about HIV.

My opinion

I am inspired and believe that young people knowing our status will go along way to prevent the stigma we face.

I live in a small country on the West Coast of Africa; Ghana with a population of about 23 million. We currently have comparatively low prevalence standing at 1.9%. The prevalence has seen a gradual decline on the last three years from 3% in 2007 to the current rate. Ghana has a youthful population with over 50% below 35 years. Prevalence in Ghana is highest between 15- 49 years age group. Ghana has a National Commission on HIV which is the country’s coordinating body for the response in Ghana.

Many young people do not want to know their status mainly due to the fear of alienation by their friends, family and society. Think about a society where everyone knows his status and can freely talk about it. This is my motivation to want to encourage all young people to get tested. Fortunately, there are testing centres dotted around our communities and there are quick testing kits and free counseling in many youth centres and hospitals. Testing for HIV also gives our governments an idea about the numbers of people needing Anti Retroviral Therapy and adequately plan for them. Civil society will also be able to effectively advocate for increased access to ART and counseling and support services.

Leave comment, have your say

I hope you will join this discussion. A panel of experts will be answering some of the best responses and comments. They include Dr. Doug Kirby, an HIV researcher and author of The International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education and Darlington Muyambwa, a youth activist and programme manager of an organization providing information on HIV to students in Zimbabwe.

It’s an exciting way to interact with the international HIV/AIDS community, so join the Conversation! Your comments will also be part of a survey on HIV prevention. Let us know what you think about these important questions related to condoms by commenting on this blog-post

Did you miss the other video-blogs from the Conversation-series on Youth and HIV? You can read them here:

• What do you think about HIV and condoms?
• Let’s talk about HIV and education!

Poor women who have no decision making power their partners, specially their husbands, are the victim of HIV/AIDS. This is one of the main reasons why most people with HIV/AIDS are women. This is true not only in poor communities, but in all social classes. Women are suffereing from AIDS which is not their fault, whether they aware or not. So poverty is one of the factor, but not the only one. We need to change the perception.

Young people make up a huge part of the population in India. There are 315 million young people between the ages of 12-24 years who make up 30 percent of India’s population. Though these young people are more educated, healthier, and more urbanized than previous generations, they still face problems. Most troubling is their lack of knowledge in terms of sexual and reproductive health.

Researchers and groups like Population Council, report that, “These young people face significant risks related to sexual and reproductive health, and many lack the knowledge and power they need to make informed sexual and reproductive health choices,” Population Council reports.

The YP Foundation

One young woman, Ishita Chaudhry, has been addressing this problem since 2002 when she began the Youth Parliament, at the age of 17. Also known as the YP Foundation, the acclaimed group designs and implements community-based youth projects, providing funds for people between the ages of 13 through 28 years to create projects related to socio-cultural, economic, legal and environmental issues.

One of the most important subjects the YP Foundation has focused on, however, is reproductive rights and sexuality. AIDS, for example, is especially problematic for the world’s youth, reports UNAIDS. The Geneva-based organization says people worldwide between the ages of 12-24 years account for four of each ten new AIDS cases. Also, (mirroring findings from Population Council, above) this age group has very little knowledge about the disease and its transmission. That’s not all. Young people are often “left to fend for themselves,” regarding all aspects of sexuality and reproduction, said Dr. Robert Carr, the Associate Director of the International Council of AIDS Service Organizations.

Spreading information with technology

The internet is a natural choice to disseminate this information. “If you’re looking at issues of sexually reproductive rights and health,” says Ishita Chaudry in a video interview (below), “then it becomes clear to provide a space where young people can continue conversations once they’ve finished community based interactions and workshops.” Because so many of India’s youth are online, it makes sense that this community is an online one. Moreover, young people can access it whenever they like and anonymously, if they like.

In this video Ishita Sharma and Ishita Chaudry speak about the YP Foundation’s online work.

Project 19

Though the Internet provides a forum for discussion about change, the YP Foundation also attempts to create communities in the non-digital world as well. One of the organization’s major initiatives is Project 19 which trains young people in New Delhi to become peer facilitators in order to lead discussions and workshops on topics that are often considered too sensitive, like gender, sexuality, reproductive rights and HIV/AIDs.

In a post on the YP Foundation blog, Ishita Chaudry sums up some reasons the initiative got underway.

Why as society, are we so scared to address any kind of sexuality education or rights cohesively? What stops us from giving people complete rather than half baked information that is critical and live saving and that can protect them from disease, empowers them to be informed individuals and that teach them to be respectful to their own needs and desires and to be respectful towards the rights of others as well?

…We have had too many years of awkward silences and far too many generations of people who have grown up not being given the opportunity to speak out about their thoughts, fears, expressions and questions.

Project 19 Annual Festival

In conjunction with Project 19, the YP Foundation also organizes (with a variety of other groups) the Project 19 Annual Festival, bringing over 600 at risk and marginalized group and urban youth from around India to Delhi. These young people, whose members range from truck drivers to sex workers, lobby and discuss how to tackle issues ranging from collective rights to sexual reproductive rights and health.

As the Daily Indian newspaper explains:

Using various mediums like art, music, theatre and dance, the festival will provide a platform to the young men and women as well as the vulnerable groups to bring forth their experience-based opinion on different issues and form a network so as to solve some of the problems together.

I come from a country whose HIV prevalence is one of the highest in the world (15.3%). There are thousands of organizations responding to AIDS and most of them focus on prevention of new infections. I see young HIV educators volunteering and getting nothing in return while those at the top, sit on the budget and decide what young people should do.

I am saddened that young people are being used for selfish gains of project leaders and managers.

If the AIDS response is a charity and voluntary fraternity, then let it be for everyone not just young people!

Today, young people are concerned about their future. They want jobs and a good life. As such, only a few young people are willing to get involved in the fight against AIDS voluntarily. They ask, how long shall I be a volunteer? As a young person, I want to have a good career and not just work voluntarily for other people’s selfish gains.

The new book and documentary Diamonds tells the stories of ten women and one girl who are all HIV-positive.

Globally, the incidence of HIV/AIDS among women is rising at an astounding rate. In 1997, 41 per cent of HIV infected adults were women and this figure rose to 50 per cent at the end of 2002.

The feminization of HIV/AIDS is a worrying trend and UNIFEM is committed to addressing the inequalities that lie behind it. But recently UNIFEM partnered with APN+ to take a different look at the impact of the epidemic.

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. The stories plot key moments in their lives, from diagnosis to the realization that they could be part of the change, documenting the journey each woman went through to emerge as an advocate for individuals living with HIV and a powerful voice in the global dialogue on AIDS.

The documentary made in debut at the Bangkok World Film Festival, November, 2009.

The stories within Diamonds are honest and passionate, providing a deep insight into the personal struggles and victories of women and girl children living with HIV.

I will admit to shedding more than a few tears while I read these stories. They are bravely honest and a genuinely good read.

Statistics taken from the very useful Gender and HIV/AIDS web portal

What is “harm reduction”?

The term “harm reduction” refers to policies, programmes and projects which aim to reduce the health, social and economic harms associated with the use of psychoactive substances. It is an evidence-based and cost-effective approach – bringing benefits to the individual, community and society. Harm reduction is a targeted approach that focuses on specific harms. It requires that politicians, policymakers, communities, researchers and frontline workers ask two questions:

1. What specifically are the harms associated with different psychoactive drugs?
2. What can be done to reduce the risk of those harms occurring?

Examples from the real world

• People who inject drugs are vulnerable to contracting blood borne infections such as HIV and hepatitis B and C. Providing sterile needles and syringes helps reduce the risk of infection.
• People dependent on illicit opiate drugs (such as heroin) are at particular risks from impure drugs, overdose, and having to engage in acquisitive crime in order to purchase their drugs. The medical provision of substitute drugs such as methadone and buprenorphine reduces these risks.
• People who become drunk in bars and pubs may cause harm to themselves or others. Training bar staff in responsible serving may help reduce the risk of intoxication and give staff the skills to prevent incidents.
• People who drink and then drive motor vehicles may hurt themselves or others. Drink driving laws, the provision of public transport, and designated driver programmes reduce risks of injury and fatality by separating drinking from driving.
• People who smoke tobacco are likely to suffer serious illness and premature death. Helping them to switch to non-smokable forms of nicotine vastly reduces their risks. Harm reduction can work alongside approaches that aim for reductions in drug, alcohol and tobacco consumption.

Drug-, drink- and nicotine-free

However, harm reduction is often a more realistic approach: it recognises that many people throughout the world use psychoactive substances, and that society is unlikely to ever be drug-, drink- or nicotine-free.

Harm reduction does not exclude abstinence as a goal for individuals who are dependent but, rather, provides people with more pragmatic choices such as limiting their intake.

Harm reduction helps to engage people and motivate them make contact with treatment providers when they are ready.

A drug free society

However, as good treatment and help is unavailable to many people around the world, and many psychoactive substance users may not be ready to engage with treatment services, it is essential from a public health perspective to do what can be done now to reduce harm – waiting for a drug free society or for people to achieve abstinence is not an option.

There are two main pillars that guide harm reduction. One is a pragmatic public health approach, and the other is based within a human rights approach. Both share an ethos that changing human behaviour must be a facilitative and cooperative process which respects the dignity of the individual.

‘Addict’

Harm reduction avoids moralistic, stigmatizing and judgmental statements about substance use and users. It avoids value laden language (such as ‘drug abuse’ and ‘addict’). Harm reduction approaches also seek to identify and advocate for changes in laws, regulations and policies that increase harms, or which hinder the introduction of harm reduction interventions.

The evidence clearly demonstrates that harm reduction reduces the impact of substance use for the individual and society, and helps keep people alive and well. Harm reduction saves lives.

Given their limited choices, poor people are ingenious and resourceful – they have to be, in order to survive. But poverty’s companions encourage the infection. Very poor people may lack confidence or hope in the future. The pressures under which they live encourage high-risk behaviour, from casual relationships to drug and alcohol abuse and gender violence. Living with HIV and AIDS, they find that lost earnings, lost crops and missing or inadequate care make them weaker and make their poverty deeper. AIDS can push vulnerable families and whole communities into poverty. Children of affected families grow up in a world of diminished opportunities. The cycle intensifies.

Inequality sharpens the impact of poverty, and a mixture of poverty and inequality may be driving the epidemic. A truck driver is not well paid compared to the executives who run his company; but he is rich compared to the people in the villages he drives through. For the woman at a truck stop, a man with a few rand or rupees is wealthy. She knows the risks, but she is desperate for money to feed her family. That may be enough to buy him unprotected sex; and perhaps to doom her and her family as well.

If poor people were given the conditions that are necessary for better health, such as clean water, good food, sanitation, shelter and adequate medical care, if they were armed with literacy and access to information, if they were given voice and space to participate in decisions that affect their lives, they would be better equipped to resist the spread of HIV and AIDS. None of these measures call for huge investments or high technology. But they do require the determination to put poor people first.