| mhbvickers@gmail.com 2005-05-18, 6:00 pm |
| http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature5.cfm?REF=237
Needed: A Revolution Within the UN
--Strong advice for how to halt HIV/AIDS from devastating Africa's
women and Africa itself.
Monday, May 09, 2005
by Stephen Lewis
I've been in the Envoy [for HIV/AIDS in Africa] role for four years.
Things are changing in an incremental, if painfully glacial way. It's
now possible to feel merely catastrophic rather than apocalyptic.
Initiatives on treatment, resources, training, capacity, infrastructure
and prevention are underway. But one factor is largely impervious to
change: the situation of women. On the ground, where it counts, where
the wily words confront reality, the lives of women are as mercilessly
desperate as they have always been in the last twenty plus years of the
pandemic.
Just a few weeks ago, I was in Zambia, visiting a district well outside
of Lusaka. We were taken to a rural village to see an "income
generating project" run by a group of Women Living With AIDS. They were
gathered under a large banner proclaiming their identity, some fifteen
or twenty women, all living with the virus, all looking after orphans.
They were standing proudly beside the income generating project... a
bountiful cabbage patch. After they had spoken volubly and eloquently
about their needs and the needs of their children (as always, hunger
led the litany), I asked about the cabbages. I assumed it supplemented
their diet? Yes, they chorused. And you sell the surplus at market? An
energetic nodding of heads. And I take it you make a profit? Yes again.
What do you do with the profit? And this time there was an almost
quizzical response as if to say what kind of ridiculous question is
that... surely you knew the answer before you asked: "We buy coffins of
course; we never have enough coffins."
.... You can read the rest of this article at:
http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature5.cfm?REF=237
Michael H. Vickers
Associate Publisher
StraightGoods.com
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For AIDS/HIV+ resources, visit the s.s.a.h+ website at :
http://www.webcom.com/benny/ssah/ssah+.html
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