Rethinking HIV/AIDS

As I am wrapping the boxes for OCC(OPERATION CHRISTMAS CHILD) , I am praying for the kids that get them. With my past experience with this kinds of programs, my mind automatically gravitates towards the HIV/AIDS situation around the world.
Its an intense subject, but today, I keep asking myself,
are we going in circles with this issue? is there any new ground to be broken?
Alot of money is going into research, and alot more going into different programs,…and maybe I wonder if we need to start from scratch.
I don’t have any answer nor suggestions….just questions

What is is the hope?

Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) are slowly become an emerging population. Approximately 2.5 million children are orphaned or have HIV/AIDS. Not surprisingly is that 90% of these live in Africa…..did I mention that this yearly?
Presently, there are 15 million children under the age of 18 who are classified as OVC due to some dire situations. There is an expectancy of approximately 40 million OVCs by 2010….well that is what like a year away…The obvious reasons are that they lost both parents, but this goes further. These children are child soldiers, slaves, those who have HIV/AIDS or are sole caretakers of their parents who have contracted this disease. Statistics show that for every child that is affected by war and natural disasters, there are 7 children who are orphaned….
It is amazing how society seems to ignore these children. Maybe the more is the pathetic excuse of why they are not being taken care of- indifference. Everyone wants to claim that its not their responsibility, especially since most of society has put the responsibility on the parents. But we are affected by the conditions of these children and their futures or potential futures affect our overall being. This is probably why the UN has put much emphasis on taking care of these children.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the main human rights instrument that is relevant to the OVC crisis. According to them, they have outlined the best way to tackle this situation….
• The best interest of the child: In each decision affecting the child, the best interest of the child must be a primary consideration. This principle is of direct relevance to OVC where decisions are being made regarding their caretakers, property and future. The principle also extends to other matters that concern children, including development policies and the allocation of public resources.
• Non-discrimination: All children should be given the chance to enjoy the rights recognised by the CRC and the ACRWC. States must identify the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children within their borders and respect, protect and promote the rights of these children.
• The right to survival, well-being and development: This principle emphasizes the need to ensure the full development of the child at the spiritual, moral, psychological and social levels.
• Respect for the views of the child: Children have the right to participate in all matters affecting them and their views must be given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity.

Obviously, this is not the case in many places. Without an education, they have little or no chance of ever escaping destitution. The sense of hopelessness, as well as the existence of economic pressures to provide sex in exchange for food or poor health care increases the chance of the children not only contractng diseases like HIV/AIDS, but also having little or no hope for a future.

If we keep throwing the responsibility of the children to someone else-more or less tossing back and forth, then who is to take care of them? How are we going to have a bright future, when the future is not being taken care of? Whether we like it or not, these children are the future, and if we do not start seriously taking care of them, we are going to be spectators of society falling apart.

Africa, where Thou Art?

“The strength of Africa lies in its people” – my mother
At first I brushed it off…especially looking around. Failed infrastructures.. Poverty, diseases, death by the masses, civil wars…crooks (governments especially)…yea, i could really see the strengh..(NOT)…but I was 15 then..and I thought I knew everything…(part of me still has that all-knowing thought once in a while)…
So am finishing the pep on HIV/AIDS, and am seeing my mother’s wisdom. Should have listened to her…with all her degrees…dat should be worth something.

I find that the top ten states with the highest AIDS prevalence rates are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Only Angola is of exception to the fact that states in this region have prevalence of 10% and above. 10% of the world lives here but 60% of the world’s population with HIV is in this region. Of the top ten countries with the highest prevalence, nine of them are found in the Southern region. With the population of southern Africa, this means that half of them are infected with Aids.
With this population dying, about 15 million children are orphaned. UNAIDS reports that, by 2006 about 40% were living with AIDS, 4 million of those were new infections and there were about 3 million deaths due to AIDS worldwide. More than two-thirds of this population with HIV and about 80% of the deaths were in the Sub-Saharan Africa. Obviously, this has become more than a social issue and has transformed into an economic and a political issue with this amount of people dying per year. In his article, HIV Epidemic Reconstructing Africa’s Population, Lester Brown “[2000] Began with 24 million African infected with the virus. In the Absence of a medical miracle, nearly all will die before 2010. Each day, 6,000 African dies from AIDS. Each day, an additional 11,000 are infected.” If there is no continual and serious battle against this disease, the African population will decrease gradually with some countries more affected than others.

after being robbed of their land and resources, the Africans discovered that they can only rely on each other…not even the international community could save them…because they do not understand them…
So they figured that they can only rely on themselves. No theories, no expensive equipments…no programs could teach them to care. To take care of their own.
The stigma has got to go, because it has become an invisible tool to the dying population. After all, AIDS is neither a curse from God nor a punishment…and no one really deserves to be afflicted by the disease.

Personal Struggle…solution?

There are days you are completely emotional….and u just dont want to face those days. Probably because you think too much, and in the end, you end with no solutions. I have developed a habit of riding in the subway mindless, from one end to the other, just because I needed to think. Today was one of those days. For a while now, I have been reading and rereading a book about the AIDS situation in Sub-saharan Africa. I keep hoping that there is a light bulb moment, where I am supposed to find an answer to all my questions.
Have you ever gone through a period where you felt that you could strip off your identity, and just be someone else? I admit, this doesn’t happen to me very often, but when it does, i feel like the earth has been shook and it could swallow you?
I am proud of who I am…maybe not the best person, but my mum comes from good stock, and I would hope that I’ve at least got her goodness in me. Being African has thought me to be tough, and being a person of faith has thought me the essence of goodness in all men.
Today…those two identities were in conflict…and the two things that are the essence of who I am were, for lack of a better word, at loggerheads with each other.
I was telling a friend just the other day that if i had my way, AIDS orphans would have the bes that the world has to offer, and at times I wonder why they don’t. But reality comes and I have seen the other side of poverty,(and it isn’t pretty). Then the hardest thing, being able to pray and truly mean that “not my will but yours be done”.
Is there really no answer to AIDS? As I type, a child is losing a parent to AIDS. Somehow, I refuse to believe that the God I know to be merciful is really going to let that child suffer. Jesus was the one who told His disciples to “Let the children come to me” so why are they suffering.
I am not losing my faith, if anything, its stronger, but I wonder, what happened to a continent that I love so much.
Its no wonder people think God Abandoned Africa…I wondered at that myself a while back. Maybe the curse of Ham was truly upon us. But then I discovered that it wasnt God, but man’s actions that were turning my home into a bloody wasteland.
Prayer works…I heard this phrase being shouted as I walked from the subway. Yes, prayer works…but does that mean we cant work to help those who are in need of our help?
so am pissed…livid maybe, just because I can’t really find why. Have you ever felt helpless in a helpless situation? I’ve been working on this research paper for a year now, and every time I have hope that there is that solution that might work, it ends up in a dead end tunnel.
Should I be mad at evangelical christians who are making AIDS patients feel like low scams of the earth, instead of showing them love, and compassion(which is the gospel)
Should I be mad at the government because of the corruption and failed infrastructures?
or maybe the international community, for the foreign Aid which makes them feel good, but ends up doing less, because of the many stipulations that come with the overflow of millions?
Condoms wont work alone, and Abstinence(no matter how much the preaching)wont work alone, and neither will be prayer alone.
Zero grazing, yea, it has a chance of working, but like the rest of the men in the world, African man are not going to stop being polygamous and neither are they going to stop concurrent relationships.
Prayer wont stop a man from pulling down his pants, when the opportunity is there…
Praying and preaching about sin wont help a woman who has three children to feed and has no money or food….
or help an orphan who has to be tough to protect they siblings
or teach that child the important skills of life….
or help them cope with a dying parent that they have to bathe, clothe…
Christians(including myself) start using your hands, help those in need. Dont preach at them, dont judge them(ITS NOT YOUR PLACE!!!!) and just love them(isnt that what Christ did?)
International COmmunity….Stop giving money to governements that you very well know are corrupt (How stupid can you be?)
Help grassroot movements, those small community establishments that are helping childrent, and patients, to have atleast one more day of breathing……
So simple solutions for such a complicated situation….but maybe not so simple

Can technology be a vital tool in weathering the storm of HIV/AIDS?

Instead of governments pouring money into governments, maybe a different approach should be taken to in combating HIV/AIDS. What if the international community focused on providing resources for communities dying from AIDS to help combat this disease? I propose technology mainly because it covers both the prevention and care of patient’s dimensions of combating AIDS.  In addition, it will be addressing the five dimensions of healthcare. Technology is needed in hospitals, communities and in schools. Providing biomedical technology like low-cost AIDS testing instruments would make testing available to all AIDS patients. At present the flow cytometers cost about $100,000 and are complex in maintaining and operating. Cytometers are used to test the presence of AIDS and CD4 cells. Testing is needed  to detect the advancement of the disease before the patients to receive treatment However, because the machines are scarce in Africa, and expensive, most people do not have access to this testing in order to receive treatment. The international communities can do two things to make sure that treatment is available.
1. Help researchers like Dr. J Paul Robinson of Purdue in making sure that low-cost cytometers are available so that they are attainable by all low-income countries.
2. Buy these machines and donate them to hospitals and community testing centers.
This would help patients who are able to receive AZT (AIDS infusion drug) have access to this treatment. This would also make it easier to know how to adequately
Technology is also needed in hospitals to be able to test for clean blood for infusions. This would prevent further spread of the disease in people that are otherwise HIV free. The same technology can be used for research. This would include vacuum pumps, high tech biomedical equipments. In being able to provide good research equipment would make the process of AIDS research much more quicker and efficient.
There is another part of combating AIDS that technology will play a big role in-prevention. Computers, media sources, mass education equipment are some ways to help in prevention. Schools in Africa do not have technology that enables them to learn adequately. Computers do not exist or exist in rarity, which can be a challenge to get access to information that is mostly on the web.  Therefore, providing technology in schools would enable the students to be able to learn and give them a competitive edge in the globalized society.
AIDS is a disease that focuses on behavior. Therefore for behavioral change, there are several measures that need to be taken. There is a surge of community programs that are targeted to the youth of Africa especially the orphans. These communities are aimed at restoring the children’s hope in the future and give them an alternative to living in the streets. In these communities, the children are educated about AIDS, and also introduced to programs that enhances their talents. This is one way to change behaviors. If the young people are bored, they find other means to keep them busy. By giving them an alternative to boredom, and building their self-worth, there is a big chance that behaviors are bound to change because they are not so willing to throw their lives away. Therefore, I suggest we take the example of the World Bank in providing aid that is focused on communities to avoid Bureaucracy.

Hello world!

So I was looking at my previous blog that I have had for five or so years, and it was decided that I needed to start blogging again, with the intention of highlighting two things: HIV/AIDS in Africa and India, and two, Women and the OVC(Orphans and Vulnerable children) in those regions.

There is also a selfish motive here….with the help of my friends, we are starting an organization, and this is going to highlight the beginning stages….eventually, that will have its own site, but until then, we are working with wordpress.