The Lancet Calls for a Bad-Ass HIV Prevention Movement

August 7, 2008 at 6:55 am (narrative) (, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , )

(good thing some of us are working on that!)

That venerable medical journal The Lancet dedicated its pre-IAC issue to HIV-prevention, what editor Richard Horton called “the neglected issue in the AIDS response.” On Wednesday, contributing authors called for a reinvigorated movement for prevention that demands a comprehensive, multifaceted approach, including structural change. The distinguished panel also called for investment in flexible, realistic monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

Jeffery O’Malley, director of the HIV and AIDS group at the UN Development Programme, opened with the history of HIV-prevention, urging us to remember when prevention and epidemiology were all the AIDS community had enough information about to discuss. In the early 80s, he recalled, “gay men and drag queens invented safe sex, and they still haven’t been given the Nobel Prize.”

Read the entire post at www.AIDS2008.com.

Other highlights not in that blog post:
  • Dr. Piot, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, also said, “It is time to be frank with young people about sex.” After calling out STI rates among teens in the good ol’ USA, he lowers his head into the microphone. It is sort of awkward, mostly urgent.  He explains, one example, that HIV infections rates have doubled among young men ages 13 to 19 in the past 5 years in New York.

  • Later he showed photos of TAC work in South Africa; held them up as a model of a well-organized and thoughtful treatment justice initiative broadening to include a prevention agenda.

  • The room voted overwhelmingly in favor of abandoning the term “ABCs” and all derivative alphabetical shorthand for HIV prevention, which- if we approach it in earnest- is as complex as all our human desires and desperations. That’s hard to address with legislation, but good policies can and must support us in making long term, root level change and caring for each other as we go.

  • There were 3 other speakers I haven’t mentioned anywhere, including on microbicides and those trials among women.

  • I would also add- free now as I am of the wonkified world of the conference- that there are so many brilliant efforts on the part of caring people in all parts of the world, working and educating in their PTAs or kitchens or health centers.  It is part of the everyday exchanges of social justice minded people.  To make change that we should not limit ourselves to thinking in terms of formal programs or school-based education.

  • There was no time for Q & A.

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naked farmers in mexico

August 6, 2008 at 6:26 am (narrative) (, , , , , , , , , , , , , )

hola gentle readers…

Today from the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City (okay – from my hotel, very late at night, after drinking really amazing Mexican tequila, after another long day of absorbing and reflecting new AIDS prevention information), I recommend you read the blog post excerpted below.  

Another note on IAC: the food is atrocious.  Conferences are not generally beloved for their cuisine, but one might reasonabley expect this health-focused event to invest time (therefore expense) arranging for healthy food.  Couldn’t the organizers partner with groups dedicated to nutritional, sustainable, delicious food to create a “food court” friendly to those with comprimised immune systems?  As a vegetarian, I have the option of a cheese-slab topped spinach salad or sweets, and vegans, so far as I can tell, are crap out of luck.  Oh wait, there is a fruit salad in a plastic square fold-over container.

More than one attendee, all young people, have worried out loud about the carbon footprint of this mammoth event.  Providing local, organic food would reduce that detrimental effect and support local farmers and cooks.  They could use the support, although here and in other future locations, locals might not have land to farm:

Why are Farmers Staging Naked Protest in the Streets of Mexico City?

by Waheedah Shabazz-El

Sun, 08/03/2008 – 3:48pm

 

As I was taxi cabbing through the streets of Mexico City journeying from the airport toward my pre-arranged living quarters for the week of the IAC, alternative reality quickly set in when I observed about 300 Indigenous men and women staging a protest fueled by anger and frustration, all of whom, by the way appeared to be naked!

 

El Movimiento de los 400 Pueblos (400 Villages) has been protesting naked in Mexico City since 2002.

 

At least 300 men stand on cans and dance naked (my observance was that women were well represented) in some of the city’s major squares and streets, whilst the women (and men, again my observance) from the movement collect money from passers-by and give out pamphlets detailing their cause. The protestestors are farmers from Veracruz and they hold marches and protests outside of the Mexican Congress in an effort to bring Delgado, current governor Patricio Chirinos and others to trial. The farmers accused former Governor of Veracruz, Dante Delgado from the Convergence party, of obtaining by force, more than 100 hectares (acres) of land in May of 1992.

 

One of the first thoughts that came to my mind (besides that I am no longer in Kansas) was the all-too-obvious tyranny that must exist here and being carried out by a government that has for far too long (since 2002) ignored the basic needs of its constituents.

 

As a farmer, how are you able to farm with no land? How does a farmer feed his family and provide the basic needs of a family like food shelter, clothing and the big one, “Medical Coverage,” if he has no land with which to yield a harvest?

 

Read the Rest of the Article here: http://www.aids2008.com/blog/why-are-farmers-staging-naked-protest-streets-mexico-city   

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jumping blogs – temporarily

August 3, 2008 at 12:41 pm (narrative) (, , , , , , , , , , , )

Hola from Mexico City, where the Olympics of HIV and AIDS are being held!
The organizers are expecting 25,000 people over the next week.  Yesterday, walking through the long central cooridor at the Centro Banamex to meet up with my organization’s booth shipment at the exhibition hall, I caught the humming, urgent energy of pre-show preparations.   Off the main plenary hall, a Mexican man and woman sat at sewing machines, stiching giant black curtains.  Lines of conference volunteers waiting for their matching t-shirts wound around the main floor lobby.  In the exhibition hall, elaborate installations- some by drug companies and some by artists (guess which are more profound; guess which risk dismantling by activists)- were being banged together among pallets of tons of materials.  Curtains go up TODAY!!
 
I think the grassroots coverage of this year’s event is going to be broader and deeper than ever before.  Good thing because extensive mainstream media coverage, especially in the U.S.,  may be lacking given the media fall back on AIDS coverage generally.  You can be all in the know by checking in with www.AIDS2008.com, the community blog. 
 
My first post is up, and you can read the whole thing here: http://www.aids2008.com/blog/mexico-youthforce-power-generation.
 
luv,
One Radical Muffin (soy vegetariana…)

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