African Leaders and their First Ladies tackle Maternal, Child Health

On the 18th of July 2010 in Kampala, Uganda, the Ugandan First Lady, Janet Kataha Museveni presided over an important session of the meeting of African First Ladies, devoted to the theme of the debate that their powerful husbands had just concluded on “Promoting Maternal, Infant and Child Health and Development in Africa".

The move was seen as a strategic success and welcome to governments and organizations promoting maternal and child health in Africa, because African First Ladies have traditionally focused their work on HIV and AIDS through their umbrella organization: Organisation for African First Ladies Against AIDS (OAFLA).
Ms Thoraya Obaid, UNFPA’s Executive Director, one of the keynote speakers at the event, thinks it has been a mistake to think of maternal and child health matters as

Cash Rewards as an HIV prevention strategy

By Alex Ogle, Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The World Bank released two studies Sunday linking cash payments to Malawian and Tanzanian youths with "significantly lower" rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

In the first study, a two-year program rewarded young girls in Malawi, rife with poverty and high HIV infection rates, with cash payments for regular school attendance. In Tanzania, the Bank paid young adults in cash to avoid unsafe sex.

The studies "show the potential for using cash payments to prevent people, especially women and girls, from engaging in unsafe sex while also ensuring that they stay in school and

From the 18th AIDS Conference in Vienna

In the beautiful city of Vienna, Austria between 23-28 July 2010 AIDS activists, researchers, decision makers, scientists, policy makers, grassroots workers and people living with HIV gathered for a structured dialogue regarding the major issues on the global response to HIV/AIDS – a disease that has killed more than 25 million people. The theme of the conference which was the 18th since the outbreak of AIDS epidemic in the early 80s was “Rights Here, Rights Now”.

What happened in Vienna 2010 (AIDS 2010)

The AIDS 2010 conference theme emphasizes the central importance of protecting and promoting human rights as a prerequisite to a successful response to HIV. The right to

Cure for AIDS on the way

In the news, there are encouraging reports about 2 breakthroughs in the search for a treatment to reverse the trend of the deadly AIDS virus.

The latest is the Anti-AIDS gel – a vaginal gel which has proved capable of blocking the AIDS virus thus cutting by 50% a woman’s chances of getting HIV from a partner. The gel, spiked with the AIDS drug tenofovir, cut the risk of HIV infection by