Big organizations with big titles make big news. The World Bank, the United Nations and the Red Cross, just to name a few, are household names, but they’re not the only ones enacting change around the world. Hannington Segiriniya directs the New Dawn Africa Foundation (NDAF), a small nonprofit in the Entebbe region of Uganda that exemplifies how local change is making a difference, too. He reached out to us through Twitter, inspiring us to profile him here on the ONE Blog.
Now in its second year, the New Dawn Africa Foundation (NDAF) collaborates with local communities to ensure that children diagnosed with HIV/AIDS receive proper medical care and nutrition. The Foundation’s center opens its doors to parents and kids alike in an effort to engage the entire family in a child’s development. Workshops and trainings help parents acquire skills that will help them enter the workforce — and with a paycheck in hand, they can better feed their children.
What happens when you put a few moms and a powerful HIV/AIDS activist in a Google+ Hangout? ONE Mom Rachel Fox reports:
When ONE Mom Amy Graff asked Florence Ngobeni-Allen what message we could send to moms here in the United States to inspire advocacy efforts for HIV/AIDS, she responded — “straight talk” — talking with our children about sexuality and sex openly before maturity, talking to our male children about respecting women, involving our kids in volunteering and encouraging them to travel the world. When we were on the HIV/AIDS home visits in rural Kisumu during our ONE Moms trip, we were able to watch the CDC home-based counselor demonstrate how to apply a condom correctly on a very realistic model. This is done with children of all ages gathered around. Removing the shame and providing the facts — straight talk!
Florence Ngobeni-Allen discovered she was HIV-positive in 1996 after giving birth to a HIV-positive little girl. Sadly, her daughter passed away at only 5 months old. From this experience, Florence began talking with other moms and women. These conversations lead to the creation of a support and advocacy network where women were encouraged to share their stories and learn the facts.
In November 2011, a team from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) visited Zambia to produce a video on vaccination efforts -– their value, their implementation and the challenges they face. In the current global environment of austerity and ever-decreasing budgets, immunizations represent one of the pillars of global health that is a cost effective, proven intervention.
ONE pulled a lot of legs yesterday. We launched our new spot “I Predict” across the web and in an April Fool’s Day email to our members with a series of crazy predictions for what could happen by 2015 — “kittens will be banned from YouTube,” “Charlie Sheen will be president,” “fax machines will make a comeback.” We got your attention. Now we want you to act to support the one prediction that can actually come true: the beginning of the end of AIDS.
Calling all thespians! Drama for Life, an HIV/AIDS awareness theater program out of Johannesburg’s Wits University, is now accepting applications from African artists to participate in their summer 2012 Sex Actually Festival. The boldly named festival, scheduled for Aug. 23 to Sept. 1, brings together activists and artists (and activist-artists) from across the continent who have a common purpose: using the stage to put a human face on HIV/AIDS.
Even for those of us who can’t apply, the festival stands as a reminder that amid all the statistics, HIV/AIDS remains first and foremost a human issue, sitting at the busy crossroads of sex, sexuality, gender, human rights, and health. While antiretroviral therapies (ARTs) save millions of lives by actively suppressing development of the virus, programs like those featured at the Sex Actually Festival work to evaluate, decipher, and appreciate the disease’s cultural complexities.
Just a few decades ago, an HIV/AIDS diagnosis used to be a death sentence. Even when highly-effective treatment was newly available, it cost upwards of $10,000 per person—a way to stay alive, but financially far beyond the reach of the majority in need. Fortunately much has changed since then; thanks to negotiation and partnership, the drugs that make up life-saving antiretroviral treatment now cost as little as 40 cents per day. Antiretroviral therapy (ART), consisting of combinations of antiretroviral drugs, has saved millions of lives by suppressing the body’s viral HIV load and halting progression of the disease. ART is not a cure for HIV or AIDS, and the drugs must be taken every day for the rest of one’s life, but it can prolong the onset of illness and enable a person to live a healthy, productive life for many years.
Currently, there are 6.6 million people around the world receiving ART, up from about 300,000 people in 2003. The number of people on treatment in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 50,000 in 2002 to more than 5 million people in 2010. The Global Fund and PEPFAR, the two largest donors providing ART treatment, support nearly 5.6 million people on ART combined. Since the introduction of ART in the mid-1990s, an estimated 2.5 million AIDS-related deaths have been averted.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies recently created a short video featuring the perspectives of HIV/AIDS experts looking forward to the 2012 International AIDS Conference in Washington, DC, AIDS2012.
From July 22 to 27, 2012, Washington, D.C., will host the 19th international AIDS conference, known as AIDS2012. As the largest conference in the world dedicated to a single global health topic, organizers expect 25,000 people –- including scientists, activists, practitioners, and policymakers -– to attend this year’s meeting.
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Just a few decades ago, an HIV/AIDS diagnosis used to be a death sentence. Even when highly-effective treatment was newly available, it cost upwards of $10,000 per person—a way to stay alive, but financially far beyond the reach of the majority in need. Fortunately much has changed since then; thanks to negotiation and partnership, the drugs that make up life-saving antiretroviral treatment now cost as little as 40 cents per day. Antiretroviral therapy (ART), consisting of combinations of antiretroviral drugs, has saved millions of lives by suppressing the body’s viral HIV load and halting progression of the disease. ART is not a cure for HIV or AIDS, and the drugs must be taken every day for the rest of one’s life, but it can prolong the onset of illness and enable a person to live a healthy, productive life for many years. 
