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Kigali, 11 November 2010 - Rwanda has launched a new country action plan in alignment with national and global priorities. The National Accelerated Plan for Women, Girls, Gender Equality and HIV 2010-2014 was unveiled on 10 November at an event at the Parliament with around 470 participants.
The campaign was initiated during the 2010 FIFA World Cup by UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé and Kirsten Nematandani, President of the South African Football Association (SAFA). It reinforces global efforts to virtually eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2015.
At the opening ceremony of the Women's Championship on 31 October at Sinaba Stadium in Benoni, South Africa, the captains of the qualifying teams from Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania and South Africa, publicly read the appeal:
"As captains and players of teams competing in the 2010 African Women's Championship in South Africa, we appeal to football players and fans across Africa to celebrate life and help prevent mothers from dying and babies from becoming infected with HIV... together we must Give AIDS the Red Card to prevent mothers from dying and babies from becoming infected with HIV."
1 November 2010 - Botswana's former Minister of Health Professor Sheila Tlou has today taken over from Mbulawa Mugabe as Directore for the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for East and Southern Africa.
Prof. Tlou is a former Professor of Nursing at the University of Botswana. Prior to that she was the country's health minister from 2004 to 2009, where she spearheaded the highly effective AIDS programme. She was a Professor of Nursing at the University of Botswana from 1999 to 2004. She has held the positions of Director, World Health Organisation Collaborating Centers and Professor with the UB.
Sustained commitments necessary to secure future progress
28 September 2010 | GENEVA / NAIROBI / WASHINGTON D.C - Significant progress has been made in several low- and middle-income countries in increasing access to HIV/AIDS services, according to a new report released today. The report Towards Universal Access by the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) is the fourth annual report for tracking progress made in achieving the 2010 target of providing universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care.
Secretary-General secures more than $40 billion for women’s and children’s health
UNITED NATIONS, New York, 22 September — A United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) concluded today with the adoption of a global action plan to achieve the eight anti-poverty goals by their 2015 target date and the announcement of major new commitments for women’s and children’s health and other initiatives against poverty, hunger and disease.
The outcome document of the three-day Summit – Keeping the Promise: United to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals – reaffirms world leaders’ commitment to the MDGs and sets out a concrete action agenda for achieving the Goals by 2015.
Published in "This is Africa", 17 September 2010
The Aids response enters its fourth decade as world leaders gather in New York to discuss progress made in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Much has been achieved so far - fewer people are dying of Aids-related illnesses and the rate of new HIV infections has fallen by more than 17 percent since 2001. More than 5m people are now accessing antiretroviral therapy. HIV prevalence among young people in 15 of the countries most affected by Aids has dropped by more than 25 percent. Recent breakthroughs in HIV prevention research such as a woman-initiated and controlled microbicide gel as well as male circumcision hold promise for both women and men to protect themselves from HIV.
New UNAIDS data show significant progress towards Millennium Development Goal 6: to halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV by 2015.
GENEVA, 17 September 2010 - Ahead of the United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on 20-22 September 2010, UNAIDS today released data on progress towards MDG 6 and called for leveraging the AIDS response to support all MDGs.
The data shows that countries with the largest epidemics in Africa-Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe-are leading the drop in new HIV infections. Between 2001 and 2009, 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have seen a decline of more than 25% in new HIV infections. The number of new HIV infections is steadily falling or stabilising in most parts of the world.
A snapshot of selected protective and punitive laws relating to HIV
10 September 2010
Background
In the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS (2001), governments committed themselves to protecting the human rights of people living with HIV, women and members of vulnerable populations. In the Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS (2006), they further committed to overcoming legal, regulatory or other barriers that block access to effective HIV prevention, treatment, care and support, medicines, commodities and services. Building on these commitments, UNAIDS in the Outcome Framework 2009-2011 made it a corporate priority to support countries to "remove punitive laws, policies, practices, stigma and discrimination that block effective responses to HIV". In order to understand better the challenges involved in this priority, UNAIDS has developed - in collaboration with key partner organisations - a "snapshot" of selected protective and punitive laws from countries across the globe that impact national responses to HIV.