http://icrossinternational.org/news.aspx?id=160
One of the tragic things about yet another World AIDS day is the apathy
and indifference that has emerged over the last few years. Initiatives
like the Global Fund and PEPFAR , MARPS and comprehensive care have made
a huge difference but there is a growing danger of complacency among
both Governments and those who are most vulnerable. Despite education
there is dreadful ignorance and ranging from fundamental Christian
groups and Russian authorities to young sexually active men in Europe
and Africa.
AIDS has caused more suffering and death across Africa than the last century of Wars. The scale of destruction has magnified poverty and reversed much of the progress of the last 50 years with life expectancies falling decades across the continent. ICROSS was at the forefront of HIV/AIDS prevention and fighting prodigies and intolerant in the 80s, it continues a very different fight now. ICROSS was among the first to establish Home Based Care and support programmes for AIDS orphans and vulnerable children.
There are 2.5m new cases of HIV/AIDS every year. 40% of new infections are between 15-24 years old. Over 75% of people living with AIDS are in Sub-Saharan Africa and Africa still count for a half of all AIDS related deaths. One of the growing tragedies is the rapid rise of HIV among the teenagers.
Fear, ignorance and the danger of social rejection are growing problems in Africa. While the vast majority of new cases is heterosexual. There are sexual minorities that are specially vulnerable. ICROSS together with its partners seek to provide increased support systems to those most vulnerable.
The Kenya government (National AIDS Control Programme) identified key communities most at risk. What was left out of these was the very population with the fastest increase, teenagers.
Men who have sex with men and present population make up 15.2% of new HIV infections. In 2014 we will target the National AIDS Control Programme priorities. This will include strengthening our systems our existence HIV AIDS programmes.
Since 1984 ICROSS has worked in international collaborations fighting HIV and AIDS. ICROSS was involved in the first scientific research into rate of sexual partner exchange in collaboration with Prof Roy Anderson of imperial college and has been doing ground breaking in HIV research ever since.
ICROSS has reached over 130,000 HIV patients and established one of the earliest home care programs in east Africa.
Long before the idea of absorbing AIDS orphans into local communities, ICROSS teams were implementing cultural appropriate support programs. Decades after identifying this epidemic, ICROSS remains at the fore front of innovative research. One of the tragedies about world AIDS day is that it has become a passing fade in the minds of most people; it is largely remembered by HIV organizations. Over 33 million people suffer with HIV, a small fraction of those who suffer from starvation and hunger.
The tragedy of categorizing illnesses is that you cannot categorize the total burden of poverty. Years after ICROSS began working in the area of HIV and AIDS, UNAIDS was formed in 2004. The misleading illusion of Word AIDS Day themes has in our believe been unhelpful. We cannot separate youths, women, girls, men or lobbing issues. It is not helpful to have an AIDS awareness months, there needs to be a coherent integrated sexual health strategy not divided by 300 well-funded foundations and organizations. World Aids Day completely misses the point of the primary problem, there are almost a billion people suffering from hunger today, and there are 400 million living in slavery. ICROSS is committed to seeing human beings not as a disease of a clinical diagnosis but as equal deserving our respect and support.
As Africa support and funding decline dramatically these feast days invented by multilateral organization remain increasingly unhelpful to the poor. The international aid organizations and inept structure like USAID live in lucrative while the poor they serve receive a tiny fraction of public resources, that purport spent in their name, Dr Michael Meegan the founder of ICROSS has advocated for the last 24 years that the vast resources allocated to HIV and AIDS should be channeled directly through local communities without the extra ordinary overhead wasted by the us government.
World AIDS Day like the 740 conferences a year is kittle more than the exploitation of the poor and the continued feeding of wasteful and often corrupt bilateral aid programs in his ground breaking work loads of poverty graham Hancock challenged the betrayal of public trust, in this ground breaking book (1989) he warned that very little of the money ever sent to Africa would ever reach the poor.
One of the problems with things like World AIDS day is we often forget about it the rest of the year. We all face big issues in our communities about increasing unsafe sex especially among the young and the increase in STIs in the gay community and other sexual minorities. An equally dangerous thing is a complacency and indifference to emerging trends that are quietly spreading. The persecution and cleansing of the voiceless, this time not an ethnic or religious minority but a sexual one.
We have become immune these days to all the suffering in the World. We are numb to the litany of cruelties and abuses that fill the media. One of the things that distances us is the scale of everything, we feel powerless looking at the numbers of crimes and injustices. When it comes to human rights abuse across the world it seems that most states are guilty of atrocities too. When we hear the statistics and listen to the constant stream of tragedy we are left immobilised, drowned in numbers simply left feeling useless and often angry.
Over eighty countries still criminalize consensual homosexual sex, or “sodomy” as it’s often called, including most African and most Arabic countries.
Punishment includes torture, stoning, public flogging, imprisonment, and in about a dozen jurisdictions, the death penalty. The most extreme state violence is Muslim countries. Despite some small gay communities that have emerged in major African cities being gay remains a life-threatening nightmare for most gay people on the continent.
Often violence against the gay community goes unreported or suppressed though there are poignant examples.
In July, Eric Ohena Lembembe, Gay activist, author and journalist was the most high-profile African gay rights lobbyist to be killed since 2011, a year that saw the deaths of Uganda's David Kato and South African lesbian activist Noxolo Nogwaza. The brutality and savagery of these murders is hallmarked by a hate and rage feeding the most unspeakable torture. While attacks across Africa against sexual minorities are rising, prosecution of hate crimes is rare.
A growing climate of hate often fueled by Christian and Muslim fundamentalist groups has encouraged a new generation of homophobia, indifference by authorities, judiciary and senior politicians has created an environment where police rarely protect gay rights. In one of my books (Changing the World) I recounted the story of a young South African man who had been held for six months on remand on charge of prostitution of which he was found innocent. During that time he was in the company of hardened criminals, repeatedly raped, his teeth removed so that he could be “used”, He was repeatedly victimized and beaten and by the time he came to our health services he had already developed AIDS. This is tragically not a rare story, many young vulnerable gay men or those perceived as gay are brutalized and tormented in the vilest of ways and for many life is a lonely living hell. Michael Wines writes “crowded cells where inmates sleep in shifts; warders who ‘sell’ juvenile offenders for sex with other cons “Wasting Away, A Million in African Jails” (November 6, 2005) New York Times 11. And across Africa the most vulnerable prisoners are repeatedly raped without condoms and with little interest from prison authorities. The International Journal of human rights warns that this crisis among the most vulnerable is worsening exponentially (Prisons in Africa: An evaluation from a human rights perspective, Jeremy Sarkin )
One young Ugandan man Olino, 22 was beaten and chased from his home by his brothers who burnt his clothes and his identity documents, school certificates. They told him he was dead to the family and to the village. He had developed HIV, his family belonged to an evangelical group and told him that he would burn forever in hell, that was when he was 18. Of course we don’t need to go far even in our own country to encounter such hate and bigotry but what is a thing of the past is the collective anti gay hate that feeds on fear and in the name of God commits the most dreadful crimes. What is worrying is that hate feeds hate and these minorities across the world including places like Russia and the Caribbean are hunted, sought out tortured and despised. There’s no shortage of hate campaigning and Youtubes likehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjnrLt3VuSM are common but worse these are widely held views across Africa and they are being encouraged from the pulpits.
Seoen was a young Sudanese man diagnosed with HIV. He tried three Government health facilities and a mission looking for help but was turned away every time with staff refusing to treat him, he was unashamedly gay and was removed from his school after students reported that he was gay. He had no money for a bus so walked the 14 miles home. When his father heard the story he told Seoen that he had to leave the next morning as he was a shame to the family and he was not welcome inn his own home. The following morning his mother found him behind the small outside toilet, he had taken rat poison. In his pocket there was a note, which simply read
“ Mum Dad I love you, I am sorry, maybe I can be happy if God wants me “
In my thirty something years in Africa I have seen many examples of heart breaking cruelty against minorities, it is so often the oppressed that becomes the oppressor. But even when you look at the overwhelming odds there are unstoppable changes taking place. All the hate and brutality in the World will not stop the tide of basic rights. With growing momentum heroic movements are springing up with over 400 gay right activist groups working often under state persecution. It is pointless to know these things if we can do nothing about them. Many African Governments have recently introduced initiatives for those most at risk, targeting most at risk populations. These initiatives are only as good as the leaders and health workers driving them. Not enough is being done and as long as most African countries criminalise and persecute gay and lesbian people they will continue to be mistreated.
I once recounted the end stages of young man dying of AIDS, his name was Atria, I initially told the story in the Journal of the American Medical Association and expanded on it in a selection of reflections in ALL WILL BE WELL ( www.eye-books.com )
I tried to express the reality of what it meant to die of AIDS putting a person not a statistic before us. The title was “I held him in my arms and wept”
All movement is acutely painful and distressing. Intestinal worms are back again. Atria's limbs are stiffening and his back is covered with ulcers that leak and bleed but do not heal, impossible to manage in a small hut. His issues are controlling pain, managing extreme distress, reducing humiliation, creating dignity, reducing multiple infections, reducing cross-infection to others. But the worst thing is loneliness. To die of AIDS in Africa is an intensely humiliating ordeal, slow . . . obscene. Atria is now in his last days of life. His tear ducts have dried up, his hair has fallen out, his bones are brittle. He has no muscle or fat and his heart is 70% weaker than pre-HIV. He has been eaten alive and he has no resistance. All of Atria's senses are shutting down.
His fingernails and toenails have fallen out. His skin is blistered and scaly, and scabs cannot form. The bedsores and ulcers have spread, sources of multiple deep infections. Breathing is almost impossible and the slightest movement is slow and full of dreadful anxiety. I give him water drop by drop through a straw.
I hold his frail, stiffened hand. He is cold, he has no tears. I look into his eyes. I whisper to him, and kiss him. He slowly inhales, half closes his eyes. He breathes out, very slowly.
The tragedy we see in our work is that so many of these people live in fear and anguish, rejected and vilified. In many countries there is a rising tide of hatred being fed by lies and fear, ignorance and increasing violence.
A few weeks ago I was with a young man who could not stop trembling , his recent HIV diagnosis had caused him to flee his village in Uganda and he had nowhere to stay, no one to help him, he was vomiting with fear. I was able to put him in touch with a growing network of support and he is now I am delighted to say safe and among friends.
We can all do something, we can all get directly involved and help. We need to work directly with these groups, provide practical support, and help lines, technology, and advice and health services. Organisations like the International gay and lesbian human rights commission http://www.iglhrc.org/ and their partners are among the growing co ordinated efforts making a difference.
There are also a myriad of small local NGOs quietly campaigning, supporting small groups of gay and lesbian people who are in danger and living in fear. The issues of these rights concerns each one of us and I hope that the flickering flame of hope can be nurtured and kindled by our own personal action. There are many voices coming together, one of the first in Africa was Mandela
Desmond Tutu said recently “I think it’s as utterly unjust as racism ever was.” He went on to say “I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I’d say sorry. I mean, I’d much rather go to that other place.”
There are too many Eric’s, Olinos, Seoens, too much trembling alone and to many tears. There is simply too much unkindness in the World and it will take us all to reach out and find a brother, a sister, someone desperately in need of being understood, accepted, to know that they are not alone.
--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA5gqmoysGg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vZoe0ZXqmw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWeXQm9xZ0E&list=UUAfcaQr0gP3L9yJtqkgmmvw&index=16&feature=plcp
ICROSS WORLD AIDS DAY 2013
Latest News » 28 November 2013
AIDS has caused more suffering and death across Africa than the last century of Wars. The scale of destruction has magnified poverty and reversed much of the progress of the last 50 years with life expectancies falling decades across the continent. ICROSS was at the forefront of HIV/AIDS prevention and fighting prodigies and intolerant in the 80s, it continues a very different fight now. ICROSS was among the first to establish Home Based Care and support programmes for AIDS orphans and vulnerable children.
There are 2.5m new cases of HIV/AIDS every year. 40% of new infections are between 15-24 years old. Over 75% of people living with AIDS are in Sub-Saharan Africa and Africa still count for a half of all AIDS related deaths. One of the growing tragedies is the rapid rise of HIV among the teenagers.
Fear, ignorance and the danger of social rejection are growing problems in Africa. While the vast majority of new cases is heterosexual. There are sexual minorities that are specially vulnerable. ICROSS together with its partners seek to provide increased support systems to those most vulnerable.
The Kenya government (National AIDS Control Programme) identified key communities most at risk. What was left out of these was the very population with the fastest increase, teenagers.
Men who have sex with men and present population make up 15.2% of new HIV infections. In 2014 we will target the National AIDS Control Programme priorities. This will include strengthening our systems our existence HIV AIDS programmes.
Since 1984 ICROSS has worked in international collaborations fighting HIV and AIDS. ICROSS was involved in the first scientific research into rate of sexual partner exchange in collaboration with Prof Roy Anderson of imperial college and has been doing ground breaking in HIV research ever since.
ICROSS has reached over 130,000 HIV patients and established one of the earliest home care programs in east Africa.
Long before the idea of absorbing AIDS orphans into local communities, ICROSS teams were implementing cultural appropriate support programs. Decades after identifying this epidemic, ICROSS remains at the fore front of innovative research. One of the tragedies about world AIDS day is that it has become a passing fade in the minds of most people; it is largely remembered by HIV organizations. Over 33 million people suffer with HIV, a small fraction of those who suffer from starvation and hunger.
The tragedy of categorizing illnesses is that you cannot categorize the total burden of poverty. Years after ICROSS began working in the area of HIV and AIDS, UNAIDS was formed in 2004. The misleading illusion of Word AIDS Day themes has in our believe been unhelpful. We cannot separate youths, women, girls, men or lobbing issues. It is not helpful to have an AIDS awareness months, there needs to be a coherent integrated sexual health strategy not divided by 300 well-funded foundations and organizations. World Aids Day completely misses the point of the primary problem, there are almost a billion people suffering from hunger today, and there are 400 million living in slavery. ICROSS is committed to seeing human beings not as a disease of a clinical diagnosis but as equal deserving our respect and support.
As Africa support and funding decline dramatically these feast days invented by multilateral organization remain increasingly unhelpful to the poor. The international aid organizations and inept structure like USAID live in lucrative while the poor they serve receive a tiny fraction of public resources, that purport spent in their name, Dr Michael Meegan the founder of ICROSS has advocated for the last 24 years that the vast resources allocated to HIV and AIDS should be channeled directly through local communities without the extra ordinary overhead wasted by the us government.
World AIDS Day like the 740 conferences a year is kittle more than the exploitation of the poor and the continued feeding of wasteful and often corrupt bilateral aid programs in his ground breaking work loads of poverty graham Hancock challenged the betrayal of public trust, in this ground breaking book (1989) he warned that very little of the money ever sent to Africa would ever reach the poor.
One of the problems with things like World AIDS day is we often forget about it the rest of the year. We all face big issues in our communities about increasing unsafe sex especially among the young and the increase in STIs in the gay community and other sexual minorities. An equally dangerous thing is a complacency and indifference to emerging trends that are quietly spreading. The persecution and cleansing of the voiceless, this time not an ethnic or religious minority but a sexual one.
We have become immune these days to all the suffering in the World. We are numb to the litany of cruelties and abuses that fill the media. One of the things that distances us is the scale of everything, we feel powerless looking at the numbers of crimes and injustices. When it comes to human rights abuse across the world it seems that most states are guilty of atrocities too. When we hear the statistics and listen to the constant stream of tragedy we are left immobilised, drowned in numbers simply left feeling useless and often angry.
Over eighty countries still criminalize consensual homosexual sex, or “sodomy” as it’s often called, including most African and most Arabic countries.
Punishment includes torture, stoning, public flogging, imprisonment, and in about a dozen jurisdictions, the death penalty. The most extreme state violence is Muslim countries. Despite some small gay communities that have emerged in major African cities being gay remains a life-threatening nightmare for most gay people on the continent.
Often violence against the gay community goes unreported or suppressed though there are poignant examples.
In July, Eric Ohena Lembembe, Gay activist, author and journalist was the most high-profile African gay rights lobbyist to be killed since 2011, a year that saw the deaths of Uganda's David Kato and South African lesbian activist Noxolo Nogwaza. The brutality and savagery of these murders is hallmarked by a hate and rage feeding the most unspeakable torture. While attacks across Africa against sexual minorities are rising, prosecution of hate crimes is rare.
A growing climate of hate often fueled by Christian and Muslim fundamentalist groups has encouraged a new generation of homophobia, indifference by authorities, judiciary and senior politicians has created an environment where police rarely protect gay rights. In one of my books (Changing the World) I recounted the story of a young South African man who had been held for six months on remand on charge of prostitution of which he was found innocent. During that time he was in the company of hardened criminals, repeatedly raped, his teeth removed so that he could be “used”, He was repeatedly victimized and beaten and by the time he came to our health services he had already developed AIDS. This is tragically not a rare story, many young vulnerable gay men or those perceived as gay are brutalized and tormented in the vilest of ways and for many life is a lonely living hell. Michael Wines writes “crowded cells where inmates sleep in shifts; warders who ‘sell’ juvenile offenders for sex with other cons “Wasting Away, A Million in African Jails” (November 6, 2005) New York Times 11. And across Africa the most vulnerable prisoners are repeatedly raped without condoms and with little interest from prison authorities. The International Journal of human rights warns that this crisis among the most vulnerable is worsening exponentially (Prisons in Africa: An evaluation from a human rights perspective, Jeremy Sarkin )
One young Ugandan man Olino, 22 was beaten and chased from his home by his brothers who burnt his clothes and his identity documents, school certificates. They told him he was dead to the family and to the village. He had developed HIV, his family belonged to an evangelical group and told him that he would burn forever in hell, that was when he was 18. Of course we don’t need to go far even in our own country to encounter such hate and bigotry but what is a thing of the past is the collective anti gay hate that feeds on fear and in the name of God commits the most dreadful crimes. What is worrying is that hate feeds hate and these minorities across the world including places like Russia and the Caribbean are hunted, sought out tortured and despised. There’s no shortage of hate campaigning and Youtubes likehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjnrLt3VuSM are common but worse these are widely held views across Africa and they are being encouraged from the pulpits.
Seoen was a young Sudanese man diagnosed with HIV. He tried three Government health facilities and a mission looking for help but was turned away every time with staff refusing to treat him, he was unashamedly gay and was removed from his school after students reported that he was gay. He had no money for a bus so walked the 14 miles home. When his father heard the story he told Seoen that he had to leave the next morning as he was a shame to the family and he was not welcome inn his own home. The following morning his mother found him behind the small outside toilet, he had taken rat poison. In his pocket there was a note, which simply read
“ Mum Dad I love you, I am sorry, maybe I can be happy if God wants me “
In my thirty something years in Africa I have seen many examples of heart breaking cruelty against minorities, it is so often the oppressed that becomes the oppressor. But even when you look at the overwhelming odds there are unstoppable changes taking place. All the hate and brutality in the World will not stop the tide of basic rights. With growing momentum heroic movements are springing up with over 400 gay right activist groups working often under state persecution. It is pointless to know these things if we can do nothing about them. Many African Governments have recently introduced initiatives for those most at risk, targeting most at risk populations. These initiatives are only as good as the leaders and health workers driving them. Not enough is being done and as long as most African countries criminalise and persecute gay and lesbian people they will continue to be mistreated.
I once recounted the end stages of young man dying of AIDS, his name was Atria, I initially told the story in the Journal of the American Medical Association and expanded on it in a selection of reflections in ALL WILL BE WELL ( www.eye-books.com )
I tried to express the reality of what it meant to die of AIDS putting a person not a statistic before us. The title was “I held him in my arms and wept”
All movement is acutely painful and distressing. Intestinal worms are back again. Atria's limbs are stiffening and his back is covered with ulcers that leak and bleed but do not heal, impossible to manage in a small hut. His issues are controlling pain, managing extreme distress, reducing humiliation, creating dignity, reducing multiple infections, reducing cross-infection to others. But the worst thing is loneliness. To die of AIDS in Africa is an intensely humiliating ordeal, slow . . . obscene. Atria is now in his last days of life. His tear ducts have dried up, his hair has fallen out, his bones are brittle. He has no muscle or fat and his heart is 70% weaker than pre-HIV. He has been eaten alive and he has no resistance. All of Atria's senses are shutting down.
His fingernails and toenails have fallen out. His skin is blistered and scaly, and scabs cannot form. The bedsores and ulcers have spread, sources of multiple deep infections. Breathing is almost impossible and the slightest movement is slow and full of dreadful anxiety. I give him water drop by drop through a straw.
I hold his frail, stiffened hand. He is cold, he has no tears. I look into his eyes. I whisper to him, and kiss him. He slowly inhales, half closes his eyes. He breathes out, very slowly.
The tragedy we see in our work is that so many of these people live in fear and anguish, rejected and vilified. In many countries there is a rising tide of hatred being fed by lies and fear, ignorance and increasing violence.
A few weeks ago I was with a young man who could not stop trembling , his recent HIV diagnosis had caused him to flee his village in Uganda and he had nowhere to stay, no one to help him, he was vomiting with fear. I was able to put him in touch with a growing network of support and he is now I am delighted to say safe and among friends.
We can all do something, we can all get directly involved and help. We need to work directly with these groups, provide practical support, and help lines, technology, and advice and health services. Organisations like the International gay and lesbian human rights commission http://www.iglhrc.org/ and their partners are among the growing co ordinated efforts making a difference.
There are also a myriad of small local NGOs quietly campaigning, supporting small groups of gay and lesbian people who are in danger and living in fear. The issues of these rights concerns each one of us and I hope that the flickering flame of hope can be nurtured and kindled by our own personal action. There are many voices coming together, one of the first in Africa was Mandela
Desmond Tutu said recently “I think it’s as utterly unjust as racism ever was.” He went on to say “I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I’d say sorry. I mean, I’d much rather go to that other place.”
There are too many Eric’s, Olinos, Seoens, too much trembling alone and to many tears. There is simply too much unkindness in the World and it will take us all to reach out and find a brother, a sister, someone desperately in need of being understood, accepted, to know that they are not alone.
--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA5gqmoysGg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vZoe0ZXqmw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWeXQm9xZ0E&list=UUAfcaQr0gP3L9yJtqkgmmvw&index=16&feature=plcp
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