AIDS/HIV PREVENTION
IN THE PAST TWO DECADES, MORE THAN 18 MILLION AFRICANS HAVE DIED OF HIV/AIDS OUT OF 25 MILLION AIDS DEATHS WORLDWIDE. IN 2002 ALONE, ALMOST 3 MILLION AFRICANS DIED OF AIDS.
The AIDS epidemic imposes a fearsome burden on poor countries. To have any success in stopping this pandemic, there must be broad-scale initiatives: improved public health programs accompanied by small-scale initiatives of organizations that derive from the communities and that know their clients in a more intimate way. The solutions lie in entire communities working together to create healthy environments.
Please click on the programs below for more information.
Statistics
The number of people living with HIV has risen in every region, and tackling the pandemic will be more difficult than previously believed. As Helping Hands International stated five years ago in its News Letter « The Voice of Silence » AIDS / HIV crisis will become a runaway case in Asia …the epidemic expansion has proven the prediction right! The virus has pushed deep into Eastern Europe and Asia . More than 38 millions people are infected with HIV worldwide. Sub-Saharan Africa , with an estimated more than 25 million people living with HIV, remains the worst- hit region.
One-fourth of the 5 million new HIV infections reported in 2003 are in Asia . HIV is spreading faster in Vietnam than in India and China . One in every 75, households has been touched by the disease. It's driven by the country's young population, by high infection rates among injecting drug users and by a sex trade that caters to up to 15% of men each year. Sadly fewer than 300 of Vietnam 's roughly 200,000 people with HIV now get treatment. About 440,000 in the developing world are receiving treatment.
With poverty, quite often, the individual's healthcare is not PLWAHs' (People Living With AIDS HIV) priority. It's a lot of other things, like getting clothes and roof over their family's heads, assuring that they have food. If the rate of new infection isn't slowed, the effort to treat those already infected will be overwhelmed. Between this year and the deadline for the ‘3by5' initiative, 8 million people will become infected with HIV at the current pace.
The AIDS epidemic imposes a fearsome burden on poor countries. To have any success in stopping this pandemic, there must be broad-scale initiatives: improved public health programs accompanied by small-scale initiatives of organizations that derive from the communities and that know their clients in a more intimate way.
Solutions
The solutions lie in entire communities working together to create healthy environments. Human life has no price. And corruption is a common hurdle, but need not be an insuperable one. Therefore donors should pay heed that, while more money is needed to tackle poor countries' health problems, how it is spent is more important than how much is spent. It is up to the developing world to reassure that they will give priority to scaling up the most effective interventions. A good HIV/AIDS prevention needs to:
be locally run, involves the active participation
of the people who are supposed to benefit
and is led by organizers, not politicians or the government
Helping Hands International will increase its:
HIV/AIDS Education Outreach
Promotion of the Principle of General Welfare
Collection and Distribution of Medical Supplies
Hygiene Education Outreach
Frequent Information Sessions In Form of Special Events
Training for Local Personnel to Develop Prevention Expertise for the Long-Term
As the program grows, Helping Hands International will target other regions (Asia, Middle East, Latin America ) where the deep silence make leaders and societies want to deny the reality that these parts of the world are on the brink of an irremediable runaway catastrophe. Without a greatly expanded prevention effort, treatment is simply not sustainable.
It is primordial to help bridge the gap between consistent healthcare and poverty and make living with HIV a lot more healthful and hopeful.
Prevention Campaigns need to be increased. Awareness and Education need to be expanded. Comprehensive Assistance to AIDS orphans and vulnerable children need to continue. Care for the infected can not be avoidable.
