Comrades's blog

From the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) a new report has been published. Human Rights and the Millennium Development Goals in Practice : A review of country strategies and reporting. At the moment a massive advocacy push is needed, this document is very useful for understanding where we are, and where we must go in each country. Know Your Rights - Know the MDGs. The link to the report is found at the very bottom. Below is an interesting table that makes it clear.

The Alarm bell is ringing. Hard times hit hardest the well-being of poor communities. As public health funding is under severe pressure in national budgets around the world, and international donors are cutting back or cutting out, we think its time to take extraordinary steps to increase the involvement in local health issues of many more people in communities affected by this roll back. Even before the downturn in resources, the road was a steep uphill climb towards realizing the Right to Health for all.

‘In most cases, the top brass knew what was going on'
With the cold-blooded murder of Right to Information (RTI) activist Amit Jethwa near the Gujarat High Court in Ahmedabad last Tuesday, the number of whistleblowers killed this year alone has gone up to eight. The Congress-ruled Maharashtra tops the list with four killings, followed by the BJP-ruled Gujarat with two.
The murdered RTI activists were: Datta Patil of Kolhapur (Maharashtra), killed on May 31; Vitthal Gite of Beed district, Maharashtra, on April 21; Sola Ranga Rao of Krishna District, Andhra Pradesh, on April 11; Arun Sawant of Badlapur, Maharashtra, on February 26; Shashidhar Mishra of Begusarai, Bihar, on February 14; Vishram Laxman Dodiya of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, on February 11; and Satish Shetty of Pune, Maharashtra, killed on January 13.
Eyewash: RTI activist Krishnaraja Rao said that after every murder the respective State Government gave a standard reply: “Matter is under investigation. We will find the culprits.” He alleged that this is nothing but eyewash. In most cases, the top brass knew exactly what was going on.

NEW YORK — Demaris Muthoni weighed the same at 4 years old as when she was born. When Jane Kinuthia found her, huddled beside a shack in the red light district of Gilgil, Kenya, Muthoni weighed 10 pounds. “In all my years in Gilgil, I had never seen anything like this,” said Jane Kinuthia, who owned a cafe in the area of the Rift Valley, northwest of Nairobi, before she became a child's rights activist.
Muthoni's parents died of AIDS, leaving her to pass the time along the dingy streets of her neighborhood while her 17-year-old aunt and caregiver worked as a prostitute, to bring in about a dollar a client.
That was three years ago. Today, Muthoni is a robust schoolgirl who lives in an orphanage on the other side of town. She has thrived, thanks to a nutrition and education program founded by Kinuthia along with two other women, one a nurse and the other a social worker.

According to Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, the vast majority of countries in the Middle East and North Africa region score very poorly to various degrees. The often oppressive and hostile policies towards activists and organizations that are involved with civil society and governance (including those that promote transparency and accountability) and the mediocre integration of technology in governance, administration, and everyday life in general have resulted in a negligible use of available technologies and the tools and platforms they provide to promote accountability and institutional integrity.

Following the launch of a new GOOD PRACTICE GUIDE for the Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV (GIPA), action is needed to turn these words into practice. Like hundred of other publications aiming to increase the participation of the community, or fight stigma, if PLHIV do not read and the ACT upon these recommendations, no one will. Nice words on paper will remain just nice words. The pdf of the Guide is available at: http://www.aidsalliance.org/includes/Publication/GPG-GIPA-English.pdf

BEIJING (AP) -- Plainclothes officers detained a Chinese activist for sex workers' rights Monday, a few days after she publicly called for prostitution to be legalized, her sister said. Ye Haiyan was nabbed at the offices of her community group, the China Women's Rights Workshops, and told she would be held for two or three days of ''studies,'' her sister, Ye Sha, told The Associated Press.
Dissidents in China are often detained by authorities with the explanation that they are ''going for studies'' or ''taking a vacation.'' Usually, they are kept at a guesthouse to prevent them from moving about freely during sensitive dates. Last week, Ye Haiyan and a few supporters asked people in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where she is based, to sign a petition in support of legalizing prostitution, according to an account on her group's website. She also called for Aug. 3 -- Tuesday -- to be marked as ''Sex Workers' Day.'' Ye Haiyan argued that making prostitution legal would afford sex workers better protections.

DHAKA, 2 August 2010 (IRIN) - The tuberculosis (TB) prevalence rate in Bangladesh has plummeted to 79 per 100,000 people from 800 in the 1990s, with the majority of cases among the rural, poor and uneducated, according to the Nationwide Tuberculosis Disease-cum-Infection Prevalence Survey 2007-09 released in July. "The association between poverty and TB is well recognized, and the highest rates of TB are found in the poorest section of the community," said K Zaman, an epidemiologist with the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICCDR, B), who led the survey with the National Tuberculosis Control Programme (NTP). "TB occurs more frequently among low-income group people living in overcrowded areas and persons with little schooling."

JOHANNESBURG, 28 July 2010 (PlusNews) - As many African countries battle to bring down staggering rates of maternal and child mortality, maternal and child health made for a fitting theme at the African Union (AU) Summit this week in Kampala, Uganda.

At the summit, African leaders came under fire for failing to live up to the 2001 Abuja Declaration, in which they agreed to commit at least 15 percent of their national budgets to health. To date, only about five countries have done so. 

Using data from a recent report by Countdown to 2015, a group monitoring maternal and child health, IRIN/PlusNews has mapped the percentage of national budgets allocated to health against mortality rates of children younger than five years. 
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=89992



View the map to see what percentage of child deaths were AIDS-related, and how deaths in young children match up against efforts to meet the Abuja targets.
http://www.plusnews.org/Percentage_of_national_budget_devoted_to_health.htm

JOHANNESBURG, 26 July 2010 (PLUSNEWS) - A new, global survey [http://iapac.org/ATLIS/] has revealed the conversations healthcare providers aren't having with their HIV-positive patients with potentially negative consequences for their treatment and health.

The AIDS Treatment for Life International Survey (ATLIS 2010) of more than 2,000 HIV-positive patients in 12 countries around the world, found that most respondents also had health conditions such as depression, hepatitis C or kidney disease, which could affect their antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, but less than half had ever discussed these with their healthcare providers.

Similarly, about half the respondents said their ARV medication had had a negative impact on their lives, but only 43 percent had ever asked their doctor about new treatment options with fewer side effects.

Patients in South Africa, which has the world's largest ARV programme, reported high levels of adherence - 83 percent said they had not missed a dose in the past month - second only to Brazil, where adherence was almost 90 percent. People living with HIV in Africa and Latin America were also generally more likely to report knowing practical tips for maintaining adherence than those in North America, Europe and Asia.

However, only 62 percent of respondents in Africa knew that the development of drug resistance was a negative consequence of missing ARV doses, and 18 percent of respondents globally thought it was a "good" thing.

Researchers presenting the report's findings at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria, last week described the lack of patient knowledge about the danger of drug resistance as a major concern.

A statement by the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care (IAPAC), which commissioned the study, said the research indicated a need for more wide-ranging and in-depth discussions between patients and doctors.