Preventing And Mitigating Aids In Sub Saharan Africa

The AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to affect all facets of life throughout the subcontinent. Deaths related to AIDS have driven down the life expectancy rate of residents in Zambia, Kenya, and Uganda with far-reaching implications. This book details the current state of the AIDS epidemic in Africa and what is known about the behaviors that contribute to the transmission of the HIV infection. It lays out what research is needed and what is necessary to design more effective prevention programs.

This third part of the AWLAE series on HIV/AIDS and agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa focuses on the epidemic as a challenge to human development in general and rural development in particular. In the face of the impact of the epidemic as described in parts one and two of the series, the agricultural sector can play an important role in mitigating some of its effects. Strategies for agricultural intervention are of particular importance in sub-Saharan Africa, given the fact that most of the countries hardest hit by the epidemic are heavily reliant on agriculture. Different agricultural sector based mitigation strategies are discussed. It is further argued, however, that such interventions need to be complemented by interventions from the health and other sectors, in particular by treatment regimes including access to anti-retroviral drugs. The text is followed by an annotated bibliography.

This book let provides information on community-level behavioural interventions for HIV prevention in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The disproportional loss of individuals to HIV/AIDS in their most productive years raises concerns over the welfare of surviving members of affected families and communities. One consequence of the rapid increase in adult mortality is the rise in the proportion of children who are orphaned. Sub-Saharan Africa, accounts for about 90 percent of these. Mainly due to the staggering toll of HIV/AIDS, research effort has focused on treatment and prevention. Children have received attention primarily in relation to 'mother to child transmission' and paediatric AIDS. These issues are important and compelling but fail to capture the whole story - the unprecedented surge in the number of children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. In this book we reflect on the plight of children classified as vulnerable, review interventions implemented to improve their welfare and grapple with the concept of vulnerability as it relates to human rights and the African child.

The education sector plays a key “external� role in preventing and reducing the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS. It also plays an important “internal� role in providing access to care, treatment, and support for teachers and education staff, a group that in many countries represents more than 60 percent of the public sector workforce. The education sector can also have a critically important positive effect on the future: Even in the worst-affected countries, most schoolchildren are not infected. For these children, there is a chance to live lives free from AIDS if they can be educated on the knowledge and values that can protect them as they grow up. The authors of 'Accelerating the Education Sector Response to HIV' explore the experiences of education sectors across Sub-Saharan Africa as they scale up their responses to HIV/AIDS within the Accelerate Initiative Working Group, established in 2002 by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Inter-Agency Task Team on Education. This book demonstrates that leadership by the ministries of education and commitment from key development partners are crucial for mobilizing activities and that full participation of all stakeholders is required for effective implementation. This book summarizes the experiences of technical Focal Points from the 37 ministries of education in Sub-Saharan Africa, which are represented on the sub-regional networks for HIV and Education. These experiences prove that the education sector response can play a crucially important role in the multisectoral national responses to this epidemic.

This book considers the response to the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa by examining family planning programs and HIV prevention efforts.