Welcome to the June 2010 edition of The Governance Response to HIV and AIDS- News Diaries from Southern Africa. Click through to get further information and more story ideas if you are a community journalist.

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Until next time!

Your media@idasa GAP e-news diary team

GRASSROOT SOCCER SKILLZ

An independent study done in Zimbabwe to measure the effectiveness of the Grassroot Soccer Skillz curriculum showed that after participating in the programme, which included a roundtable talk about women’s issues and a friendly soccer match, learners could speak more openly about HIV. Grassroot Soccer has sites in Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa and its curriculum is being implemented with the help of partners like Johnson & Johnson and the Academy for Education in various other countries in Africa. Since 2003 over 270 000 youth have been part of the programme. It hopes to reach a million young people by 2014.
http://health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20032764

Story ideas:

Try to find out where Grassroot Soccer is happening closest to you. In interviewing young people involved ask them about HIV and what they have learnt through the programme.
If the community you work in is not connected with this curriculum is there anything similar happening with soccer and youth? Do young people want a programme like this? Ask people in the community as well as local government leaders what ideas they have for getting one started. You could follow this story up as things get going.

‘STERILIZED WITHOUT CONSENT’

Three landmark trials have begun in the Namibian capital Windhoek after a group of women said they were sterilised by the state without their consent. The women went in for HIV tests in two public hospitals and, after testing positive, they were allegedly sterilised without their full and informed consent. The Legal Assistance Centre, which is representing the women, says it has documented 15 cases of alleged sterilisation in hospitals since February 2008.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201006020656.html

Story ideas:

Solidarity marches are being held in other countries – if there’s one happening in the area you cover, you could report on this interesting case to raise awareness and to highlight the problems that people living with HIV and AIDS face.
It’s very unlikely that Namibia is the only place where allegations of this kind have been made. Ask human rights organisations and legal help centres if they know of allegations of forced sterilisation in your region. Follow where this story leads, while being careful about libel laws.

WOMEN’S STORIES OF RESILIENCE

Idasa’s Governance and AIDS Programme staff interviewed HIV-positive women in Makapanstat, in South Africa’s North West province, about the challenges in their lives. These stories reveal how individuals can live positively and “bounce back” even in the face of unemployment, poor infrastructure and disruptive changes in their health and their lives. Counselling has proved to be a common source of strength for the women. A close network and support base has also proved crucial in ensuring resiliency among the women.
http://www.idasa.org.za/index.asp?page=output_details.asp%3FRID%3D2094%26OTID%3D4%26PID%3D23

Story ideas:

Follow up human interest stories like these. Try to get a fresh angle - a lot of stories of brave people facing the challenges of living with HIV have been written so be sure to steer away from clichés.
Try to look at the bigger picture too - what is local government doing in the communities of the people you interview? What services do they have that help them in their daily lives, what services / opportunities do they need and how are they trying to get those?
Be careful not to use the real names of people you interview.

HIV RESEARCH ON CIVIL SERVANTS

A year ago a study by the Mozambican government warned that 20 percent of the country’s civil servants were HIV-positive. The figure was probably higher, with researchers saying that public employees may not have revealed their HIV-positive status, and therefore were not detected by the Demographic Impact Study, which collected data from the health facilities where they receive care. One of the biggest obstacles to fighting the disease is the stigma attached to it, because many HIV-positive employees "do not publicly admit their status out of fear that they might be discriminated against by their colleagues," said Célia Matavele, national coordinator of the Ministry of Public Employment's Nucleus for the Fight against HIV/AIDS.
http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=84889

Story ideas:

What research has been done on HIV levels among civil servants in your country? See if you can find this data and interview people involved in the research about its implications. If no research is being done, find out which area of local government could be doing it and do a story that looks at what efforts they are making in this area as well as the importance this research could have for your community.
Stigma emerged as a major obstacle in this Mozambican study – how widespread is stigma in workplaces in your community? What ideas do civil servants have for reducing fear of discrimination and encouraging testing in their place of work?

TUBERCULOSIS AND HIV

Reporting from a tuberculosis conference in Durban, South Africa, Health-e News said that seven out of every 10 South Africans with TB also have HIV, yet they have to get their TB and HIV treatment in different clinics. Despite government acknowledgement that the dual epidemic is a public health emergency, integration of TB and HIV services is not happening on the ground. Tired of the lip-service paid to integration, an alliance of organisations have given the health department three months in which to come up with practical guidelines on how to integrate TB and HIV services. As a start, says Dr Francois Venter of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, TB nurses could screen patients for HIV and start ARV treatment for those who needed it.
http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20032821

Story ideas:

What is the situation with the integration of TB and HIV treatment in your community? What practical guidelines are in place for healthworkers? Ask those responsible for delivering treatment what challenges they face. Also talk to people who are HIV-positive and need treatment for TB. How difficult is it for them to get the treatment they require? What ideas do they have for simplifying the process?

MENTOR MOTHERS

A multi-year grant from The Elton John AIDS Foundation of £984,000, announced in June, will enable a Mentor Mother programme that began in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, and is now in Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, Swaziland and Zambia, to work to develop effective programmes to support clinical efforts preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV, across sub-Saharan Africa and develop a gold standard for delivering and monitoring these programmes. mothers2mothers (m2m) works in health care facilities partnering with doctors and nurses to meet the comprehensive needs of HIV-positive pregnant women and new mothers. The organisation recruits HIV-positive mothers after they deliver their babies and trains them to work as paid professional health care providers in the clinics and maternity wards where they once received medical care. These peer educators, called “Mentor Mothers”, engage, educate and support HIV-positive pregnant women and new mothers, guiding them in measures to prevent HIV transmission to their babies and in steps to ensure they will remain healthy to raise their children. These efforts contribute to empowering women and reducing stigma by teaching people to “live positively” with HIV.
http://www.m2m.org/

Story ideas:

Interview mothers working as mentors in this programme if it’s running in the area you cover. It’s nice to cover a success story with so much media coverage of the drop in donor funding. What do those working in this programme see as key to its success and growth?

Possible sources for comment and more information:

• Democracy institute IDASA: www.idasa.org
• Engender Health: www.engenderhealth.org
• Family Health International: www.fhi.org
• Foreign correspondents association of southern Africa: www.fcasa.co.za
• Health-e: www.health-e.org.za
• Kettering Foundation Readers’ Forum http://forum.kettering.org/reading_room/readers_forum
• Medecins Sans Frontiers: www.msf.org
• Media Institute of Southern Africa: www.misa.org
• Red Cross Society: www.redcross.org
• SADC Secretariat: www.sadc.int
• SARPN: www.sarpn.org.za
• Your national AIDS council
• Southern African AIDS Trust (SAT) www.satregional.org
• Southern African Humanitarian Information Management Network SAHIMS), www.sahims.net
• Southern Africa Malaria Control: www.malaria.org.zw/samc.html
• Treatment Action Campaign (TAC): www.tac.org.za
• UK Department of International Development: www.dfid.org.uk
• UNAIDS: www.unAIDS.org
• University of Washington: http://www.washington.edu
• World Bank: www.worldbank.org
• World Health Organisation (WHO): www.who.org
• Citizen journalism blog: http://wingseed.wordpress.com/
• Citizen journalism: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org/
• Journ-AIDS: http://www.journaids.org/
• Southern Africa HIV and AIDS Information Dissemination Service: http://www.safaids.net/