God, AIDS, Africa & HOPE

Reflections / Gedanken

09/20/2009 • 11:42 pm Comments Off on 20.09.2009 Beyond the condoms…

20.09.2009 Beyond the condoms…

Having written a blog entry about the criminalization of  HIV and seeing the response so far, I just realise that there are quite some moral and ethical issues we still have to deal with in the fields of HIV and AIDS. One is used to hear only about the condom story when talking about or talking with the Catholic Church, but there are more things coming to my mind:
– Equality of man and women
– Criminal Code and HIV
– Travel restrictions or travel ban and human rights
– Commencement and possible cessation of treatment
– Dealing of the Catholic Church (or any church) with their own clergy being positive
– Understanding of sexuality in the context of Europe, Africa and Asia as well as Latin America
– Abstinence only or diverse approach towards prevention work

I wish I could convince the German and the Southern African Bishops Conference to set up a study group on all these issues and surely a couple of more questions, which will come up in a brainstorming session. It would make such a difference.

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, HIV Prevention, HIV Treatment, Medical and Research, Politics and Society, Reflection, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

09/20/2009 • 9:11 am 1

20.09.2009 Mandatory testing

Mandatory HIV testing ‘violates their rights’
(IOL website 19.09.09)

Mandatory testing for HIV would violate the rights of people, the SA Human Rights Commission said on Friday. This comes after provincial Health MEC Theuns Botha announced plans to introduce legislation in the Western Cape to have every patient at every health facility tested for the virus. Botha says the move is the final onslaught in the fight against the disease.
Currently 200 000 people in the Western Cape are estimated to be HIV-positive and 63 000 are on ARV treatment. Botha has started the ball rolling to draw up legislation which he anticipates will be ready by next March. He said the legislation was necessary as people had “avoidance” behaviour and chose to not be tested.
Dr Mark Heywood, of the Aids Law Project, agrees with the rights commission. The Treatment Action Campaign was divided on the issue, spokesperson Rebecca Hodes said. Steven Ngobeni, the national HIV and Aids health rights co-ordinator for the commission, said yesterday mandatory testing “does not make sense”. People, he said, often did not know their rights, counselling at voluntary testing centres was not up to scratch and universal access to treatment was not readily available.  Both Ngobeni and Heywood said the provincial government would make a greater impact by educating people about HIV and testing.  Heywood said: “There is no way that you could justify a law to introduce mandatory testing.” It was also wrong from a public health and HIV management perspective.  “I would suggest a public campaign to get people to go for testing. Right now people are avoiding being tested as there is too little information and routine offerings are haphazard.”  He said a law would not work. “People will still be scared of a diagnosis and they could in fact completely avoid health care facilities.”  The TAC’s Hodes said mandatory testing in Botswana had been successful but it had been rolled out as part of a broader ARV treatment campaign.
“Some say mandatory testing will increase stigma, others say it will destigmatise the disease. But if testing becomes mandatory there should be proper support,” she said.  Botha said on Friday it was a two-pronged approach – testing as well as getting people into treatment sooner.   “We would introduce people much earlier into a treatment programme,” he said.

An interesting article and I would like to add: We have to make HIV testing as normal as any other testing. Which would mean in a first step to remove all “extra doors & extra benches” for HIV testing, counseling, treatment and so on..” I even think we can stop the pretest counseling. Like any other diseases we have to advise after a diagnose and not before. If somebody has cancer, we also do not put him or her through a lengthy intimate process before he or she is allowed to have a result.

Being HIV positive is a medical condition in this frameset, let’s treat it as such.

Filed under: HIV Prevention, HIV Treatment, Politics and Society, Society and living environment, , , , , , , , , ,

09/19/2009 • 5:17 pm Comments Off on 19.09.2009 a whitey…

19.09.2009 a whitey…

a Cape Town, Saturday, 19.9.2009 @ round about 10 am in the morning. With a friend of mine I visit the FNB Bank in the pedestrian zone and we have to wait quite a while until somebody attends to us. Everybody needs some time to resolve his or her problem. Looking around in this big room, I suddenly realise that I am the only white person in the crowd of customers. I realize it and I find it amazing. When I arrived in Cape Town in 1997 the city was known for her “white colour”.  Coloureds where common, but not so many black South Africans. The first time I experienced me being a minority was in Johannesburg a couple of years ago, when I went to Hilbrow and the muti market.
This country is really transforming, but race remains an issue. Most applications, most forms have a space where you must identify yourself either as black, coloured, white or asian/indian. Knowing the race means knowing a bit of the history of the family the person is coming from. It is knowing a bit of the trouble, this person, if old enough, had to go through in life.

In Germany, where I was born, race was never really an issue when I was young. As Bitburg, where I grew up, had a big US base, the colour black was rather associated with “having money”.  So here in South Africa I had to learn to appreciate this race issue – and I struggled with it. Because for me, so i always argued, race does not matter…
Well, I had to learn here, that it does matter, one or the other way, in the past of South Africa, in its present times and it looks like this will still go on quite a while. I must admit, I am getting used to it – and do not understand anymore, when visiting Europeans start arguing about it..  I guess, I am becoming more and more a real South African; or should I say: a real Capetonian?? 🙂

Filed under: Reflection, Society and living environment, , , , , , , , ,

09/18/2009 • 11:03 pm 12

18.09.2009 Criminal HIV?

“Nick Rhoades, an Iowa man sentenced May 8 to 25 years in prison for failing to disclose his HIV status to a male sexual partner, had his sentence reduced to five years of probation without jail time in a September 11 reconsideration hearing, The Iowa Independent reports.”

It is indeed an interesting question on whether disclosure of a HIV status can or should always be judged by legal means. In the existing climate of stigmatization and discrimination it is very unlikely that all people infected will be willing or able to disclose before being sexually active with somebody else. Punishment for non-disclosure, often even if no infection took place is growing in the legal systems of nations and I tend to disagree.
I would argue that the onus lies on both parties to protect and if I want to engage in sexual activities where the exchange of body fluids is likely, I have to treat every unknown and maybe even every known person as if he/she is carrier of the virus.  It always takes two to dance one says – and this applies also to such cases like the one above.
I personally don’t think that the tool of the criminal code is a very good tool to prevent infections; I think it will rather make it more unlikely that people get tested because at least they could argue then, that they did not know at all.
I see with concern that more and more also African countries develop laws in that regard, even punishing people when they did not know of their infection and no infection took place.
Extra criminal laws in this regard puts people living with the virus very quick into the criminal corner – that is not what we need to stop the stigma and in doing so,  creating an environment where we are really able to stop the spread of the virus.

Filed under: HIV Prevention, Politics and Society, , , , , , , , , , , ,

09/17/2009 • 9:15 pm Comments Off on 17.09.2009 School anniversary in Brooklyn

17.09.2009 School anniversary in Brooklyn

Yesterday evening I was invited to join a performance of students of the Holy Cross Primary School in Brooklyn near Cape Town – and as every year, it was marvellous to see how the first till seven grader performed and transformed a school hall into a studio, a landing on the moon, a school class 50 years ago and much more, all done with lots of music, singing and dancing. Seeing in the clear eyes of most of these youngsters one wonders while watching the performance how they will do in life. What will they achieve after leaving school? What future is for them in this wonderful paradise called South Africa, where the beauty and the beast are always in reach. Where world icons like Nelson Mandela live side by side by with people killing each other on a daily base for a cigarette, some Nike shoes or a handful of Rand.  Where the triumph of mind over 27 years of imprisonment meets the downfall of millions who cannot make a living for themselves still in our days and rely more or less on a handout of the government, too little to live, too much to die…

What kind of dreams, of hopes I had when I was in that age? I cannot remember exactly but I surely had not the worries and sorrows of everyday struggle these kids endure sometimes on a daily base. This from Holy Cross Sisters lead school is like an island of hope: a beacon of assurance that there is a way forward in this new South Africa. We can not honour enough those teachers and educators, be it in this particular school or all over the country who try their very best to give those kids a chance in life in giving them a base of knowledge. And yes, knowledge is part of development, is part of being able to be self-determined as an adult and to be able to contribute towards society and the community they live in.

But Brooklyn Holy Cross Primary School is for me also travel back in time, the school is a sort of deja-vu of my own school time – the way of teaching, of discipline … it all reminds me on my good old school days somehow ages ago.
In May I attended the 30th anniversary of my own “Abitur” and I it was amazing to see all those faces again I left in 1979 when starting to study theology and philosophy. How most of them had changed but still: again the deja-vu of behaviour patterns – not everything changed really.

I went home after the performance with joy in my heart having seen another generation hopefully being able to do better as we have done, being more wise in using our resources, caring more about nature and the ecology, avoiding meaningless wars and battles and.. and .. and.. And in my heart I also know that it will be most probably not the case. Is the world really going only in circles? Is every generation hoping that the next does not make the same mistakes? Like every parent is hoping to provide a better future for their own kids?

I am not sure, but nobody can take away the joy this eve seeing those kids having a fun of a lifetime while performing, parents to be proud of their kids, nobody can take away two hours of just being content with the world, the people around me and myself. That is more than I hoped for. Thanks to all students and teachers of this school.

Filed under: Reflection, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , ,

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