If you've ever had any doubts that international aid or global health is a business, then one visit to an International AIDS Conference will clear them away. Between the free frozen yogurt from big pharma and bookend speeches from the Clintons, it was hard to ignore what a "sexy" disease HIV was last week in Washington D.C.…

This week I attended the XIX International AIDS Conference on behalf of REPSSI (The Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative.) Based in Johannesburg, REPSSI trains "front-line" service providers on children's emotional and social well-being and works with governments and NGOs to develop child-friendly policy frameworks in 13 countries in southern & eastern Africa. There are at least 1,994 project sites where REPSSI approaches are being applied and…

As we drove past the White House and the Lincoln Memorial on Constitution Avenue yesterday, Tapfuma and Lynette noticed the flags at half-mast.

“It must be because of the tragedy,” our conversation began.

Flags in Washington D.C. are honoring the 12 people killed in a shooting in Aurora, Colorado on the day REPSSI staff arrived in the U.S.

“What causes…

This post on behalf of REPSSI originally appeared on A View from the Cave.

The first and most challenging exercise of the day when I took a seminar from The OpEd Project required me to fill in the following blanks and share with the group:

Hello, my name…

This is a guest post by Jennifer Lentfer of how-matters.org on the REPSSI (Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative) blog.

Growing up, my family life was not easy. My father drank and it weighed heavily on my mother, who did her best to maintain as much normalcy for me and my brothers as possible. Looking back, our home’s “culture of silence” was often the…

At the upcoming XIX International AIDS Conference here in Washington D.C., I'll be joining REPSSI (the Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative) as they celebrate their decade-long work to lessen the devastating social and emotional (psychosocial) impact of poverty, conflict, HIV and AIDS among children and youth across East and…

Dear friends, 



We have formed a page on Facebook as an outreach effort to create a global forum of scholars and like-minded people who think about one of the biggest pandemics of 21st century i.e. HIV/AIDS. This is a Forum for Networking and  Collaboration for sharing of increasing frontiers of Knowledge in the areas of HIV/AIDS, Drug & Alcohol Abuse, LGBTQI, Women and Children and Risk, and overall Public health concerns in the…

Understanding the organizational dynamics of local, indigenous, community-based groups directly serving vulnerable families is vastly different from the project-based, accountability-by-paper world of the aid industry. While those in the aid system may acknowledge local groups’ resourcefulness in mobilizing local resources, their language and cultural competencies, and responsiveness to communities’ needs, there are challenges in working with local groups that many organizations are not up…

Weh Yeoh of whydev.org argues that everything that we do in international development is about selling a message. But how do we convince people when a message goes against the grain of what they already believe?

Read on at: http://www.how-matters.org/2012/02/07/change-the-messenger/…

http://worldpulse.com/magazine/articles/rwanda-defying-history?page=0,0

RWANDA: Defying History

I always walk away from a conversation with Saeed Wame, founder and director of Namwera AIDS Coordinating Committee (NACC) of Malawi, with a new understanding. Whether he be blowing my concept of “capacity” wide open, or offering a completely new definition of volunteer, Saeed is the sort of community leader whose wisdom and…

The New York Times reviews Dr Jacques Pepin's 'The Origins of Aids', which aims to shed light on how rapidly expanding twentieth century public health campaigns may have been responsible for the spread of HIV and other blood-borne diseases in French and Colonial colonies from the 1920s onwards. Patients on such programs could get up to 300 injections in a lifetime. As a precedent, a schistosomiasis (bilharzia)…

Why do so many HIV-positive children in Africa have HIV-negative mothers? For example, approximately 30% of HIV-positive kids aged 0-11 years have HIV-negative mothers in Mozambique (see pp. 177-181 in:http://www.measuredhs.com/pubs/pdf/AIS8/AIS8.pdf).



Why are so many virgin men and women found with HIV? In the Republic of Congo, for example,…

In a review of randomized controlled trials for HIV/AIDS prevention interventions in Africa, Dr David Gisselquist finds the HIV community somewhat wanting when it comes to tracing the source of infections, asking questions about non-sexual as well as sexual risks and failing to report findings that don't support the prevailing orthodoxy.



As Gisselquist points out, HIV is…

Did contaminated blood transfusions make a significant contribution to the HIV pandemic? In wealthy countries, the answer is clearly ‘yes’, blood transfusions and use of blood products was already very common when HIV was identified. Until the role of these procedures in HIV transmission was recognized, many people were infected with HIV nosocomially.

But could blood transfusions have made such a contribution to the most serious HIV epidemics in the world? Often, it is said…

In honor of this week's Clinton Global Initiative's Annual Meeting, I'm reposting this from early October last year. The issues remain the same; the fundraising resources for local organizations still needed.

“Is a trickle of that money ever going to reach us?”…

On the treadmill this morning (a time I usually reserve for non-development thinking), a story from Malawi popped up via This American Life on my ipod. They continue covering stories on aid issues in ways that are, for the most part, respectful and engaging, this one specifically related to HIV prevention programs.

This American Life 444: Gossip, Originally aired 8/26/11 Summary from…

Communities have the capacity to take action, based on their strengths, to realize their dreams. Constellation Support Teams develop and nurture the capacity of communities to facilitate communal discussion, reflection, learning and action. They accompany communities on their journey to their…

Dear Members,

Over the last five years, the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) in India has been striving to realize its full potential with the support of and in close partnership with community groups and civil society organizations. And it is in this spirit of commitment and ownership that Civil…

A new online platform was set up a week ago for India Civil Society- It is a place to share and exchange experiences and nurture a network of those engaged in development issues particularly HIV in India.

I invite you to join this online community

http://indiacso.ning.com/