HIV/AIDS AND YOUTH

HIV/AIDS AND YOUTH

HIV/AIDS AND YOUTH

Last week Friday 8^th December 2017, I did a PowerPoint presentation at the African Union Commission headquarters to celebrate the World AIDS Day with on theme: Africa Unite to end AIDS, Speak out, No to stigma and discrimination; Prevent new infections. My focus was On HIV/AIDS and Youth.

This is my presentation that I converted to word. Some of the issues need much in-depth and I will do articles on them later.

Introduction

HIV; Human Immunodeficiency Virus

AIDS; Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

The African Union 2017 theme: Harnessing the demographic dividend through investments in youth highlights the importance of involving our youths in developmental activities in the continent. The youth play a major role when it comes to sensitization, they are good peer educators facing the same challenges with their; use of social media and access of information also plays an important role to access of education to the youths.

Statistics

•       5 million young people are living with HIV.  41 percent of new HIV infections is among the young people, every 30 seconds, another young person becomes HIV-positive.

•       The vast majority (3.8 million/76 percent) of young people living with HIV or AIDS (YPLWHA) are in sub-Saharan Africa

•       Globally, only 34 percent of young people ages 15-24 have comprehensive and correct knowledge of how HIV is transmitted – leaving these youth not only vulnerable to HIV, but to believing myths about HIV and HIV positive people.

Preventive Measures

•       A - Abstinence from sexual activities

•       B - Be faithful to one partner

•       C - Condomize; use of condoms

•      Drugs - Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP); truvada drug that is taken by individual who are at high risk of HIV infection to reduces the chances of them contracting the disease and Post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) that is administered to individuals that suspect to have been in situations that have exposed them to the virus.

Challenges facing HIV control in Africa

•  Challenge of stable political support and engagement of policy makers; every government comes with different priorities in developing their countries and not having policies that binds the different governments to commit to support HIV victims is quite a big challenge

•      Inadequate legal protection and legal enforcement of fundamental human rights and individuals living with and at risk of HIV; cultural practices that violate human rights are at the high levels of exposing individuals to the infection

•   Low HIV and sexual health knowledge; most of the youth especially have been exposed to the risk of HIV infection due to lack of sexuality education when they were growing up

•    Parental consent for youths below the age of 18 years; some of the health care facilities still need parental consent to allow youths under the age of 18 years to access HIV/AIDS services. Most live without knowing their status

•       Describing gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation d sexual health

•    Youth-specific services are rarely available and healthcare providers may have little experience dealing with the young people dynamics

Socio-economic Impact of HIV

•      The premature deaths of young adults has a great negative impact on the economic growths

•   Increased dependency on older generation, diminishes human capital and cuts   productivity growth

•       Education; Erodes the supply of teachers and dilute the quality of education

•    Severe strain on government budgets to spend on health and social welfare; limited resources are depleted and public investments fall

Sexuality Education on Young People

Sexuality education is a lifelong process of acquiring information and forming attitudes, beliefs, and values. It encompasses sexual development, sexual and reproductive health, interpersonal relationships, affection, intimacy, body image, and gender roles.

Comprehensive sex education teaches abstinence as the best method to prevent contraction of HIV/AIDS, STIs and preventing unintended pregnancies but also teaches on condoms and contraception as ways to reducing the risks to contract HIV/AIDS, STIs and prevent unintended pregnancies.

Youth need to be educated about adolescent development, sexuality, anatomy and physiology, the basics about STIs, and the choices involved when engaging in sexual activity.

Benefits of Sexuality Education

•       Increases understanding of sexuality by youth

•       Reduces HIV and other STI infections

•       Reduces unwanted pregnancies

•       Having the option to delay sexual activity till when ready

•       Understanding the importance of using condoms if sexually active

Risk on Serodiscordant Couple

Serodiscordant couples (one partner is HIV positive while the other is HIV negative) are at a higher risk of being infected.

Regular testing for couples allows them to know their status and be able to take preventive measures and live as a healthy couple. With the new discovery of Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) drugs, discordant couples are able to live together without the fear of being infected if they take the drug consistently.

Strategies Deployed by African Union to Control HIV

•  Improving Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SHRH) information, education and communication through: the institution of effective behavior change communication and information sharing mechanisms that targets the adolescents and youths

•     Investing in SRHR needs of adolescents, youth and other vulnerable and marginalized populations

•   Establishing strong-evidence based integrated national monitoring and evaluation frameworks

Policies by the African Union

·      Catalytic Framework to End AIDS, TB and Eliminate Malaria In Africa By 2030; To end the AIDS as a public health threat by 2030;

·     Maputo Protocol of Action (MPoA); mainstreams and harmonizes SHRH into national, sub regional and continental development initiatives and African policy making to improve well-being and quality of life on the continent

References

•       United Nations: Key actions for the further implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development United Nations, New York (1999) (A/RES/S-21/2)

•       United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Opportunity in Crisis: Preventing HIV from early adolescence to young adulthood. New York: Unicef; 2011. Accessed November 1, 2011 from http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/Opportunity_in_Crisis-Report_EN_052711.pdf

•       Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Global Report. Geneva: UNAIDS, 2010. Accessed November 1, 2011, from http://www.unaids.org/globalreport/ documents/20101123_GlobalReport_full_en.pdf

By: Nyabena Susan; Gender Specialist

Public toilets; The Challenges that Women and Girls Face

Public toilets; The Challenges that Women and Girls Face

By 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals, specifically SDG #6, aim to reach everyone with sanitation, and halve the proportion of untreated wastewater and increase recycling and safe reuse. Poor water and sanitation cost developing countries around $260 billion a year, 1.5 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP), while every dollar invested could bring a five-fold return by keeping people healthy and productive[1].

Lack of sanitation affects some 2.5 billion people particularly women, who face not only disease but missed school, public shame, and attack[2]. World toilet day is observed on 19^th November annually having few people aware of the day to highlight problems faced by people in the world that do not have access to proper sanitation. Theme for 2017: ‘Wastewater’.

This article will focus on public toilets in Kenya and the challenges that women face. Public toilets are small rooms constructed at convenient places that are meant for the use by generally everyone. Public toilets are one of the social amenities that have come in as good initiatives to help our women to respond to the call of nature. In the past as opposed to when men would find it easy to release themselves anywhere, women had always had challenges and thanks to the public toilets they could have a sense of privacy.

As we appreciate the public toilets though, there are challenges that women face when in use of the toilets;

Hygiene; women and girls are sensitive when it comes to their reproductive systems. Lack of proper hygiene and sanitation at the public toilets leave women vulnerable to different bacterial infections and this discourages most of them from using the toilets which are worse when women are during their menstrual periods. Broken flushes, lack of anti-bacterial dispensing soap, sanitary towels being all over and not well covered.

Impact on economic growth; women spend a lot of time in queues just to use the toilets. Men and women are given the same number of toilets but men tend to have urinals in addition. They miss out on very important conversation, they get late on important meetings and they end up losing a lot of time if accumulated together which would have been used for more productive things. The sight of long queues discourages women to use the facilities. Work places that do not have good toilet facilities, women are forced to go in search of toilets which affects the business considering the number of hours they spend in the toilets.

According to a desk study carried out by the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) in 2012, poor sanitation costs the country, Kshs 27 billion annually, equivalent to US$324 million. This sum is the equivalent of US$8 per person in Kenya per year or 0.9 per cent of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). 

Accessibility; one of the key issues to consider. Toilets need to be at the center for easy accessibility of women. Being in hidden places leaves the women with the fear of being sexually assaulted or attacked.

Vulnerable groups; these are persons with special needs. Public toilets most do not have facilities that cater for their needs. They have to get a helper to ease their struggle in the use of the toilets. Considering the stigma that they face from the other women community when they take a lot of time to use the facility. People with special needs tend to restrict themselves on the amount of foods and fluids that they take to control their need to use the toilets when they are out of their homes which in the long run affects their health.

Sub-standard resources; most public washrooms lack adequate resources for example most lack a bathrooms, have low supply of toilet paper, water and soap, lack of sanitary towel bins, lack of emergency sanitary towel supply in the toilets, hence they do not function to effectively meet the needs of the public. This mostly affects women because cleanliness and hygiene is one of their gender roles and women are expected to always exhibit a certain degree of cleanliness. For example, during menstruation a woman can accidentally soil their clothes and may be in need of a bathroom in order to refresh and might become very frustrated due to the inadequacy.

Public toilets also lack baby changing areas. This affects women because they are the primary care givers. Mothers with babies always have a difficult task finding a place when they need to change diapers for their babies in public.

Recommendations

· Proper hygienic conditions, ensure the toilets are regularly cleaned and

  disinfected to reduce the smell, facilities like bins for disposal of the sanitary

  towels, dispensing anti-bacterial soap.

· Have properly trained caretakers who are women to ensure the facilities are

  always clean.

· Having more toilets in easily accessible public places for women to ease the

  time they spend queuing.

· Communities in Kenya are encouraged to adopt the use of Community-Led total

  sanitation which is a methodology that empowers the community to take care of

  its own sanitation.

· Employers should strive to ensure that female employees have enough toilets

   which should always be in good condition for use.

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[1] http://www.un.org/en/events/toiletday/

[2] Laura Bliss November 7, 2014


By: Nyabena Susan; Gender Expert
      Bella Masanya; News Reporter KUTV
      Nicole Natallie: Sales and Marketing Expert Global

Teenage Pregnancy in Tanzania

Background

Adolescence is often a time when choices are made that set the course for young people’s future. More than one in five Tanzanians are adolescents, aged between 10 and 19 years[1]. The 2015-2016 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey found that one in four girls and women aged 15 to 19 are mothers. Forty percent of women ages 15 to 49 have experienced physical violence, and almost 20 percent have experienced sexual violence. Among young people aged between 20 and 24, less than 20 percent of women had graduated from secondary school, compared with 32 percent of men. In the same age group, 20 percent of women had no education at all, compared with less than 10 percent of men[2].

H.E John Magufuli, president to the Republic of Tanzania issued a directive in June 2017 stating that teenage girls that get pregnant while in school would not be allowed to go back to school; ‘giving them the opportunity for free education and allowing teenage mothers back to school is encouraging the other girls to get pregnant’, he said. No data however, shows the correlation between more girls getting pregnant when they interact with the teenage mothers and when they do not. This comes as a question considering that Tanzania has ratified several human rights treaties including the African Youth Charter 2006, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, as well as Tanzanian Legislation on Education and Labour; and the landmark 2009 Law of the Child Act for the Mainland and 2011 Children’s Act for Zanzibar. Primary focus must be on prevention of pregnancies, the loss of human potential should be a call for second chances. Having girls not going back to school after getting pregnant not only deny them their rights but also come as a negative impact to the economic growth and development to the country.

Factors contributing to teenage pregnancy in Tanzania

1. Child marriage: While underage sex is criminalized in Tanzania, parents may marry off their daughters using a special privilege granted by a 1971 marriage law, which allows a girl as young as 15 to marry with parental or the court’s consent.
2. Lack of information about sexuality and reproduction: Lack of appropriate and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education including information and services for reproductive tract infections, sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy-related issues, mean that many adolescents still do not know how or do not possess the means to prevent pregnancy.
3. Sexual violence and exploitation both at home and in schools
4. Economic deprivation and opportunities accessible to teenage girl child can cause young girls to engage in transactional and/or unprotected sex to meet basic needs, survive or to improve their living conditions
5. Education  level  and  employment  status  is  associated  with  the  risk  of  pregnancy among teenage  and adolescent  girls. Teenagers and adolescents are at higher risk of pregnancy if they have no formal education and if they are unemployed.

Currently, about one-third of Tanzania’s health facilities are reported to provide “youth-friendly” sexual and reproductive health services, including access to contraceptives. While the quality of services provided probably varies greatly, these facilities should offer a non-judgmental, supportive environment where young people feel comfortable and confident about expressing their concerns and are able to receive treatment guidance in language and concepts that fit their experience and stage of development. Teenage mothers however, are offered vocational training as an alternative of not going back to school. The girls still tend to lose a lot in this regard, when they are compared with their mates and colleagues. There is therefore, the need and more concerted efforts for these girls to have re-entry program to continue their formal education.

Recommendations

1. There is a need to improve the quality and implementation of reproductive and health education for both boys and girls. This means involvement of governmental agencies; local and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); the parents and communities focusing on comprehensive sexual education through participatory approaches.
2. Youth-friendly health services promoting open communication between parents and children and increasing the coverage in the media with a distinct focus on pregnancy.
3. Cultural practices, early marriages and Female Genital Mutilation/Cut (FGM) should be tackled having in place to reach out to the communities that are ultra-conservative. These are behavioral and cultural changes that can be achieved through participatory approach.
4. Investing in adolescents will accelerate the fight against poverty, inequity and gender discrimination and contribute to the reduction of maternal mortality and HIV and AIDS.
5. Building skills and creating jobs for young people, especially those in the poorest rural communities can help rescue a generation from poverty
6. Universal implementation of sex education with focus both on abstinence and safe sex as well as biological and social risk factors.
7. Schools should be encouraged to form peer health clubs with the objective of sensitizing on the impact of teenage pregnancy and to also reduce discrimination. 

Provisions That Protect Children’s Rights:

Article 11 (3) African Charter on The Rights and Welfare of the Child: States Parties … shall in particular: (a) provide free and compulsory basic education; (b) encourage the development of secondary education in its different forms and to progressively make it free and accessible to all; (c) make the higher education accessible to all on the basis of capacity and ability by every appropriate means; (d) take measures to encourage regular attendance at schools and the reduction of dropout rates; (e) take special measures in respect of female, gifted and disadvantaged children.

Article 21 (1) of the African Charter on The Rights and Welfare of the Child: States Parties to the present Charter shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate harmful social and cultural practices affecting the welfare, dignity, normal growth and development of the child and in particular: (a) those customs and practices prejudicial to the health or life of the child; and (b) those customs and practices discriminatory to the child on the grounds of sex or other status.

Article 21 (2) of the African Charter on The Rights and Welfare of the Child: Child marriage and the betrothal of girls and boys shall be prohibited and effective action, including legislation, shall be taken to specify the minimum age of marriage to be 18 years and make registration of all marriages in an official registry compulsory.

Article 11 (6): States Parties to the present Charter shall have all appropriate measures to ensure that children who become pregnant before completing their education shall have an opportunity to continue with their education based on their individual ability.

Countries that Allow Continuation of Teenage Mother’s Education:

South Africa: Section 9(3) of the South African Bill of Rights says that the State must not discriminate against any person based on aspects such as gender, sex, pregnancy and marital status. Section 8 of the Equality Act makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender. In particular, Section 8(f) prohibits discrimination on the basis of pregnancy.

Benin: There is a re-entry program, which allows teenage mothers to go back to school. In cases where the father is also a minor, the parents to the boy are held liable to cater for the girl and her baby until the teenage mother is eighteen years of age inclusive of her education

Malawi: Both the boy and the girl must leave school till the girl has delivered. However, if the girl is willing to remain in school, she is allowed to continue with her education until she delivers.

Kenya: has a ‘return to school' policy for teenage mums which was introduced in 1994. A girl that gets pregnant is supposed to be allowed to remain in school for as long as she thinks she can. After delivery, she is supposed to be allowed to go back or be given support to gain admission into another secondary school if she feels there are issues of stigma and discrimination.  There is also a provision for pregnant schoolgirls and their parents to receive counseling. 

By: Nyabena Susan
Blogger/Gender Expert

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[1] NBS Statistical Abstract 2009

[2] Tanzania’s Demographic Health Survey Data for 2010

Women Economic Development in Kenya

One thing that we all agree on, Africa has got entrepreneurial talent among the women and youth but the environment is what many see as not conducive for such development. Taking gender lenses, Africa has got great potential to develop economically but the culture that we have has been so embedded in regards to gender that has made it difficult for women and youth to become independent.

Gender has been confused mostly to refer to women. Anytime gender affairs are being discussed, it is always allude to be affairs that involve the women. Gender consider the women, men, children and the marginalized groups. This is our understanding of our socialization as we grew up. Women have been crowned with particular roles that is expected of them.

The cultural and structural challenges that they face has been a great discouragement for women to engage in entrepreneurial activities. Women having in mind that their primary responsibility is confined in the private sectors which also they are seen not to be able to perform unless decisions are made for them. Many women thus have had the fear to engage in such activities with the fear of failing. And the few who had the courage to step out never have the change to do what they want as what they do is determined by someone else mostly by men. As young girls’ growing, their minds are already set to a particular way of future, one that is to be confined to the private sector and never the public sphere.

Women need to brace themselves, hey need more of capacity building and opportunity t be able to venture into entrepreneurial activities. Women have a actually had more of business success stories.

By: Nyabena Susan
Blogger/Gender Expert