ACW Partner Highlight: Public Health Watch

AIDS-Care-Watch (ACW) commends the work of our campaign partner- Public Health Watch (a project of the Open Society Institute)- for their work in monitoring national governments’ commitments to HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB).

According to a new study published by Public Health Watch (PHW) (released just before the International Aids Conference in Toronto), governments around the world are failing to address the deadly interaction between tuberculosis and HIV.

The report examines the preventable but growing global TB epidemic, its interaction with HIV/AIDS, and the inadequate response to the two diseases in Bangladesh, Brazil, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Thailand. The report revealed a striking lack of political commitment to control TB, despite the fact that tuberculosis is the leading infectious cause of death for people living with HIV/AIDS, and that AIDS is fueling a resurgence of TB in many areas of the world.

Public Health Watch urges national governments, NGO’s and activists to take immediate action against the twin epidemics- HIV and TB. For more information about PHW and this report, please go here.

ACW Partner Highlight: Pakistan Village Development Program

Pakistan Village Development Program (PVDP) is a non governmental organization based in Peshawar. PVDP- established in 1999-works with communities to build their capacities and “harness the creative energies of poor and underprivileged in the field of human & institutional development, non formal primary education, drinking water supply and sanitation, reproductive/primary Health Care, HIV/AIDS awareness and vocational skills development.”

PVDP has been working in the field of reproductive health and particularly in HIV/AIDS awareness raising for the last three years in various districts with the support of international agencies such as Catholic Relief Services (CRS), UNICEF & Aus-AID etc. PVDP also focuses on Adolescent Reproductive Health in Swat and Peshawar Districts in collaboration with World Population Foundation (WPF).

For more information about PVDP, please click here.

ACW partner highlight: Bangladesh AIDS Information and Dissemination Services

BAIDS, is a network of five major civil society organizations working on HIV/AIDS, which includes CCD (Centre for Communication and Development), Communication for AIDS Prevention project (CAP), Anti-AIDS Journalist Alliance (AJA), Bangladesh Anti-AIDS Students' Alliance (BASA) and CARE Bangladesh.

Bangladesh, with a population of 136 million, had about 13,000 adults and children living with HIV infection at the end 2002, according to UNAIDS estimates. However, only 248 HIV cases have actually been reported.

Significant underreporting of cases occurs because of the country's limited voluntary testing and counseling capacity and the social stigma, which leads to the fear of being identified and detected as HIV positive.

The HIV-prevalence rate among adults between the ages of 15 and 49 is still relatively low, at 0.1 percent of the population. As expected, rates are higher in specific groups, such as injecting drug users who have left treatment (1.7 percent) and commercial sex workers (0.5 percent), according to a national behavioral and serological surveillance undertaken in 2001.

BAIDS programme was initiated with the main objective to provide up-to-date HIV/AIDS related information to inform communication media, journalists, researchers and organizations.

Executive Director Golam Mourtoza says that "At the beginning of this project a separate cell at the CCD office was established which was called Bangladesh AIDS Information and Documentation Service (BAIDS).

This type of center was first of its kind in Bangladesh. BAIDS worked at the same time as HIV/AIDS related news agency and as a resource center.

Its task as news agency was to provide factual reports, features, articles, news items, views etc reports of all the activities of this project as well as various activities of HIV/AIDS program of CARE Bangladesh. Through e-mail and fax these were sent to all the news media, journalists at local and national level, national and international agencies in the country.

In a similar way it provided photograph-library, reports, features, articles, news items and views about agencies working in Bangladesh as well as abroad to combat the deadly disease, their success, experience insights & gain".

BAIDS is also a partner organization of the AIDS-CARE-WATCH campaign and believes that it is vitally important to raise awareness about comprehensive care and support options locally available to people living with HIV in Bangladesh.

For more information please contact: www.baids.org Or write to:

Bangladesh AIDS Information and Dissemination Services (BAIDS), Center for Communication and Development (CCD), Dream Paradise House, Monnafer Morh, Raninagar, Rajshahi-6204, Bangladesh.
Telephone +880-721-751001
Fax +880-721-751001
Hotline +880-11-091441
Email: info@baids.org or ccd@ccdbd.org
Website: www.baids.org