Constitutional court in Columbia strikes down law criminalizing HIV.

Youth Global platform on Hiv/aids joins UNAIDS and other relevant #HIV organizations around the globe to congratulate #Columbia for the recent judgement by their constitutional court striking down the section of the criminal code criminalizing #HIV transmission in Columbia.
This judgement will see adolescents and young people boldly committing themselves more on the fight against this viral menace ravaging young people and adolescents around the globe as criminalization of #HIV does not in any way uphold the principles of non - discrimination or prevention of new #HIV infections.

Hence the rationale for Youth Global platform on Hiv/aids so that young people and adolescents can be empowered to resist stigma or discrimination while understanding their right to universal health care as a rationale to enhance universal youth response to #HIV.

Photo credit: AVERT

Video: Universal Health Coverage Day rally by Youth Global Platform on HIV/AIDS...Facilitated By Onyibupet Consulting Limited in a local community in Nigeria...

Youth Global Platform on HIV/AIDS: An inspiring story of a 'grass to grace' Nigerian mother living with HIV!

My story: By Ogechi Njoku.

MY VISION IS MY DRIVING FORCE:

I was born into the family of Eight Children, and I was the last born but unfortunately I lost Seven of my Senior Siblings, making me an only child.
I lost my father too, as a child, hence I was singlehandedly trained by my mother.
My mother was a petty trader who hawks on different seasonal fruits, ranging from oranges, avocado peers, banana, etc and when in out of season, she trades on kola nuts.
While growing up, I watch my mother cries every night, her pains was greater than I could imagine, I couldn't proffer solution, all I could say then whenever she cries was "Aunty ndo kwanu" (Aunty sorry) yes, I calls my mother Aunty till date.
The pains of losing her Seven Children one after the other to the cold hands of death was excruciatingly great to her heart, to a point she almost lost hope that she had me. At any little experience, she would wish she wasn't living, she often makes reference to them.
I grew up as a very stubborn child, my stubbornness and street fight always makes her remember her late children, she felt if they were alive, my excesses would have be tamed by them. So I kept hearing her making references to what the dead children would have been to her, her pains birthed my VISION. Gradually, I started feeling her pains too, even as a growing teenage who doesn't know what future holds for her, I assured her and reassured her each time she cries that "I WILL BE TO HER, WHAT THE SEVEN DEAD CHILDREN WOULD HAVE BEEN TO HER".
My growing up was liken unto hell, I would hawk from 6am-9am before going home to prepare for school, immediately after school, I would hit the street again to hawk, that was our only source of livelihood, the proceeds were used for our feeding and my school fees and books, during holidays, my effort triples. My Hawking experience became bitter when I was deflowered by raped at 16, in 1996, I lost my virginity. Nothing could be done to the guy who did it because his father was the chairman of one of the local government in IMO state then, so my mother dare not raise such accusations against the high and mighty. My experience became more bitter when I was raped for the second time by gangs of men in pretence of trying to buy my market, they successful cornered me and over powered me at Ekeonunwa market Owerri. I hated hawking, my passion for education grew, my dream to become someone influential and rich grew, my vision for life became my burning desire. I was determined by quest to take care of my mother and make her proud, hence I wasn't ready to allow any challenges deter it. I kept pushing on.
I had a vision to be great, and rich. I was passionate about education, the fact that I didn't have who would see me through my academics didn't make me loose hope.
After my secondary education in 1997, I journeyed to Lagos in 1998, life was hell, at a point, I lived in an uncompleted building for over a year without anyone knowing that someone lives in there, because I would leave there as early as 4 am to go to where I worked as sales girl with a salary of 3,000 and would come home very late, the supermarket I worked for, used to close by 10pm, before I would get home, it would be 11pm.
When I had a change of work, I worked for Linar Pharmacy at Salvation road Opebi, Ikeja. Seeing my boss children who were schooling at University of Lagos, my enthusiasm for education and good life intensifies the more. I reassured myself of my dreams of becoming a graduate. Then I knew I won't just sit down and dream, I need to take an action but the nature of the job am doing and where I live was my stumbling block, but I took a decision to enroll into computer school, hence I changed my job of a sales girl to a cleaner, so that I could attend my computer school.
While in computer school at Allen avenue, Ikeja, I became very close to one of my course mate "Late Akpa Elina Odachi" (may her soul Rest in Peace) whose father was a Soldier and mother was a mobile Police Officer, they were living in Sam Ethan Air force Base, Ikeja. She noticed that I was living in an uncompleted building, and sought to know why, I explained, she highlighted the dangers of me staying in there, should area boys became aware. So she suggested to take me to her parents in the barracks, that was how my how my journey to the barracks started. Her parents accepted me, I became a member of their lovely family. Her friends became my friends too, life became sweet.
Life in the barracks was sweet till I started dating a Soldier, pregnancy came, children came, no marriage, the sweetness of my soul was taken away, I was abused both by the father of my kids and his relatives. I was abandoned, in fact the soldier worked his posting out, that was how I started Hawking again, joined cleaning work to it, to sustain myself and kids, in 2005 I decided to become a soldier through recruit, I bought the Air Force form, took my kids home to my mother. It was in the course of medicaI screening, they found out that I was pregnant again for my soldier boyfriend again, hence I was dropped. All hope to good life were lost. My soldier friend still insisted that there will be no marriage, even if I born king David, and me, I love children, I saw them as brothers even though they were my children.
My suffering was raised to powered to three, the sisters of the father of my kids would mock me, each time they saw me Hawking oranges in the street of Oshodi, Lagos or they saw me sweeping the blocks of barracks, my sight was irrigating to them, they hated me with passion, they concluded that I wanted to entangled their younger brother with pregnancy to gain marriage, they were all graduates, I was just a waec holder, cum an orange seller and a cleaner. The disparities between us were much, the gap was too much, they saw nothing good in me but the ability to get pregnant and have children. Their constant mockery was a reminder to my ambitions.
In 2007, I doubled my cleaning work alongside my Hawking business with the view of saving more money to go to school even if it is on part time bases. I would sweep the barracks and wash the gutters from 4am - 5:30 am, moved straight to oshodi market to buy my oranges before 6:30am, then prepare before 7:30 am to Pacific Access Limited, to clean their office, by 9am I am through with all cleaning work, I would go home, rest till 12pm, then wash my oranges, and hit the streets for my Hawking business. Some days, I would make sales ranges from 3,000-5,000 per day, then get monthly salary of 5,000 for cleaning the barracks, also 5,000 from cleaning Pacific Access limited office at no 4 Anike Apena street, off Mobolaji Bank Anthony Way, Ikeja, Lagos. Sometimes in a month I do have savings from incomes ranges of 30,0000-40,000. My hope for school started rising.
On August 29, 2007, i came to clean office as usual, I found a Wednesday Punch newspaper on my boss table, dated August 28, 2007, 1 flipped through the pages, I saw job advertisement for junior staff with minimum of Diploma and must be computer literate. I checked out for its location and organization, it was Abuja, the Nigerian Society of Engineers, National Headquarters, National Engineering Center. My instinct told me to apply, I came home and told everyone, they all discouraged me, except one officer, Warrant Officer Ogumuyiwa who encouraged me to try my luck. I did, passed the aptitude test and interview and was given the job.
assumed office on 16th November, 2007, that was beginning of my breakthrough. My dreams came true, I found favour among my colleagues, Management Staff and the entire organization favored and blessed me. In 2009, I gained admission to study Financial Accounting at Fidie Polytechnic Gboko, Benue state, I got my National Diploma in 2011, in 2012, I gained admission to study B. Sc. in Economics at University of Ibadan, Oyo state through Direct Entry. My dreams to become a graduate and take care of my mother came true against all odds, against all my failures and challenges, I conquered my fears and dismay.
I became a mother at age 22, a single mother of four children at age 28, started higher institution at age 29, owned a car at age 31, became an Oracle Database Certified Expert at 32, a landlady in Abuja at age 33, a graduate of Economics 2015/2016 at 36, established BDMG Resources Limited on 5th April, 2017, before my 37th Birthday. Currently writing my ICAN and ACCA Professional Certification Exams. Above all, I am still gainfully employed with the Nigerian Society of Engineers, "the engine room of my breakthrough".
God is my all in all, His grace, favour and mercy was sufficient unto me and my enabler, my mother is my Rock, my children are my motivators, The Nigerian Society of Engineers (The best Organization) was my strength, and MY VISION WAS MY DRIVE.
My only regret was becoming HIV positive, but I thank God that all my children are NEGATIVE and their father is also NEGATIVE.
Surviving the reality of living with HIV became my greatest challenge, my worst nightmare, the thought was killing, the pains was excruciatingly great, better imagine than experiencing.
HIV is a management disease, and not a killer disease, it is the fear of stigmatization and discrimination that leads to living in self pity/denials which leads to AIDS, which is the killer. Fears, Stigmatization, Discrimination and AIDS are undoubtedly and convincingly the killer.
I conquered the FEARS (False Evidence Appears Real Sufficiently). I became adherent to my ARV, today I am gladly living positively healthy with my viral load undetectable and high CD4 count.
Join me to kill AIDS and reduce the spread of HIV to zero level by stopping Stigmatization and Discrimination.

Ogechi Stella Njoku © September 2, 2017

Adaptations of settings approach towards an integrated model of healthy greening in the light of climate change.

By Eloke Onyebuchi

My major objective is to showcase to the world that settings approach as developed within the health promotion context, is the key technical lead to sustain global efforts to ‘green’ settings and more effectively link sustainability, health and place. Settings  within the public health domain is seen as the place or social context, where people in their everyday activities allow environmental, personal and organizational factors interact to impact on their health and wellbeing. The 1986 Ottawa charter informed us that health is lived and created by people within the settings of their daily life, such as place of learning, work, play, and love.

The settings approach offers us the opportunity to understand people’s experience in their world, and the advantage to address their challenges by scaling up interventions that matches their lived experiences. It also helps us through the invitation of key stakeholders to address key features like culture, structure and history of different kinds of setting, as a rationale to create synergy through coordinated working across settings to effectively promote healthy greening.

The above explanation underscores the fact that in different settings like hospitals, schools, market, work place, and prisons, there are multiple momentum around environmental sustainability. This is because evidence based research indicates that carbon mitigation and climate change reduction enhances long term public health benefits (Griffiths et al. 2009), together with the recognition that action related to key issues like transport and food gives us the opportunity to attain both environmental and health goals (Adshead 2008, p.1): The health implication of climate change across the globe have started manifesting, a syndemic approach that offers us the thunderous opportunity to make a real difference by initiating common solution to difficult social policy problem. Take obesity for example, encouraging people through formative campaigns to walk rather than drive their cars to work will enhance our collective solution on climate change by reducing carbon emission and also benefit the health of the public.

In the light of the above, I strongly maintain that working on the settings itself rather than the people in the setting will be the key technical lead to achieving a healthy greening by providing us the holistic vision to initiate policies that will promote health in the light of climate change and enhance a healthy planet. Hence the rationale to the six frameworks below, designed to create the technical lead for health planners, evaluators and practitioners on achieving a healthy and sustainable settings approach.

Framework 1: Building on total ecological perspective.

Taking note of the fact that health and sustainable development depends on environmental, organisational and personal factors within the premise that people school, work, and play and live, the approach will underscore the connectivity and linkages between variable components, that tends to promote and sustain changes within the setting in totality. This simply implies introducing health and sustainability in the daily life, major business and culture of targeted settings, ensuring that environments where they work, live, play and love, manage and sustain health and sustainability, with the sole aim of improving the well – being of the larger community. The idea of settings approach here ensures that there is a shift from limited concentration of single issues to a total concentration of healthy people and healthy planet.

Framework 2: Start where people are.

This principle ensures that you do not only engage people but respect their diverse forms of knowledge by listening to their lived experiences. In the light of complex issue, such as climate change, it is necessary to start tackling the issue by understanding the needs and challenges of those people that we seek to mitigate their problems. This is a truism in community development. Their needs have to be reflective in the policies for full ownership and easy implementation. The implementation can take several forms, from tactical focus group dialogue, to more structured drop-in spaces for informal conversation.

Framework 3: connect practice to setting.

People’s world is often emotionally tied to the setting or environment in which they learnt everything they know or have lived their life most. Everyday knowledge is mostly socially located. Therefore it is very imperative to connect practice anchored on place, culture, history and structure, communicated through policies, agenda and biographies relating to the settings. Climate change solutions are going to be easy if we integrate the practice to daily discussions and routines of the setting in question.

Framework 4: Strengthen the socio – political commitments.

There should be a constructive dialogue involving the people and the government to move beyond symptoms and focus more on the root causes of the problem. The interventionist seeking to green settings need to understand the relevance of the interconnectedness of lived experiences of one setting to the other and connect to the practice and structure that create and sustain inequity, domination and exploitation, including the environmental movement itself. The importance of this framework is that it provides the rationale to explore the unintended gaps created by the state and greening practices of the setting.

Framework 5: develop strength and successes.

Building on those practices that have found value on communities and places, rather than concentrating on groups with deficit as often seen in the dominant problem – based community development will be a great step to achieving a healthy greening. The intent is to encourage interventionist greening setting to adapt approaches and practices already evident in accomplished settings to build on capacities and successes of others. This is easily implemented by initiating a commission on climate change strategies that will oversee the adaptation of strategies in different settings. This is achievable as those already registered successes in their setting will be more than glad for a bit of recognition to share supportive ideas to those struggling in their own setting.

Framework 6: Build the capacity to withstand.

Large cities now have the highest populations compared to smaller cities around the globe. In a world with increasing social change, the importance of building resilience cannot be overemphasized. This is demonstrated by the fact that most large cities now have reduced internal capacity to meet basic amenities, such as clean water, electricity, food supply in the light of a breakdown of complex supply chains from severe weather, flooding, environmental degradation and other related incidences relating to climate change. In the light of the above, the rationale to re - build resilience – the capacity to withstand, learn or even embrace change will be highly valuable, rather than allowing our stock of diversity or resilience to run down because of our pursuit for efficiency and standardization.

In the light of the climate change and the thunderous challenges ahead of us, we need to refocus our agenda and policies to what I simply term “the secret of reversion”. From now to 2030 will see the world going through considerable challenges that requires human creativity and ingenuity in providing services for adaptation of the most human transformational transition of our time; the transition from an industrial growth to a life centered human post – carbon society, a transition that reverts us from present industrial revolution to the previous agricultural evolution that came before it. We truly need to embrace the current fact, whether it is because of the push factor of the climate change or the pull factor of re-localization, it is now crystal clear that re-birthing an emergence of a new human post – carbon society built on settings approach is perhaps the healthiest greening project of our modern history.

Youth Global Platform on HIV/AIDS: UNAIDS Ambassador, Victoria Beckham campaigns HIV prevention.

Watch this short film of Victoria Beckham recent trip to ‪#‎Ethiopia‬ with UNAIDS: http://bit.ly/1YwaB39 ‪#‎WAD2015‬ --- UNAIDS
Onyibupet Consulting Limited: A health sector consulting) Youth Global platform on Hiv/aids Eloke Onyebuchi The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Youth Global Platform on HIV/AIDS: key Messages of inspiration for young people and adolescents ‪#‎WAD2015‬.

“By including adolescents in decision-making processes that have a direct effect on their lives, this initiative will be a catalyst for change. Kenya is proud to support this new initiative.” --- President Uhuru Kenyatta
“AIDS is the leading cause of death among adolescents in Africa. Globally, two thirds of all new infections among adolescents were among adolescent girls. This is a moral injustice, I am calling on young people to lead the All In movement, alongside the United Nations, public and private partners, and countries themselves, to end the adolescent AIDS epidemic.” --- Michel Sidibé Executive Director of UNAIDS.
“Children and young people should be the first to benefit from the progress we have made in ending the epidemic, not the last. We need to reach the adolescents we are missing and engage all young people in the effort to end adolescent AIDS. In fact, we cannot achieve the goal of an AIDS-free generation without them.” --- Anthony Lake, Executive Director @UNICEF.
"The future of sub-Saharan Africa rests in the health and well-being of the youth. We’re committed to working with partner countries and others to close the health gap that leaves adolescent girls and young women particularly vulnerable to HIV infection.” ---- Dr. Deborah Birx, United States Global AIDS Coordinator and United States Special Representative for Global Health Diplomacy.
"I am advocating that people should know that women have rights. Women have rights for information, for proper contraceptive counseling and methods. They have a right to be able to make decision for them selves. They must be given opportunity to use health services. Either she is using a condom or any other method. But we always say it is better for an unmarried, sexually active girl to use condom because it will also protect her from HIV" --- Hon Dr. Ejike Orji: Immediate past Director of IPAS (Health, Access and Right).
“We can expand opportunity by getting everyone to recognize the seriousness of HIV, and how to end it,” --- Mark Dybul, Executive Director of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
“We can’t say that we are on the right track to end AIDS if it continues being the main cause of death for adolescents in Africa", “we must ensure that no adolescent is left behind.” --- Pablo Aguilera, Executive Director of the HIV Young Leaders Fund and Co-Chair of the PACT.
"2015 has been a great year in advocating, researching, tracking and analyzing the drivers of the HIV epidemic. Knowledge that is crucial for us to end AIDS epidemic by 2030. I commend all the efforts of those that participated in this process. It is now in our jurisdiction to apply this crucial knowledge at this critical moment (Post 2015 development agenda). This is no time for half-measures. For the first time ever, we have the plan, resources and knowledge to fast track the AIDS response. What is needed now is the political courage and leadership to take effective action. Countries endorsed the SDG3 to end AIDS epidemic by 2030. This is especially important for those in the African region with high prevalence and concentrated epidemics. In these settings, providing targeted services for people who inject drugs, sex workers and their clients and men who have sex with men will help us fast track the AIDS response and equally make the 2030 goal, a reality. For us it is all about advocating for the right strategic policies to enable young people and adolescents be the change agents to end AIDS epidemic by 2030. Therefore the campaign continues." ----------- Facilitator/Coordinator Youth Global platform on Hiv/aids.

Hope for HIV vaccine as researchers resort to computer programe to end the long wait for the vaccine.

 
More than 30 years have passed since the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, and scientists are still struggling to develop a vaccine. But researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville have used an unconventional method to get one step closer. Instead of finding an antibody to kill the virus, they simply created one using a computer program.

Four years ago, Josh Robbins was, literally, the poster boy for clinical trials of the HIV vaccine: HVTN 505.

Robbins told Ivanhoe, "I thought I was doing something amazing for the world."

The vaccine was considered a failure. Robbins recorded, and posted on YouTube, the moment he was told he was one of 48 participants who became infected with HIV during the study.

Researchers have now taken a big step forward by finding what amounts to a needle in a haystack.


This computer graphic shows the structure of an antibody, which looks like a ball of string, attached to the HIV protein in green. Using a computer program called "Rosetta", researchers were able to redesign and test it thousands of different ways before finding the one design that made the antibody four times stronger.

Graduate student at Vanderbilt, Jessica Finn, explained, "We could never test a million antibodies in our laboratory, but Rosetta can search through that list of antibodies and pull out candidates."

One reason HIV has been so hard to destroy is because it is always mutating. Director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center, James Crowe, MD, said, "So we redesigned this antibody on the computer so that it would kill more viruses."

Researchers say the redesigned antibody will soon become another weapon in the fight against HIV.

Dr. Crowe says within a year, the redesigned antibody will likely be added to current trials as a drug to help people already infected with HIV.

Because of his earlier experience, Robbins continues to advocate the need for volunteers for HIV vaccine trials.

Margot Kim, Health Watch.