Memory is a record.
People only have substance within the memories of other people. And that’s why there were all kinds of myself. There weren’t a lot of myself per se, I was just inside all sorts of people, that’s all.
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Reblogged from united-nations, Posted by united-nations. Filed under: #un #united nations #ban ki-moon #ricky martin #lgbt #aids #hiv
united-nations: Global celebrities Ricky Martin and Yvonne Chaka Chaka joined UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a special event at UN Headquarters on Tuesday to call for the end violence and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

united-nations:

Global celebrities Ricky Martin and Yvonne Chaka Chaka joined UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a special event at UN Headquarters on Tuesday to call for the end violence and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

image

Reblogged from doctorswithoutborders, Posted by doctorswithoutborders. Filed under: #aids2012 #maps #topography #geography #typography #art #design #graphic design #msf #humanitarian #health care #aids #hiv #HIV/AIDS #vih #sida #doctors #doctor #doctors without borders
doctorswithoutborders: MSF provides treatment for HIV/AIDS to 220,000 people in 23 countries. This week at the International AIDS Conference (IAC), we’ll be presenting field research and pushing key messages on scale-up and pricing. See why this year’s IAC is unique.

doctorswithoutborders:

MSF provides treatment for HIV/AIDS to 220,000 people in 23 countries.

This week at the International AIDS Conference (IAC), we’ll be presenting field research and pushing key messages on scale-up and pricing.

See why this year’s IAC is unique.

Reblogged from curiositycounts, Posted by curiositycounts. Filed under: #good #health #global #infographic #statistics #data #information #hiv #aids #aids/hiv
curiositycounts: The Changing Face of AIDS – the successes and failures of the fight against AIDS in the past 30 years, in an infographic

curiositycounts:

The Changing Face of AIDS – the successes and failures of the fight against AIDS in the past 30 years, in an infographic

Reblogged from good, Posted by good. Filed under: #hiv #aids #aids/hiv #medicine #health #homophobia #good #transfusions #donations #Blood #Canada #United States of America #gay #homosexual #lgbt #lgbtq #lesbian gay transgender rights
good: Americans are more likely to be killed by lightning than get HIV from a blood transfusion. So why is there still a lifetime ban on gay men donating blood? Amanda Hess looks into the structural homophobia of the blood supply: Even some guys who are otherwise out of the closet have copped to lying to donate blood as a political statement. “Like jury duty, donating blood is something I consider my civic duty,” a gay blood donor wrote on Queerty in 2009. “And because I’m committed to donating blood, I regularly lie to the Red Cross about my sexuality.” The donor declined to include a byline. Back in 2002, Canadian blood donor Kyle Freemanwrote an anonymous email to Canadian Blood Services informing the agency that he had donated blood 18 times despite the country’s lifetime ban on donations from men who have had sex with men. “I am a gay man and have been involved in a long-term committed relationship,” he wrote. “Both my partner and myself [have] been tested for the HIV virus and are both negative and intend to stay that way. We are both very honest people and are both blood donors.” Canadian Blood Services didn’t see it that way: It tracked Freeman’s IP address, outed him, and sued him for $100,000 for lying on his blood screening questionnaire.  Read more on GOOD →

good:

Americans are more likely to be killed by lightning than get HIV from a blood transfusion. So why is there still a lifetime ban on gay men donating blood? Amanda Hess looks into the structural homophobia of the blood supply:

Even some guys who are otherwise out of the closet have copped to lying to donate blood as a political statement. “Like jury duty, donating blood is something I consider my civic duty,” a gay blood donor wrote on Queerty in 2009. “And because I’m committed to donating blood, I regularly lie to the Red Cross about my sexuality.” The donor declined to include a byline. Back in 2002, Canadian blood donor Kyle Freemanwrote an anonymous email to Canadian Blood Services informing the agency that he had donated blood 18 times despite the country’s lifetime ban on donations from men who have had sex with men. “I am a gay man and have been involved in a long-term committed relationship,” he wrote. “Both my partner and myself [have] been tested for the HIV virus and are both negative and intend to stay that way. We are both very honest people and are both blood donors.” Canadian Blood Services didn’t see it that way: It tracked Freeman’s IP address, outed him, and sued him for $100,000 for lying on his blood screening questionnaire. 

Read more on GOOD →

Reblogged from doctorswithoutborders, Posted by doctorswithoutborders. Filed under: #photography #photojournalism #rico gustav #Médecins Sans Frontières #msf #doctorswithoutborders #aids #aids/hiv #hiv #india #Bhārat Gaṇarājya #भारत गणराज्य #Republic of India #India #tb #tuberculosis #eu #European Union
doctorswithoutborders: In India, AIDS activists celebrate a victory. The European Union backed down on a key trade policy that would have made it more difficult for people in the developing world to get drugs for HIV/AIDS, TB, and other deadly diseases. But the fight continues. [Photo: 2011 © Rico Gustav]

doctorswithoutborders:

In India, AIDS activists celebrate a victory. The European Union backed down on a key trade policy that would have made it more difficult for people in the developing world to get drugs for HIV/AIDS, TB, and other deadly diseases. But the fight continues. [Photo: 2011 © Rico Gustav]

She's 10 and May Be Sold to a Brothel

tinysprout:

womenaresociety:

M. is an ebullient girl, age 10, who ranks near the top of her fourth-grade class and dreams of being a doctor. Yet she, like all of India, is at a turning point, and it looks as if her family may instead sell her to a brothel.

Her mother is a prostitute here in Kolkata, the city better known to the world as Calcutta. Ruchira Gupta, who runs an organization called Apne Aap that fights human trafficking, estimates that 90 percent of the daughters of Indian prostitutes end up in the sex trade as well. And M. has the extra burden that she belongs to a subcaste whose girls are often expected to become prostitutes.

M. seemed poised to escape this fate with the help of one of my heroes, Urmi Basu, a social worker who in 2000 started the New Light shelter program for prostitutes and their children.

M., with her winning personality and keen mind, began to bloom with the help of New Light. Both her parents are illiterate, but she learned English and earned excellent grades in an English-language school for middle-class children outside the red-light district. I’m concealing her identity to protect her from gibes from schoolmates.

Unfortunately, brains and personality aren’t always enough, and India is the center of the 21st-century slave trade. This country almost certainly has the largest number of human-trafficking victims in the world today.

If M. is sold to a brothel, she will have no defense against H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases. Decisions about using a condom are made by the customer or the brothel owner, not by the girl. In one brothel I slipped into to conduct some interviews, there was not a single condom available.

The police make more effort to help girls like M. than they did a few years ago, and in a column a week ago I described a police raid on a brothel and the rescue of girls inside ages 5, 10 and 15. Yet the police force’s progress is uneven, with one prostitute explaining why brothels hide young girls from police: “Because when the police come through, they confiscate the very young girls, and then the brothel owners have to pay a bribe to get the girls back from the police.”

*Click on above link to read the full article

this is heartbreaking.

HIV guidelines to help homosexuals, trans-gender people

Homosexual men and trans-gender people should get equal access to HIV/AIDS programmes under the World Health Organisation’s first guidelines aimed at ending stigma that denies quality care to many, the U.N. agency said on Tuesday.

WHO also reported evidence of HIV infections surging again among men who have sex with men and people who change their gender, particularly in Western countries. The two groups are already hard hit by the AIDS epidemic that began 30 years ago.

“This is the first time that WHO, as a U.N. agency together with other partners, is putting this forward. It is sensitive but is right to the point and is really critical for the epidemic,” Dr. Gottfried Hirnschall, director of the HIV/AIDS department at the WHO, told a news briefing.

Reblogged from good, Posted by good. Filed under: #hiv #aids #aids/hiv #health #good #microbicide #medicine
good: Let’s face it: There’s nothing particularly fun about discussing HIV and safe sex. But what if you could make prevention easier by throwing in an extra perk, like increased sexual pleasure? Microbicide gels that are used during sex to prevent HIV aren’t new. In the summer of 2010, a microbicide was shown to be 39 percent effective in preventing the transmission of HIV to female partners (it later hit a funding wall). But Tuesday, researchers in South Africa announced plans for a 24-month trial of a new gel, to begin later this summer. The gel contains the antiretroviral drug tenofovir, and is meant to be used vaginally both before and after penile-vaginal penetration.  It was at this launch event where the gel’s, um, side effect came to light. Helen Rees, a professor involved with the research, said participants in past gel studies had noted an increase in sexual pleasure while using it. “One of the big messages we got, was many women said ‘We liked this’,” Rees said, a rather demure way of saying they had fun with it in the sack. This HIV-Preventing Gel Comes with a Bonus: Heightened Sexual Pleasure - Health - GOOD

good:

Let’s face it: There’s nothing particularly fun about discussing HIV and safe sex. But what if you could make prevention easier by throwing in an extra perk, like increased sexual pleasure?

Microbicide gels that are used during sex to prevent HIV aren’t new. In the summer of 2010, a microbicide was shown to be 39 percent effective in preventing the transmission of HIV to female partners (it later hit a funding wall). But Tuesday, researchers in South Africa announced plans for a 24-month trial of a new gel, to begin later this summer. The gel contains the antiretroviral drug tenofovir, and is meant to be used vaginally both before and after penile-vaginal penetration. 

It was at this launch event where the gel’s, um, side effect came to light. Helen Rees, a professor involved with the research, said participants in past gel studies had noted an increase in sexual pleasure while using it. “One of the big messages we got, was many women said ‘We liked this’,” Rees said, a rather demure way of saying they had fun with it in the sack.

This HIV-Preventing Gel Comes with a Bonus: Heightened Sexual Pleasure - Health - GOOD

Reblogged from doctorswithoutborders, Posted by doctorswithoutborders. Filed under: #Médecins Sans Frontières #msf #doctorswithoutborders #aids #hiv #aids/hiv #un #united nations #un summit on aids
doctorswithoutborders: We’re ready with signs and banners (and sunscreen!) for the #StopTheVirus rally today at the UN Summit on AIDS. At a time when HIV treatment has been proven to dramatically reduce HIV transmission by 96 percent, governments meeting at the UN Summit on AIDS must agree today to put nine million people on treatment over the next four years to break the back of the epidemic. If you’re in NYC, you can join us at 12:30pm ET, we’re meeting at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at 47th Street and 2nd Ave. And if you’re not, there are lots of ways to take action online here: http://on.fb.me/kUsJkG

doctorswithoutborders:

We’re ready with signs and banners (and sunscreen!) for the #StopTheVirus rally today at the UN Summit on AIDS.

At a time when HIV treatment has been proven to dramatically reduce HIV transmission by 96 percent, governments meeting at the UN Summit on AIDS must agree today to put nine million people on treatment over the next four years to break the back of the epidemic.

If you’re in NYC, you can join us at 12:30pm ET, we’re meeting at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at 47th Street and 2nd Ave. And if you’re not, there are lots of ways to take action online here: http://on.fb.me/kUsJkG

Reblogged from doctorswithoutborders, Posted by doctorswithoutborders. Filed under: #doctorswithoutborders #Médecins Sans Frontières #msf #aids #hiv #aids/hiv #south africa #africa
doctorswithoutborders: Getting Ahead of the Wave of New Infections Khayelitsha is a large township on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa with a population of over 500,000 and one of the highest burdens of both HIV and TB in the world. An estimated 16% of the adult population is HIV-positive. MSF began providing ART in Khayelitsha in May 2001, and today supports ART provision to more than 17,000 people. There are indications that as treatment has been scaled up in Khayelitsha, new HIV infections have decreased. An analysis of HIV prevalence data among pregnant women shows that the proportion of HIV positive pregnant women attending antenatal care had risen from 15.4% in 1999 to 31.4% in 2008. By 2010, that percentage had fallen to 26.3%. While other factors including deaths, out-migration, and behavior change may have played a role in this reduction, ART scale up is considered to be the strongest contributing factor in reducing new infections. Learn more in our special report, “Getting Ahead of the Wave: Lessons for the Next Decade of the AIDS Response”

doctorswithoutborders:

Getting Ahead of the Wave of New Infections

Khayelitsha is a large township on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa with a population of over 500,000 and one of the highest burdens of both HIV and TB in the world. An estimated 16% of the adult population is HIV-positive. MSF began providing ART in Khayelitsha in May 2001, and today supports ART provision to more than 17,000 people.

There are indications that as treatment has been scaled up in Khayelitsha, new HIV infections have decreased. An analysis of HIV prevalence data among pregnant women shows that the proportion of HIV positive pregnant women attending antenatal care had risen from 15.4% in 1999 to 31.4% in 2008. By 2010, that percentage had fallen to 26.3%. While other factors including deaths, out-migration, and behavior change may have played a role in this reduction, ART scale up is considered to be the strongest contributing factor in reducing new infections.

Learn more in our special report, “Getting Ahead of the Wave: Lessons for the Next Decade of the AIDS Response”

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