UNAIDS Executive Director Highlights Latin America, Caribbean Successes In Battle Against HIV/AIDS

The CMC/Jamaica Observer examines recent comments made by UNAIDS Executive Director Michael Sidibe that Latin America and the Caribbean have made major strides in the fight against HIV/AIDS. “In the Caribbean and Latin America, governments and health system are responding quickly, and the number of people who need treatment was not so high compared to the rest of the world,” Sidibe said. “The Caribbean was the first region in the world to negotiate a reduction of the price of drugs for treatment, which made a big difference in increasing coverage,” he added (CMC/Jamaica Observer, 6/10).

Public Radio International Interviews Nepalese Gynecologist About Women’s Health In Nepal

Public Radio International (PRI) examines women’s health in Nepal where about one-third of the population lives on a dollar a day and “political turmoil has displaced tens of thousands of people.” Nepal has a “long record of discrimination and exploitation,” and the maternal mortality rate in the country has “historically been among the highest in Asia,” according to PRI. The show features an interview with Sangeeta Mishra, a gynecologist from Nepal and Fulbright Scholar at Johns Hopkins University, discussing ways to improve the health of Nepalese women (PRI, 6/9). 

Most Cameroonians Lack Access To Safe Drinking Water

Although Cameroon has “Africa’s largest hydro-electric potential after the” Democratic Republic of the Congo, “less than half” of its estimated 18 million inhabitants have access to safe drinking water, according to the UNDP, VOA News reports. “Taps often dry up for months and people have to depend on water from wells built dangerously close to latrines and cesspools,” according to VOA News, and “[w]ater-related diseases like cholera and typhoid are endemic” (Divine, VOA News, 6/9).

Jakarta Globe Examines Drug Use And HIV/AIDS In Indonesia

The ballooning numbers of intravenous drug users in Indonesia may fuel the spread of HIV/AIDS in the region, a member of the National AIDS Commission warned Tuesday, Jakarta Globe reports. “There are more than 250,000 injecting drugs users in this country and 90 percent of them are infected with HIV/AIDS,” Inang Winarso, the assistant deputy secretary of commission, said. “It has been estimated that drug use accounts for 50 percent of all HIV/AIDS cases in Indonesia, which, according to some measures, has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infection in Southeast Asia,” according to the newspaper. Winarso called upon the government to do more to increase public awareness about the dangers associated with drug use (Sagita, Jakarta Globe, 6/9).