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Attempts to address the gap in literature on the experiences of HIV/AIDS care workers in Africa through studies of professional care givers in Lome, Togo. Uses a pilot study of 30 care givers and examines the roles, services and coping mechanisms of these individuals. Presents the demographics characteristics of the care givers and the type of services provided. Discusses how they cope with stress and their feeling regarding the prevention of HIV. Concludes they face enormous demands which may affect their own health and families. Suggests that a support network would be helpful.

Older adults’ sexual health is becoming an increasingly important component of healthy aging in the wake of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and rising infection rates among this age cohort. The increase in HIV/AIDS diagnoses in the older adult population ignites the need to understand the reasons why older adults are omitted from HIV/AIDS prevention education policy.

This chapter examines the social forces that influence HIV/AIDS policy at the state and community levels. Through qualitative methodology and analysis, including interviews with state policymakers and managers of AIDS service organizations in four Midwestern states (n=31), I look for trends and patterns as to whether or not older adults are considered as an “at-risk” group for HIV infection.

Findings reveal that HIV/AIDS policy may be impacted by enduring sexual scripts about older adults. To some extent both state policymakers and AIDS service organization personnel adhere to stereotypes about older adults’ sexuality and sexual activity, which is then implemented in their health promotion activities. The result is that gaps exist in HIV/AIDS prevention education for older adults, despite the fact that current trends show an increase in new HIV infections and AIDS diagnoses among people over the age of 50.

While this is an exploratory study of the available HIV/AIDS prevention education and health promotion activities for older adults, as well as the viewpoints of state policymakers and AIDS service organization personnel, the findings do indicate the need for additional research on the potentially dangerous sexual behaviors – lack of HIV testing, low condom usage, multiple partners – exhibited by older adults. Future research involving interviews with older adults, physicians, and medical personnel may add new perspectives to the current research.

As the baby boomers continue to age and challenge cultural stereotypes of sexual behaviors among older adults, research in the area of sexual health and HIV/AIDS prevention education will remain an important component of healthy aging. This research begins what will ultimately be a necessary conversation.

Impact mitigation strategies in sub-Saharan Africa on HIV/AIDS in the education sector involved initially the development of education sector policies. This study traces the policy development initiatives, level of implementation, progress made and existing challenges. The study is based on a close (textual) reading of authoritative literature from United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), World Bank, UNESCO and UNICEF for the last decade on global monitoring of HIV/AIDS and statistical data. Studies on the impact of HIV/AIDS on the education sector in sub-Saharan Africa have been brought into focus and themes have been extracted and synthesised from a comparative perspective to guide the development of this chapter. Across the countries, the education sector HIV/AIDS policies had concurrence with the countries’ national HIV and AIDS policy or guidelines, and conformed to international conventions, national laws, policies, guidelines and regulations. Most of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa showed a significant decline in HIV prevalence among young women or men and opportunities to improve HIV-prevention knowledge and behaviour still abound. Antiretroviral therapy and other types of treatment have expanded since the early 2000s, but the number of AIDS-related deaths remains high. This chapter fulfils an identified information/resources need and amplifies the progress achieved in the mitigation of the impact of HIV/AIDS on the education sector specifically and humanity in general.

By bringing together aspects of sustainable forest management, population health, and local livelihoods, the purpose of this study was to characterize how household dependence on forest resources changes through three phases: the period before HIV became a problem in the household, the period during HIV-related morbidity, and after AIDS-related mortality.

Sixty semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of unaffected and HIV/AIDS-affected households in four case study districts in Malawi.

This study demonstrates that the relationship between HIV/AIDS and dependence on specific forest resources appears to correspond closely with the stage of the disease. Firewood and water were consistently ranked as being one of the three most important resources, regardless of HIV-affectedness. During the morbidity phase, respondents reported their need for medicinal plants increased substantially, along with other resources. The importance of timber increased significantly after HIV-related mortality.

Interview respondents themselves suggested key interventions that would assist households in the HIV/AIDS-mortality phase, in particular, to obtain the forest resources they require. These interventions could address the impacts of HIV/AIDS on the sustainability of important resources, compensate for a decreased availability of household labor, and foster greater access to these resources for vulnerable households in the four study sites.

In spite of the fact that forest resources can play a crucial role in enabling a household to control and adapt to the disease, research on the environmental dimensions of HIV/AIDS remains limited. This chapter helps to address this knowledge gap, suggests practical, innovative interventions that could alleviate some of the disease burden on rural Malawian households, and offers insight into potential areas of further inquiry in this research domain.

The purpose of the study was to analyse approaches to HIV/AIDS education adopted by the Zambian Ministry of Education (MoE), using a holistic approach and focusing on the Zambian culture. This chapter reports on an explorative qualitative study involving focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with Ministry of Education and Health officials, pupils, students, and members of the community. Qualitative analysis was applied and themes from ecological theory were used to organise and discuss data. At the macro level, there was inadequate implementation of HIV/AIDS education in schools, very few handbooks, textbooks and learners’ reading materials, and no discussion of the Zambian cultural (sexual) practices in relation to HIV/AIDS education. Inadequate laws and policies on HIV/AIDS prevention, poverty, unemployment, lack of job creation, and lack of social security were blamed for the lack of positive sexual behaviour changes. Communities had strong theological and metaphysical beliefs including witchcraft and sex with a widow, a menstruating woman or a woman who had an abortion as possible causes of HIV and incurable diseases being a curse from God. At the individual level, the knowledge of HIV/AIDS was high with radio and television being sources of information. Respondents viewed sexual cultures in communities not to have significantly changed. A majority of respondents did not use condoms; most adults continued having multiple sexual partners and women were submissive in marriages. This chapter is useful to policy makers, teachers, pupils/students, and the community, and in understanding interactions and influences of cultures on HIV/AIDS education and government's role in creating an enabling environment to sustain desirable changes.

To highlight and explain some characteristics of sport which can contribute to HIV/AIDS awareness as a part of comprehensive HIV/AIDS countermeasures. HIV/AIDS is among the most crucial of global issues, and sport is widely viewed as a possible vehicle to counter it. By using data from a Zimbabwe study, the chapter draws on several unique characteristics of sport which can help in combating challenging social problems.

Several characteristics of “awareness activities” in Zimbabwean baseball were observed. Some points are characteristics of sport itself, some are related specifically to baseball, and the others are, we can say, peculiar to the activities of the Zimbabwe Baseball Association (ZBA) and the Maxwell and Friends Foundation (MFF). As an awareness catalyst, sport has some unique characteristics, although we cannot say that promoting HIV/AIDS awareness through sport can always be effective for all fields. However, the worldwide increase in such activities shows certain advantages of using sport as an awareness tool.

This chapter shows some unique characteristics of sport in the field of HIV/AIDS awareness. It will contribute to the re-examination of sport from the perspective of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP).

The incipient HIV/AIDS epidemic in Chile poses challenges for responsiveness of the Chilean national health care system, Fondo Nacional de Salud (FONASA) (National Health Funds), especially given the sociocultural forces for inertia in FONASA. Thus, the issue is what is the nature of the forces for change. A grounded theory approach was applied to interview data from two qualitative studies, one with HIV/AIDS advocates and activists as interviewees and the other with Chilean low-income women. The stories of their experiences with and perceptions of FONASA revealed major issues facing FONASA, including quality of care and ethics. Ways in which these issues are being addressed by the activists result in constructed environmental dynamism. A conceptual model of the forces for change was developed including actors, strategies, and targets of change that constitutes organizational environmental dynamism. The construct of environmental dynamism has international applicability, particularly to governmental health systems, which are influenced by strong sociocultural forces.

In the absence of a medical vaccine against HIV infection, research shows that educating individuals about actions they can take to protect themselves is the most effective means to control the epidemic. School-based HIV/AIDS education programs are premised on this assumption and are considered the best social vaccine to influence young people's attitudes, behaviors, and knowledge about HIV infection, prevention, and access to treatment and care. Drawing upon a larger ethnographic study, we use a tripartite analytic framework for understanding HIV/AIDS-related education to examine how schools in western Kenya implement HIV/AIDS education programs. Findings reveal that the implementation of these programs is context-driven and contested along patterns of sociocultural beliefs, religious morals, economic challenge, and a wider crisis in education. We argue for de-localization of principals and teachers and that HIV/AIDS education programs should not only be informational, but also empowering and focused on the individual as well as the context within which the individual functions.

This paper seeks to highlight the nature and possible effect of the South African higher education (HE) sector's human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) workplace programmes response and progress.

A discourse approach is employed within the contextualization of the role of the South African higher education institution (HEI) in addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The focus of wellness is rapidly becoming part of any corporate landscape and institutions of HE are an integral part of this landscape. Significant gains have been made in the implementation of creative and innovative HIV/AIDS workplace programmes in South Africa's HEI's at the individual, group, family, and at local community level.

All HEIs are currently aligning their HIV/AIDS policies with the National HIV/AIDS sector policy framework. Further research is thus needed on HIV/AIDS where this aspect forms part of a strategic and holistic approach to employee wellness.

Mainstreaming of HIV/AIDS within the institution and the realignment of other allied institutional HIV/AIDS policies together with the establishment of a monitoring and evaluation tool with relevant indicators to gauge the level of responsiveness of institutions.

This study is the first that seeks to ascertain the level of importance of employee wellness in South Africa's HE sector. Therefore, this study sets an important benchmark for further research in the area.

This paper makes the case for, and describes an effort to develop and promote the use of, model law to address HIV/AIDS in prisons. First, it outlines the concept of model law and what model law can bring to advocacy around law reform. Second, it describes why model law is particularly important to safeguard the rights of prisoners and people who use drugs. Third, it relates the methodology involved in developing model law. Three important areas of prison law and regulation related to HIV/AIDS are then described: provisions on the likelihood and duration of incarceration, including periods in pretrial detention; the legal foundation for HIV/AIDS care in prison; and the legal framework for comprehensive harm reduction services in prisons. A legislative framework to address rape and sexual violence in prison is also outlined. The paper sets out broad principles of how prison laws and regulations should be reformed to accord with human rights principles, and provides a number of examples of the specific wording of certain provisions.