The seminar is hosted by the Human Sciences Research Council as its major World AIDS Day activity. In its annual epidemic report, UNAIDS announced that: ‘New HIV infections rose by 4.3 million globally Africa remains the global AIDS epicenter, with Southern Africa being the most affected In South Africa, one in nine people, or 5.5 million, are living with HIV Women aged 15-24 are four times more likely than young men to have HIV’ (UNAIDS, 2006) The 2005 HSRC national household survey found that half of respondents found to be HIV positive did not consider themselves at risk of acquiring HIV. In groundbreaking HSRC research on positive prevention, preliminary findings on the risk behaviours among People Living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) found that: Of the 85% participants who were sexually active, 42% indicated that they had sex with a person in the previous 3-months without disclosing their status Participants who had not disclosed to all of their sex partners were significantly more likely to have multiple sex partners, HIV negative partners, partners of unknown HIV status, and unprotected intercourse with non-concordant sex partners The conclusions reached from these preliminary findings suggest that interventions are needed in South Africa to reduce AIDS stigma and discrimination, to assist people with HIV to make effective decisions whether to disclose their HIV status and to practice safer sex regardless of disclosure decisions. As the number of PLWHA is growing with the availability of anti-retroviral drugs, the need to direct prevention interventions towards PLWHA is a public health imperative. Under the World AIDS Campaign theme of Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise, the seminar will focus on The public health imperative of leading and living positively, and speakers will discuss approaches to, and preliminary findings of, positive prevention and research. |
