On the Road to Ending HIV

Alice Ouedraogo

Alice Ouedraogo is Chief of the HIV/AIDS Programme at the International Labour Organization

Heavy trucks pass through the Chirundu Corridor, one of the major routes connecting Zimbabwe and Zambia in southern Africa. This is a vital transport artery, important for the economies of both countries and their neighbors. It is also a major route for the transmission of HIV.

The mix of long-distance lorry drivers — who go weeks at a time without seeing their families — with widespread poverty existing along the corridor, results in sexual encounters between drivers and women. The risks they take with their health have an impact on the wider community.

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What can the fight against HIV teach us about Ebola?

Margherita Licata and Kofi Amekudzi

Margherita Licata and Kofi Amekudzi, Technical Specialists ILOAIDS

The more we learn about the challenges of responding to the Ebola Virus Disease  in West Africa, the easier it becomes to discern parallels to the HIV epidemic —  another health crisis , which we’ve been battling for over 30 years now. The HIV response has some valuable lessons for the way we confront the disease in general, particularly in the workplace. Here’s an example.

About four years ago, we were working in southern Malawi with the ILO Programme for HIV/AIDS on a project targeting workers at the Lujeri Tea Estate. Though the rate of new infections has slowed, Malawi still has some of the highest HIV infection rates in the world, affecting one in every four people who lives there.

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Pills and condoms alone aren’t enough to beat AIDS

All of us who will be in Melbourne to attend the 20th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2014) this month need to reflect on one question: What does “stepping up the pace” — the theme of the conference —mean?

With just a year left until 2015 — the end date for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the commitments made under the UN Political Declaration of 2011— it is certainly time for that final push. But it’s also time to look beyond the 2015 goal post and reflect on what can be done to achieve an AIDS-free generation.

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