African Housing Organisations Respond to The Hiv and Aids Crisis

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 8-15
Author(s):  
Priya Gopalen ◽  
Barry Pinsky

HIV and AIDS is an urgent housing and human settlements issue, especially among women and children living in poverty and suffering from poor housing conditions in urban slums in the South. The link between poverty and HIV prevalence is well established, and the fact that inadequate shelter increases the vulnerability of the urban poor to HIV and AIDS is increasingly recognised. Since 2003, Rooftops Canada and their partners in Kenya, Tanzania, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and more recently Uganda, have been working on strategies and developing programmes to respond to the AIDS crisis in these countries. Related programmes link shelter to poverty reduction through sustainable economic and social development, environmental protection, respect for human rights, democratisation and gender equality. This paper compiles the experiences of the partner housing organisations and resource groups in Sub-Saharan Africa responding to HIV and AIDS among their constituent stakeholders. The community-based responses focus on promoting social sustainability, enhancing operational capacity and improving financial sustainability. Community-based responses relate to issues of stigma and discrimination, reducing the impact of housing rights violations and responding to the specific vulnerability of children, women and youth. Social sustainability deals with the impact of HIV and AIDS on the social viability of communities. Operational capacity analyses housing groups' responses to the organ-isational impact of HIV and AIDS - including loss of staff, leadership and institutional memory, decreased productivity and capacity - and the experience of including HIV and AIDS within the core organisational mandate. Financial sustainability explores the challenges of reconciling related financial and social goals.

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Bright B. Drah

In sub-Saharan Africa, more women than men live with HIV and women bear the largest proportion of the burden of care that is due to the epidemic. Only a few studies have documented the precise details of how women in countries with low HIV prevalence became the worst affected by the epidemic. In Ghana, the historical factors that account for high HIV infections among women and the emergence of women-led community-based HIV interventions have been less researched. This paper examines the historical (political-economic), cultural and personal factors that account for the high HIV prevalence in Manya Klo, the area worst impacted by HIV in Ghana. The paper presents the social history of the pandemic in Manya Klo and explains why Klo women are considered to be the sources of HIV in Ghana. It suggests that concentrating interventions on women helps to reduce the impact of HIV and inform national interventions. Women-focused interventions may, however, alienate other groups that can contribute to improving the lives of families affected by HIV. Therefore, women-focused interventions must be planned in a manner that engages multiple stakeholders.Keywords: Manya Krobo, queen mothers, female migration, female sex work, orphans and vulnerable children, community-based HIV initiatives


2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan C. Herrera

AbstractHistorical studies of the War on Poverty have overwhelmingly focused on its consequences in African American communities. Many studies have grappled with how War on Poverty innovations co-opted a thriving African American social movement. This paper explores the impact of War on Poverty programs on the development of a political cadre of Mexican American grassroots leaders in Oakland, California. It investigates how coordinated 1960s protests by Mexican American organizations reveal Oakland's changing racial/ethnic conditions and shifting trends in the state's relationship to the urban poor. It demonstrates how a national shift to place-based solutions to poverty devolved the “problem of poverty” from the national to the local level and empowered a new set of actors—community-based organizations—in the fight against poverty. This essay argues that the devolution of federal responsibility for welfare provided the political and institutional opening for the rise of powerful Mexican American organizations whose goal was the recognition of a “Mexican American community” meriting government intervention. This essay also demonstrates how Mexican American organizations mobilized in relation to African American social movements and to geographies of poverty that were deemed exclusively Black.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 461-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellis Adjei Adams ◽  
Godfred Odei Boateng

The failure of the conventional public and private (market-based) water policies to improve urban water access in the global South has prompted growing interest in alternative models such as community–state co-production. However, there is little evidence of whether co-production can improve water service delivery in the informal settlements of sub-Saharan Africa where a disproportionately high percentage of the urban poor lives. This paper uses household surveys, key informant interviews, and focus groups to examine the impact of co-production on household water access and service delivery in the informal settlements of Lilongwe, Malawi. Co-production increased water accessibility, reduced the cost of water, increased the number of community water kiosks, and resulted in more effective financial management and accountability. However, challenges related to poor infrastructure and limited community capacity threaten the long-term sustainability of the co-production model. Urban informal residents lamented worsening water-supply interruptions and longer waiting times after co-production, challenges that require state intervention.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Marius KOUNOU

Many studies have been done on the impact of Foreign Direct Investment on economic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries, however there is a lack of empirical studies of FDI impact on poverty reduction in South Africa which is the second largest FDI recipients of one of the poorest regions in the world (sub Saharan Africa). We used time series data from 1990 to 2017 with the ARDL method to evaluate the impact of FDI Inflow on HDI in the country. The results show that FDI inflow has no significant impact on HDI both in the short run and long run on the country. This result is consistent with findings reported in the literature.


Author(s):  
Zemzem Shigute ◽  
Anagaw D. Mebratie ◽  
Robert Sparrow ◽  
Getnet Alemu ◽  
Arjun S. Bedi

Ethiopia’s Community-Based Health Insurance (CBHI) scheme was established with the objectives of enhancing access to health care, reducing out-of-pocket expenditure (OOP), mobilizing financial resources and enhancing the quality of health care. Previous analyses have shown that the scheme has enhanced health care access and led to reductions in OOP. This paper examines the impact of the scheme on health facility revenues and quality of care. This paper relies on a difference-in-differences approach applied to both panel and cross-section data. We find that CBHI-affiliated facilities experience a 111% increase in annual outpatient visits and annual revenues increase by 47%. Increased revenues are used to ameliorate drug shortages. These increases have translated into enhanced patient satisfaction. Patient satisfaction increased by 11 percentage points. Despite the increase in patient volume, there is no discernible increase in waiting time to see medical professionals. These results and the relatively high levels of CBHI enrollment suggest that the Ethiopian CBHI has been able to successfully negotiate the main stumbling block—that is, the poor quality of care—which has plagued similar CBHI schemes in Sub-Saharan Africa.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiu-Su Wang ◽  
Yu-Fei Hua ◽  
Ran Tao ◽  
Nicoleta-Claudia Moldovan

This article explores the impact of health human capital on the poverty trap in Sub-Saharan Africa by autoregressive distribution lag model. In the long run, there is no evidence that health human capital can help the Sahara out of the poverty trap. While health human capital has a significant effect on poverty reduction in the short term. There is a threshold effect in the poverty reduction model of healthy human capital. When the economic development level reaches the threshold, the effect of poverty reduction is more obvious and deeper. The extended Solow economic growth model also proved that if the external human capital breaks through the threshold, it can make developing countries get rid of the poverty trap. Therefore, the economic development brought about by health care expenditure must benefit the poor in Sub-Saharan Africa and allow them to enjoy the welfare of social security.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Motlalepula Sebilo ◽  
Neo R.T. Ledibane ◽  
Simbarashe Takuva

Background: Antiretroviral treatment (ART) has been associated with the development of certain cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs). The burden of CMDs amongst ART-experienced patients in sub-Saharan Africa was unknown.Objective: We quantified the burden of CMDs and identified the associated risk factors in a large treatment cohort on ART at a high-volume facility in Lesotho.Methods: In this retrospective cohort study, we extracted data from the daily dispensing electronic system and routine clinical records of 785 adults on ART between 2011 and 2015 in Maseru, Lesotho. CMD was defined as a diagnosis of hypertension, diabetes mellitus or dyslipidaemia (singly or collectively). Descriptive statistics were used to describe the disease burden; Kaplan–Meier curves and cause-specific Cox proportional hazards models were fitted to examine the impact of the ART regimen and identify the risk factors associated with the occurrence of CMD.Results: Of the 785 participants, 473 (60%) were women. The median age of the group was 42 years, interquartile range (IQR), 36–51 years. The overall incidence of CMD was 5.6 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 4.4–7.1) per 100 person-months of follow-up. The median time to onset of CMD was 16.6 months (IQR = 7.4–23.4). ART was not associated with the occurrence of CMD (cause-specific hazard ratio [CHR] = 1.55; 95% CI = 0.14–16.85; P = 0.72). Higher body mass index (BMI) was associated with the occurrence of diabetes mellitus (CHR = 1.19; 95% CI = 1.14–1.38; P = 0.026).Conclusion: The incidence of CMD in this relatively young patient population is low yet noteworthy. We recommend that patients living with HIV and AIDS should be routinely screened for CMD. Higher BMI is generally associated with the occurrence of CMD.


2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 16-22
Author(s):  
Cecilia Kinuthia-Njenga ◽  
Charles Ndungu

UN-HABITAT's experiences in the Lake Victoria region and Sub-Saharan Africa show that the underlying causes of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and its consequences on urban development must be urgently and comprehensively addressed. The epidemic affects all sectors of urban development, including housing, transportation, water, and access to health services. Development agencies, whose mission is urban development, have thus started to recognise that achieving their objectives is difficult without addressing and mitigating the impact of the epidemic. A comprehensive policy and programming is required to mitigate both the spread and the effects of the epidemic. Consequently, UN-HABITAT, working with partners and city authorities around Lake Victoria, has embarked on an HIV/AIDS mainstreaming strategy in its Slum Upgrading and Poverty Reduction programme. Related activities and lessons are presented.


2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-99
Author(s):  
Chigozie Anastacia Nkwonta ◽  
DeAnne K. Hilfinger Messias ◽  
Tisha Felder ◽  
Kathryn Luchok

We explored the impact of two community-based educational interventions on Nigerian adults’ knowledge and intention to take or encourage human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine and cervical screenings. Face-to-face presentation and printed pamphlet intervention were delivered to 266 men and women aged 18 to 65 years in 12 locations in urban setting. At baseline, the majority (80%) had poor knowledge of HPV, and less than 12% had ever received or have a family member who had received HPV vaccine or cervical screening. Postintervention, there was significant increase (>70%) in the participants knowledge and intention to take or encourage HPV vaccination and cervical screening. In addition, more than half were willing to pay for HPV vaccine and screening even when expensive. Gender-focused and context-specific low-cost community-based educational interventions are effective in increasing HPV vaccine and cervical screening in sub-Saharan Africa.


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