Showing posts with label HIV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HIV. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Poem: Alicia by Manuel Odeny

Did I tell you about Alicia
my childhood sweetheart?
her beauty bewitching
the lilt of her laughter
invoking a longing for love
the tilt of her graceful neck
invoking a longing for love
oh
her sweet seraph voice
the wake of her sweet smile
oh
love.

Did I tell you about Alicia
childhood vows broken
hushed, hustled promises
sealed in scented envelopes
all gone
with divide of time

Did I tell you about Alicia
my childhood sweetheart?
yesterday
she died
the big disease wasted her
AIDS emaciated her
before midnight hour
before cock crowing dawn hour
her soul departed here
agonizing
like echoes in a tomb
accentuating the hurt

but

as white shroud silently cover her cadaver
my spirit, soul settles silently
as she's lowered deep in grave
i shed tears of hope, love
raising with the dirge
upward with prayers
for am still in love
true

now

Have I told you about Alicia
my childhood sweet heart?
yesterday
she was buried

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Mombasa: Tumaini orphanage children to benefit from UK scooter aid

Tumaini Children Home, which is a center for children whose parents have died of aids, is set to benefit from scooters from UK donations.

The move follows a scooter taken to the orphanage based in Mombasa which has some of its orphans suffering from aids, earlier this year by Micro Scooters UK which has seen the company planning to send 60 scooters by end of this year.

“Micro Scooters UK  is planning to ship 60 scooters at the end of the year ensuring each child at the orphanage has their very own to play with and will host Tumaini’s first-ever Christmas Party at which the scooters will be handed over,”  the company said in a statement.

Micro Scooters say they were touched by the children reaction to the scooter and that “the children have few, if any, toys and spend 365 days a year in the same location following the same routine.”

Launched under the Scooter aid initiative, the company seeks to get donations from school going children who have outgrown their scooters and estimates nearly 1 million sold in the country in five years.

“We are encouraging people to send any scooters no longer in use back including a letter to the children at the orphanage adding a personal touch to their donation, we will then safety checked and refurbished before being sent to the Tumaini Children’s Home in Kenya,” Anna Gibson and Philippa Gogarty  said in an online joint press statement.

If the scheme proves a success, Micro Scooters UK will roll it out to children’s homes in other third world countries.

The Tumaini Homes of Hope is a small UK based charity that supports work with orphaned and vulnerable children infected and affected by HIV AIDS with seven years of supporting orphanages and providing education and healthcare-based projects in coast province.

© Manuel Odeny, 2012

Friday, July 6, 2012

Photography: HIV testing through the eyes of children

A child looks on as a journalist interviews her mother at HIV support center in Kisumu, Kenya
Anxiuos children waiting for HIV results from their aunt as counselors visit their home in Chiga area, Kisumu
Phoebe Anyongo, a HIV +ve mother with her two health twins after a PMTCT in a clinic in Kisumu, Kenya

Friday, July 29, 2011

Guest Blogger: UNAIDS: Homosexuality rising HIV prevalence in developed countries by Philip Alambo

New York State, USA just legalised same sex marriage though conservatives are contesting for it's withdrawal in court.
With the increased global socio-economic, political and scientific efforts put in mopping up the dreaded HIV/AIDS, there has been a remarkable breakthrough in curbing the disaster. Studies conducted by the UNAIDS reveal that the rate of infection has fallen by more than 25% between 2001 and 2009.

This is a major milestone ,for the journey of a thousand miles, as the Chinese put it , begins with one step. Yet in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the war against AIDS is far from victory.

While there has been a notable global reduction of the rate of HIV infection and their subsequent deaths across the globe, in consonance with the UNAIDS report, Eastern Europe and Central Asia do not mirror the pattern. To the shocking dismay of many the findings instead makes it known that the rate of HIV infection in seven countries located in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and North America has been steadily increasing over the last two decades , and by more than 25%.

According to the report a number of factors which are to be faulted for these peculiar occurrences abound. They range from socio-cultural and economic issues, to unnatural sexual intercourses. Also to be blamed is the sharing of needles among drug addicts for injection. But particularly more pronounced and monumental cause is attributed to the massive expansion of the gay population in these countries reflecting the reversal of their erstwhile low prevalence.

Nurture has superceded nature, as men, women and teenagers in Eastern Europe and Central Asia engage in unnatural carnal intercourse. Ironically encouragement by many governments to set up legal frameworks protecting of homosexuals and shying away from arresting bestiality is detrimental to the fight against the deadly virus.

I shall zero in on homosexuality and lesbianism as key in heightening the burdensome economic attempts these regions have allotted in curbing this pandemic. Developed north has been on the record in the past for criticizing Africa’s socio-cultural practices as outdated and retrogressive, and a major deterrent in eradicating AIDS.

These, just to name a few, include wife inheritance and traditional midwifery. Homosexuality is however not indigenous to Africa. Sadly homosexuality which is backed in the West is causing exactly what the world thought to be the main cause of spread of the deadly virus, albeit from the West!

The most enormous retrogressive cultural orientation known by man is the practice of homosexuality, lesbianism and bestiality, often synonymous with the developed world like the legalisation of same sex marriage in New York, US.

Such practices defy conventional wisdom as well as scientific premises and suppositions. This is particularly true to homosexuality, whose practitioners have turned their physiological “entrance into exit” and vice versa. The UNAIDS report testifies.

The Guest Blogger is a student of Communication and Media Technology with IT at Maseno University; Kenya.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Voluntary Male Circumcision in Nyanza a success

A volunteer undergoing the cut

The WHO and government’s call for elders from communities that don’t perform male circumcision to help curb the HIV/AIDS in the country is a move in the direction.

Gains made by medical voluntary male circumcision in Nyanza province to be replicated in major urban areas and other communities like Turkana and Teso who don’t culturally cut their males will help prevent spread of the deadly virus country wide.

The cut help reduce infection rate by about 60%, although being circumcised is not a panacea to fight HIV/AIDS this little effort always go along way to having an AIDS free Africa.

The Nyanza program was a success as other African countries like Swaziland are visiting Kenya to pilot studies to help them back home.

Published on Monday, April 12 2010 by The Star/Kenya