BlackPerspective.net

The Frontline documentary “Sick Around The World” aired last night. It takes a look at ways other developed nations provide healthcare for all, and cheaper than the U.S. provides it only for some.

In some ways it parralleled Michael Moore’s “Sicko”; but expounded on it by examining some other systems and condsidering what methods Americans might accept.

You can watch it online here . Click where it says “watch the full program online”, under the picture of the IV bag.

Trailer:

I reported to you previously about TASO and how “Uganda Still An Example To The World” in the AIDS fight; as it was one of the first countries to show that prevention could work by taking a proactive stance.

I signed this letter to go to my senator in the link at the bottom of the post, urging that we continuing funding to help fight disease. Why not let us help those who help the selves especially.

Please take a few moments to urge your senator to take this stand.

——————————————————————————————
Frome the One Campaign:

My name is Agnes Nyamayarwo. I’m a nurse, a mother and an activist living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda.

It has been more than a decade since I lost my husband, Augustine, and youngest child, Christopher, to AIDS; another son, Charles, ran away from home to escape the stigma of this disease.

Now I honor their memory through my work with an organization called TASO (The AIDS Support Organization) here in Kampala, Uganda. At TASO, I work with HIV/AIDS patients, orphans and mothers to try and save others from experiencing the pain I have.

I am also a member of the TASO Board of Trustees, representing the views of people living with HIV/AIDS in all the 11 centers of TASO across the country. You can learn more about TASO here.

Your work at ONE to make global AIDS an American priority has touched my heart. Last week, you asked your members of Congress to support the reauthorization of PEPFAR and fund the fight against AIDS, TB, and malaria and you won.

Now PEPFAR goes to the U.S. Senate and I’m asking you to please sign ONE’s petition and urge your senators to co-sponsor this lifesaving bill.

www.one.org/pepfarsenate?id=286-271166-LTLm1u&t=3

I wrote a few months ago about how Uganda is Still An Example To The World in the AIDS fight.

The ONE Campaign against global poverty has put out this notice:

In the great American tradition of helping others help themselves, we, the undersigned, ask that the U.S. Senate pass the Durbin-Smith amendment to restore $2.6 billion to the international affairs budget.

Dear ONE Member,

I am writing you from Kampala, Uganda. I just visited TASO (The AIDS Support Organization) Mulago, one of the largest community HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention, and care centers in the country. Uganda is home to one of the earliest African success stories in the fight against AIDS. The work of groups like TASO cut the number of people in Uganda living with HIV by more than half.

Today is treatment day at TASO Mulago. I took a picture of the line of people waiting. They tell us that often there are more people in line than they have medication for. The need is greater than the funding here.

This funding comes from the international affairs budget. Right now, the Senate is poised to slash the president’s 2009 international affairs budget by 4 billion dollars, which would be a 1 billion dollar cut from this year’s funding.

Thankfully, we’re not the only ones who are trying to stop this devastating cut. Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) have introduced an amendment to restore $2.6 billion to the international affairs budget, to match the House of Representatives funding level.

Here is where we come in. We only have until Wednesday to get a majority of the Senate to support this effort. So we’ve launched a petition asking the Senate to support this amendment.

You can add your name here:
www.one.org/2009budget/o.pl?id=255-1238117-DDPrBe&t=2

Petition text:
In the great American tradition of helping others help themselves, we, the undersigned, ask that the U.S. Senate pass the Durbin-Smith amendment to restore $2.6 billion to the international affairs budget.

Increasing the size of the international affairs budget is vital to increasing the amount the U.S. gives to poverty-focused development assistance. The international affairs budget funds all the proven solutions that we call for time and again: lifesaving AIDS medications, basic education, access to clean water, and many more programs like TASO helping people to work their way out of poverty.

To save these programs, we’ve set an aggressive goal of gathering 60,000 signatures before we deliver the petition to every senator. Please add your name:

www.one.org/2009budget/o.pl?id=255-1238117-DDPrBe&t=3

The fight over the international affairs budget is the first important step to making sure that we keep our promise to help the world’s poorest people. Later in the year, we’ll work to make sure that enough of the international affairs budget goes to the programs that are making a real difference in the developing world. But that fight will be much more difficult if we don’t get a significant level of funding for the poorest among us here and now.

I was invited to a woman’s home this morning who was receiving AIDS treatment from TASO. I asked what message she’d like to send back to America. She wanted us to convey her thanks to all those people who make it possible for her to be receiving treatment.

Thank you for your voice,

Josh Peck, ONE.org

Update: the amendment we are supporting is now called the Feinstein-Smith amendment. The content of the amendment has not changed.

This blog post also gives good background and explination: Restore cut in Int. Affairs Budget (poverty assistance at risk)

First of all, once again, it appears that FEMA can do no right. This institution is the height of bureaucratic incompetence; and a prime example of why many of us are weary of having to send our tax dollar to the govenment.

CDC: Gulf Coast trailers have toxic air
By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer

ATLANTA - U.S. health officials are urging that Gulf Coast hurricane victims be moved out of their government-issued trailers as quickly as possible after tests found toxic levels of formaldehyde fumes.



Fumes from 519 trailer and mobile homes in Louisiana and Mississippi were — on average — about five times what people are exposed to in most modern homes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In some trailers, the levels were nearly 40 times customary exposure levels, raising fears that residents could contract respiratory problems.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency — which supplied the trailers — should move people out quickly, with priority given to families with children, elderly people or anyone with asthma or other chronic conditions, said Mike McGeehin, director of a CDC division that focuses on environmental hazards.

“We do not want people exposed to this for very much longer,” McGeehin said.

While there are no federal safety standard for formaldehyde fumes in homes, the levels found in the trailers are high enough to cause burning eyes and breathing problems for people who have asthma or sensitivity to air pollutants, said McGeehin…

Commonly used in manufactured homes, formaldehyde can cause respiratory problems and has been classified as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and as a probable carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Last May, FEMA officials dismissed findings by environmentalists that the trailers posed serious health risks. They said the trailers conformed to industry standards.

Legislators also said the CDC ignored research from — and then demoted — one of its own experts, who concluded any level of exposure to formaldehyde may pose a cancer risk. A CDC spokesman has denied the allegations.

On that subject, an Atlanta Journal Constitution article goes on to say

A congressional committee is investigating “disturbing allegations” that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suppressed critical information about cancer dangers posed by trailers housing Hurricane Katrina victims.

“Apparently in retaliation, Dr. De Rosa was removed from his post and given a job … that appears to include no real responsibilities,” the letter said.

This seems not to be the only cover up of health hazards that the CDC is engaged in.

Now Public has The Report that was Too Hot For the Public to Handle

For more than seven months, the nation’s top public health agency has blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states, reportedly because it contains such potentially “alarming information” as evidence of elevated infant mortality and cancer rates.

The 400-plus-page study, Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern, was undertaken by a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the request of the International Joint Commission…

The Center for Public Integrity has obtained the study, which warns that more than nine million people who live in the more than two dozen “areas of concern”—including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee—may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants.

And the corruption administration just keeps on going!

A lot of people get soar when the benefits of having two parents are talked about, and want to get defensive about their nontraditional upbringing or current situation as a parent in a nontraditional structure; but the evidence just keeps coming that with all things equal; a committed two parent home is the best thing going for children.

Let it be understood that this does not mean that other situations don’t ever work, clearly they can. The issue is that the odds are much higher for children’s health in many arenas with two committed parents rather than in any other situation. One may buck the trend in an individual situation, and that’s absolutely great when a child is successfully raised; but we can’t ignore the overall situation in favor of individual anecdotal results. Those who do so have a case of not seeing the forest for the trees.

Abuse risk seen worse as families change
The Associated Press By DAVID CRARY AP National Writer
NEW YORK Nov 19, 2007 (AP)
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Six-year-old Oscar Jimenez Jr. was beaten to death in California, then buried under fertilizer and cement. Two-year-old Devon Shackleford was drowned in an Arizona swimming pool. Jayden Cangro, also 2, died after being thrown across a room in Utah.

In each case, as in many others every year, the alleged or convicted perpetrator had been the boyfriend of the child’s mother men thrust into father-like roles which they tragically failed to embrace.

Every case is different, every family is different. Some single mothers bring men into their lives who lovingly help raise children when the biological father is gone for good.

Nonetheless, many scholars and front-line caseworkers interviewed by The Associated Press see the abusive-boyfriend syndrome as part of a broader trend that deeply worries them. They note an ever-increasing share of America’s children grow up in homes without both biological parents, and say the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures.

“This is the dark underbelly of cohabitation,” said Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia. “Cohabitation has become quite common, and most people think, ‘What’s the harm?’ The harm is we’re increasing a pattern of relationships that’s not good for children.”

The existing data on child abuse in America is patchwork, making it difficult to track national trends with precision. The most recent federal survey on child maltreatment tallies nearly 900,000 abuse incidents reported to state agencies in 2005, but it does not delve into how rates of abuse correlate with parents’ marital status or the makeup of a child’s household.

Similarly, data on the roughly 1,500 child-abuse fatalities that occur annually in the United States leaves unanswered questions. Many of those deaths result from parental neglect, rather than overt physical abuse. Of the 500 or so deaths caused by physical abuse, the federal statistics do not specify how many were caused by a stepparent or unmarried partner of the parent.

However, there are many other studies that, taken together, reinforce the concerns. Among the findings:

Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents, according to a study of Missouri abuse reports published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2005.

Children living in stepfamilies or with single parents are at higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents, according to several studies co-authored by David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center.

Girls whose parents divorce are at significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father, according to research by Robin Wilson, a family law professor at Washington and Lee University.

“All the emphasis on family autonomy and privacy shields the families from investigators, so we don’t respond until it’s too late,” Wilson said. “I hate the fact that something dangerous for children doesn’t get responded to because we’re afraid of judging someone’s lifestyle.”

Go here for the rest of the article.

Last week, in conjunction with World AIDS Day nearly 20 bloggers participated in Black Blogging To End AIDS.

First congratulations to all the participants in the campaign who can be seen in totality in the comments of the above link.

We all have to continue to raise our voices and take actions to increase AIDS awareness, increase understanding, and decrease stigma; especially for we Black folk with our particular issues here in the United States, as well as the Motherland Africa. And yes, Africa is our Motherland - those our cousins.

I can’t emplore you enough to watch the fantastic program The Age of AIDS; which can be seen online for free.

See the trailer:

Vivrant Thing wrote Sistahgirl Project - Black Women & HIV/AIDS (she did 6 different post, check the others out as well)

Tayo wrote Worlds AIDS Day

Ms J. wrtoe World AIDS DAY, GET INFORMED

Sondan wrote Today is World Aids Day

Felix wrote WORLD AIDS DAY CELEBRATIONS IN CAMEROON

MaraolousOne askes Have you been tested?

other samples can be found here

We’ll do this again in February for Black AIDS Week.

I will coninute to blog about AIDS year round, I hope you will too!

I wanted to post this a couple of days ago, but as I relayed in my last post; their were technicle difficulties.

Below is just a mini-review of some of the great post this week highlighting the AIDS crisis that we indeed still have.

Take a look, learn, support these bloggers putting forth this good work.

If you signed up to participate, but forgot to do your post this week; go ahead and still do it. I’ll do another wrap up in the coming days.

Sample of Blogging To End AIDS

Felix wrote AFRICA ON WORLD AID’S DAY

Ehav wrote Black Blogging to End AIDS

Vanessa wrote In Memory of My Cousin: Blogging to End AIDS

AAPP wrote Today we are Black Blogging To End AIDS

Theo Wrote Today is World AIDS Day

Bee Easy wrote Black Blogging to End AIDS

Purple Zoe wrote World Aids Day- Dispel the myths

Backyard Beacon Blogging to End AIDS: ‘Our Failure to Act’

Villager wrote Stop AIDS Leadership Pledge

A 2005 MSNBC article stated

“BOSTON - The HIV infection rate has doubled among blacks in the United States over a decade while holding steady among whites — stark evidence of a widening racial gap in the epidemic, government scientists said Friday.

Other troubling statistics indicate that almost half of all infected people in the United States who should be receiving HIV drugs are not getting them.

The findings were released in Boston at the 12th Annual Retrovirus Conference, the world’s chief scientific gathering on the disease.

Narrative at Black Women’s Health.com states

It is important to remember that African American women currently comprise the fastest growing segment of new AIDS cases in the United States (African American women represented 67% of AIDS diagnoses in women in 2005 per the US Center’s for Disease Control).

Furthermore, of the black women living with AIDS at the end of 2005, 66% acquired their infection through heterosexual contact, 31% through injecting drug use, and 2% through other or undetermined routes.
AIDS is now the leading cause of death for African American women, aged 25 to 44 years of age. (US Center’s for Disease Control).

Worldwide, the numbers of HIV and AIDS are even more staggering, especially on the continent of Africa. As a community, we must remain vigilant in the fight against the spread of HIV and AIDS.

There’s a growing epidemic in our community, most of which could be stopped by reducing risky behaviors, or at least taking the highest precausions when engaging in sexual activity and IV drug usage.
Also being tested so that you don’t unwittingly pass it on to your partner or unborn children.

The institutions of the Black community, including civil rights organizations, Black churches, and Black elected officials have largely been horrid in addressing this issue. This must change.

While access medical care is a contributing problem that’s not a fight we can immediately when as it is the same health care fight that has been raging on in general. What we can change now is the lack of AIDS knowledge in our communities; because is the key.

All Black churches and civic groups should have some program to filter information out to their local community regarding how AIDS is transmitted and how it can be prevented. It is our duty to save ourselves

To get that understanding for yourself, watch this video from www.aidsvideos.org

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:

World AIDS Day is observed every year on December 1st. The World Health Organization established World AIDS Day in 1988. World AIDS Day provides governments, national AIDS programs, faith organizations, community organizations, and individuals with an opportunity to raise awareness and focus attention on the global AIDS epidemic.

The Facts - In 2007, the estimated number of persons living with HIV worldwide was 33.2 million and there were 2.1 million AIDS deaths

“According to data collected from 2001 to 2004, black adults and adolescents accounted for 51% of new HIV infections in the United States. These startling statistics, which come from 33 states that have used name-based reporting of HIV and AIDS cases since 2001, were published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the March 9 issue of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).” - AIDSmeds.com

Because of this factor and the problems with extreme (though significantly improving in some of the continents countries) AIDS rates of African countries, Afrosphere Bloggers along with others have come together to make this next week a week that we focus special attention towards raising social consciousness around AIDS so we can begin to end the spread.

Knowledge is the key. If you know how to prevent yourself from catching HIV, and you exercise that knowledge, their are only minimal possibilities that you would ever contract it; one being through birth, but even in that instance their are prevention treatments that can prevent mother to unborn child transmission that we need to make more greatly available globally.

I cannot encourage people enough to watch the Frontline/PBS documentary the Age of AIDS - free online.

Here is a trailer:

Saturday December 1st is World AIDS Day, as December 1st is World AIDS Day every year.

Time escaped me, and I’ve been remiss in putting forward this proposal; but I think we should do a blogging campaign around this. It’s the 11th hour, so I’m going to make it simple.

I’m calling it Black Blogging To End AIDS. The purpose will be to raise AIDS awareness, most particularly to help prevention of the spread of the disease in the Black community. Or if you’re not Black and you want to participate with the campaign to raise awareness in general, just call it Blogging To End AIDS.

Since it is such short notice, and people haven’t had time to find out about it and prepare, I think it would be best to make it a week long event starting Saturday and going through Friday; which means you can do your post (or multiple post would be even better) at anytime during the week, as opposed to just on one specific day. If you’re at your computer on Saturday though, it would be nice if you at least acknowledge World AIDS Day on Saturday and give a link to some information; then you can come back and do your more elaborate post when you have time.

Please sign up in the comments with your name or net handle and FULL clickable url so that I can do a wrap up post highlighting all the bloggers that participated.

Example: Villager electronicvillage.blogspot.com/

There’s plenty of information on the web that you can research about AIDS, including the particular issues for the Black Diaspora, so it’s not necessary that you have a great amount of AIDS knowledge to participate. You can be effective by simply pulling together some information from others sources and putting it in front of people.

You can even use info from my blogging on AIDS here. Just put the term AIDS in my search box either at the top right of the page or in the right side panel to retrieve my many post on the subject.

Actually, I did it for you .

Again, please sign up in the comments!