Deleted Post from (Blog) Red
I use Bloglines for the blogs I want to follow and read. Occasionally, a post will show up in my feeds that has subsequently been deleted on the actual blog (as you can see by clicking on the first link below). The following post at (Blog) Red impressed me quite a bit with what is a forward campaign in Swaziland. I can only speculate why it has been removed from the blog, but I put it up here for you to look at.
Likusasa Ngelami - The Future Is Mine 
Here's one of the ways that (RED) money works in Africa: Swaziland's National Emergency Response Council on HIV and AIDS, or NERCHA, targeted teachers with their "Likusasa Ngelami" ("the future is mine") campaign to encourage sexual abstinence and delay of sexual debut. Adele from the Global Fund sent over the posters for us to share.
That's not all NERCHA does to fight AIDS in Swaziland, of course. We first mentioned NERCHA last December with Adele's blog entry about her trip to Swaziland.
Here is an excerpt from her blog entry:
Swaziland has the highest infection rate in the world – about 34% of all adults are HIV-positive, and so many have already died that there are already over 70,000 orphans, and 15,000 child-headed households – in a country of only 1.2 million people. This has all happened very recently. In 1992, just under 4% of women attending prenatal clinics were HIV-positive, and by 2004 this had increased to over 42% -- that means that now, almost 1 out of every 2 pregnant women is HIV-positive. Life expectancy for Swazis has dropped to 39 years, and the number of orphans is expected to increase to 120,000 by 2010.
NERCHA’s role – with the help of (RED) money through the Global Fund grant – is to turn this terrifying trend around, ensuring that those already infected can get care and support, those who are still HIV-negative can remain that way through prevention education, and those who have lost their livelihoods because the family’s breadwinners have died, can survive, through community projects designed to support orphans by growing food for them and providing a safe space every day.
Read the rest of Adele's post here, and also a post from her follow-up visit to Swaziland last month.
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