AIDS Committee Of Toronto Staff in Southern Africa


AIDS COMMITTEE OF TORONTO IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

Lilongwe, Malawi, April 8, 2005 – In preparation for its role as a host community organization at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto next year, the AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT) will travel to southern Africa this spring.

For the next six weeks, ACT staff member Tyler Stiem will visit AIDS organizations, clinics, community projects and governmental health bureaus in Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Zambia and report his experiences on ACT's website (http://www.actoronto.org/africa).

"The southern Africa trip is an opportunity for ACT to build relationships with African AIDS organizations. It’s an opportunity to discuss HIV/AIDS as it affects both Africans and Toronto’s African communities, to share ideas and work together leading up to AIDS 2006 and beyond," says Stiem, the agency’s Communications Coordinator.

In Ontario, as in the world, Africans comprise a disproportionate number of the people living with HIV/AIDS. African immigrants — most of whom live in Toronto — make up less than 1% of the province’s population, yet they accounted for over 5% of the province’s HIV diagnoses in 2002 (1). Infection rates in African communities have nearly doubled since 1998.

"If larger AIDS organizations such as ACT have a role to play in the providing culturally appropriate services, either directly or as community partners, we must commit ourselves to understanding how religion, traditional gender roles, homophobia, and poverty complicate the decisions Africans in Toronto make about their sexual health," says Winston Husbands, ACT's Director of Research and Chair of the newly formed African and Caribbean Council on HIV/AIDS in Ontario (ACCHO). "We have much to learn from African AIDS organizations."

And with their input, ACT will be in an excellent position to create training modules and forums that meaningfully address the needs of developing world ASOs attending the next year's conference.

The trip, which is part of a Rotary International-sponsored professional exchange, begins April 5 and ends May 20. For more information about ACT in Africa, visit http://www.actoronto.org/africa or contact John Maxwell, ACT's Director of Communications and Community Education at 416.340.8484 ext. 245.

1. The last year for which data is available.
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