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Hoy Es The 3rd Annual National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

8:46 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Health · Comments Off

20 Mar 2009

nationalnativeaidshivribbon Ojibway Migisi Bineshii reminds us that today is the 3rd annual National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. American Indians and Alaskan Natives have the 3rd highest diagnosis of HIV/AIDS.

MTV to Air Pedro Zamora Movie

5 Mar 2009

Some of you might be a tad too young to remember, but back in 1994, MTV’s The Real World actually retained some element of real, and was actually a pretty engaging show (note: there were actually people with brains in the house). The San Francisco edition was one of its highest points, mainly due to the groundbreaking things that were going on on the show: 21 year old Cubano Pedro Zamora emerged as the first openly gay HIV-positive man to appear on American television, and in following Pedro’s life and death, U.S. TV viewers finally got to know someone living with HIV.

Alex Loynaz stars as earnest Real World cast-member Pedro Zamora in this intimate biopic tracing the HIV-positive immigrant’s rise from humble roots to becoming one of the most instantly recognizable HIV/AIDS activists in the United States as a result of his high profile role on MTV’s pioneering reality… television series. In 1992, The Real World made it’s debut on MTV, forever altering the definition of the term “celebrity,” and providing a sympathetic face to the growing AIDS crisis for the millions of Americans who had yet to meet someone suffering from the devastating autoimmune disorder.

While the show was great, what MTV has got up its sleeve now doesn’t look like it’s going to do it much justice. “Pedro: The Movie” actually looks pretty terrible if the trailers are to be believed (check them out here). MTV movies are infamously bad, so I guess you can’t expect much more, but I would have preferred Pedro’s story be told by a good filmmaker with…a budget. When you check out the trailer, you’ll know what I mean. But before that, check out the clip above of The Real World San Francisco to get a sense of who Pedro was.

Pedro: The Movie is set to air on MTV on April 1st.

Via / SF Citizen

World AIDS Day

8:28 am By Maegan La Mala · Health| Latin America · Comments Off

1 Dec 2008

Today marks the 20th annual World AIDS Day as founded by the World Health Organization with the goal of raising awareness. This year’s theme is “Lead, Empower & Deliver.”

33 million people are still living with the virus and there are nearly 7,500 new infections each day.

Within the Latino community and in Latin America, HIV and AIDS continues to be an issue that is talked about and dealt with in hushed whispers while the virus screams through our communities. Machismo and internalized stereotypes lead many to believe that they can’t contract HIV, that they don’t need to be tested, that they don’t need to take precautions. Those living with HIV and AIDS in our community struggle to survive in a system that doesn’t value Latino lives as much as other lives anyway.

Today, all the posts will focus on an aspect of HIV and AIDS in the Latino and Latin American community, including statistics, stories, events, and the points of views of other Latino bloggers.

Pero as with all “days”, it’s important to note that these issues need to be discussed everyday without the need of a special day of recognition, especially since for those living with HIV and AIDS, they don’t get to take a day off.

Via / Global Voices

Tagging The Sexual Activities of Indonesia’s HIV/AIDS Population

9:06 am By Maegan La Mala · Health| Indonesia| Politics| Tech| sex · Comments Off

25 Nov 2008

I say it was only a matter of time before a class of those monitored because of their “dangerousness” happen. Not surprisingly this dangerousness has been linked to sex.

Indonesia’s Papua province is set to pass a bylaw that requires some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchips in a bid to prevent them infecting others, a lawmaker said on Saturday.
Under the bylaw, which has caused uproar among human rights activists, patients who had shown “actively sexual behavior” could be implanted with a microchip to monitor their activity, lawmaker John Manangsang said…

If a patient with HIV/AIDS was found to have infected a healthy person, there would be a penalty, he said without elaborating.

Who does this really protect?

National Latino AIDS Awareness Day

3:25 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · GLBT| Health| Women| children · 1 Comment

15 Oct 2008

black%20AIDS%20institute.jpg Today is National Latino AIDS Awareness Day, and with it come La Macha’s insistent reminders to get yourself tested. HIV is a disease that can be managed for many years–to the point it is no longer the death sentence it used to be. But it has to be caught while still in the HIV negative stage for management to be as effective as possible.

Unfortunately, Latin@s are not being tested nearly often enough nor soon enough, and that’s resulting in devastating loses to our communities:

Overall, the mode of HIV infection for 61 percent of Hispanic males was male-to-male sexual contact, while 17 percent of infections occurred through heterosexual contact and 17 percent through injection drug use, the CDC said.

Among HIV-infected Hispanic women, 76 were exposed through heterosexual contact and 23 percent through injection drug use, the CDC said.

The report noted that Hispanics face disproportionate rates of HIV infections, with the second-highest infection rate among all U.S. racial and ethnic groups, behind blacks.

“The rate of HIV diagnosis for Hispanic males is about three times higher than the rate among white males. And for Hispanic females, it’s about five times higher than among white females,” Dominguez said.

Please, get yourself tested! If you’re not sure where to go or don’t have access to a doctor, this website will help you find places where you can go to get confidential and even free testing done!

Hip/Hop Artists Raise HIV/AIDS Awareness

1:33 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Activism| GLBT · Comments Off

17 Sep 2008

black%20AIDS%20institute.jpg Folks down in Texas were treated to an apparently awesome concert that was also a worthy cause. Mike Jones, David Banner and Day26 (among others) performed a “Hip Hop for HIV” concert to bring attention to the effect HIV/AIDS are having on the black and Latin@ communities. Concert goers received tickets for the concert by getting tested. And although the outreach targeted black and Latin@ communities, the testing was meant for everyone,

“We want to test across the board,” Mr. Jones said. “We don’t just want to reach out to the African-American and Hispanic communities but to everyone.”

I think it’s great that outreach like this is happening, especially given the homophobia that many times courses through mainstream Hip/Hop. I hope it means that the LGBT community is more accepted now, although the pessimistic me thinks it’s more likely that folks are thinking HIV/AIDS is “not just the gay disease anymore.”

VL Follow Up : Puerto Rico and Eight States Cut From System That Tracks Rate of H.I.V.

2:39 pm By Maegan La Mala · Health| Puerto Rico · Comments Off

4 Sep 2008

Following up on a story from a few days ago on the AIDS crisis in Puerto Rico, seems that the crisis is set to get worse with the island cut off from federal money for an advanced H.I.V. monitoring system that worked and showed that the annual infection rate in the nation was 40 percent higher than previously estimated.

Terry Butler, a spokeswoman for the National Center for H.I.V., S.T.D. and TB Prevention at the centers, said that the total money for the system — which is awarded to applicants on a competitive basis — would remain the same, but that the remaining 25 participating states and cities would receive more. Ms. Butler said those participants had the most reliable systems and could help the centers produce the best estimates.

The system uses a new test that distinguishes recent infections from old ones, helping epidemiologists track them in something much closer to real time than was previously possible.

The states that lost funding are Georgia , Illinois , Maryland , Missouri , Ohio , Oklahoma , Pennsylvania , Tennessee.

Via / NYT

AIDS Crisis in Puerto Rico

11:27 am By Maegan La Mala · Health| Magazines| Puerto Rico · Comments Off

2 Sep 2008

Oh no, here comes the Rican with another Puerto Rico related post. This month’s issue of POZ Magazine has an article about the AIDS crisis in Puerto Rico and how it is endangering the lives most in need of critical services.

According to the article, there are 11,000 people living with AIDS on the U.S. colony, and many are being denied access to treatment because they face stereotypes and and massive mismanagement of services. With an AIDS prevalence rate there is almost twice that of the U.S. mainland, people are losing their lives and not enough people seem to care.

Mexican court: HIV-positive soldiers may serve

3:33 pm By Maegan La Mala · Justice| mexico| society · Comments Off

25 Sep 2007

In a landmark decision, the Mexican Supreme Court has ruled that the forced expulsion of soldiers from military bodies because they are HIV-positive is unconstitutional:

“Being HIV-positive does not in itself imply an inability to serve in the armed forces,” the judges wrote in the ruling issued Monday. “Therefore it will be up to the military to determine, case by case, if the degree of effect on the soldier’s health makes it impossible to remain in active service.”

The ruling was made by the Supreme Court after hearing five consecutive cases with the same charge: that soldiers had been discharged from the armed forces because of their HIV status. Back in February, the Court ordered the Mexican Army and Marines to readmit four soldiers who were discharged because they were HIV-positive.

Via / Univision

The Pope discourages condom use

1:04 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Brazil| Religion| sex · 1 Comment

11 May 2007

Earlier this week Maegan told us about Pope Benedict’s trip to Brazil, where he declared that leftist Mexico City legislators supporting abortion rights would be excommunicated from the church. Perhaps more controversial (and in my own opinion much more damaging) is that on his trip to Brazil — a country that is fighting hard to win a battle against the spread of HIV — he spoke against the use of condoms (like his predecessor, John Paul II), and urged the faithful to opt for abstinence instead.

The Pope met with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is pushing for mass condom distribution throughout Brazil, but according to reports the topic of contraception was avoided, as was the other hot button issue: the legalization of abortion in Brazil, which Lula is advocating for. Then what did they talk about?

Incidentally, the Pope’s appearance in Brazil at a soccer stadium looked like a rock concert — people jamming out, sparks flying — all very un-Catholic. It reminds me of some videos I would watch in my days as an employee of a Christian bookstore (don’t ask). Click on the link to the original article below for video.

Via / 20 Minutos

Older Entries

Link Cariño | Hissip: [...] Who’s your mama? [...] [...]

la Macha: I agree totally with you bubbles. [...]

Bubbles: Re: "Many women have mental, emotional instabilities which cause them to end up in abusive relations [...]

la Macha: and whaaaa? women who have mental health issues are suddenly to blame for getting beaten? [...]

la Macha: gabriel--i don't agree with you that women have a submissive nature--but that's ok, I guess. I agree [...]

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