Ellee Seymour

We rarely hear of AIDS in the UK today, even though newly diagnosed cases doubled in 2005 to more than 7,500 compared to 2000. It’s even harder to imagine what it must be like for sufferers in Africa.  By the end of 2005, there were five and a half million people living with HIV in South Africa, with almost 1,000 AIDS deaths occurring every day. And 74% of  HIV-positive people in sub-Saharan Africa were young women

To mark International Women’s Day, I urge you to listen to the podcast of Noerine Kaeeba describe how she is educating women about AIDS, the life-shattering stigma it carries for them.

Then read about the impoverished suffering of Alice Kironde, whose husband died from AIDS, the difficulties for women to protect themselves against this scourge. Here are some more harrowing stories about HIV-positive women.

Increasingly, in Africa and globally, HIV/AIDSS has a woman’s face.  Not only are women more likely to be living with HIV/AIDS, they are also more likely to be the main carers for those who are HIV-positive.

In sub-Saharan Africa, for every 10 adult men living with HIV, there are about 14 adult women who are living with the virus. Across all age groups, almost 60% of people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa are women.  In some countries, like South Africa, young women aged 15—24 are up to four times more likely to contract HIV than their male counterparts.

This may seem a world apart from our everyday lives. But we can help by supporting charities like AVERT (please recommend any others you know), as well as research projects. Please let others know too, pass the word around.

Most importantly, let’s pressurise our global leaders to keep their word to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic, they can really help make a difference and restore hope into the lives of those women.

Besides wanting to save our planet from climate change, we must also do everything we can to save the lives of those who live on it.

More new from America, where a blogger has spent more than six months behind  bars in California for refusing to hand over video footage of a violent San Francisco demo a a G8 summit meeting. It is the longest contempt of court sentence served by someone in the media.

A “mediation session” will today try and break the impasse, else he will stay locked up until July.

It is not clear why Josh Wolf, 24, is withholding the video and refusing to testify as there are no  confidential issues involved. He sold part of the tape to local television stations and posted another on his blog.

I wonder if he hopes that his tactics will elevate his blogging status as a martyr, or whether he hopes his determined stand will catch the eye of a newspaper editor to hire him as a journalist. Or does he really have a principle worth fighting for? I would not think so if confidential issues are not at risk. It seems to me that after sticking it out for so long, it’s hard to cave in and save face.  Or is he a champion of the First Amendment?

Dick Morris, the man credited with Bill Clinton’s presidential victory and UKIP’s outstanding success in the 2004 Euro Election, is named   as a client of a former Washington madam who  prosecutors want to gag.

Deborah Palfrey has threatened to go public with details of her 10,000 former clients. She has been indicted on racketeering and money laundering charges stemming from her operation run as the Pamela Martin & Associates escort service which closed last summer after 13 years in business.

She is said to have  recruited well educated young college women for $300 assignations with high-flying clients and Palfrey is considering selling her client’s contact details as a way to raise money for her legal defence.

In their motion, government lawyers claim that some documents contain “personal information” about Palfrey’s former clients and prostitutes that is “sensitive.” Palfrey denies the charges and says she ran a legal escort service.

In connection with an asset forfeiture action, Palfrey has sought to depose political consultant Dick Morris, who she has identified as a former escort service client.

I imagine there are lots of very nervous looking men in Washington D. C. right now. Do you think she should be gagged? Surely anyone in power knows they could be blackmailed if they pay for sex. Does it really matter anyway, at the end of the day if Dick Morris, and others, paid for female companionship, of one sort or another?