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Firdaus Kharas (b. 1955) is a Canadian television producer.
Kharas was born in Calcutta before moving to the United States in 1973 and then to Canada in 1978.[ citation needed ] He received an undergraduate degree from Thiel College and a Masters from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.[ citation needed ] His early careers were as Executive Director of the United Nations Association in Canada then as policy advisor (Immigration and Refugees) for Barbara McDougall, Canada's Minister of Employment and Immigration.[ citation needed ] He created Chocolate Moose Media in 1995 to produce animated public service announcement videos. [1]
In 2004 his first major PSA series, called The Three Amigos Campaign, promoted the use of condoms to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. [2] [3] It was translated into 45 languages that reached 150 countries. “It dares to override cultural differences and address a highly sensitive issue currently affecting all cultures,” wrote University of Ottawa professor Luisa von Flotow in her study of the series’ translations. [4] The campaign won a 2006 Peabody Award. [5] Other projects have included malaria [6] , sexual and domestic violence, [7] [8] solar power, [9] and the Ebola virus disease. [10] [11]
HIV/AIDS is a major public health concern and cause of death in many parts of Africa. Although the continent is home to about 15.2 percent of the world's population, more than two-thirds of the total infected worldwide – some 35 million people – were Africans, of whom 15 million have already died. Sub-Saharan Africa alone accounted for an estimated 69 percent of all people living with HIV and 70 percent of all AIDS deaths in 2011. In the countries of sub-Saharan Africa most affected, AIDS has raised death rates and lowered life expectancy among adults between the ages of 20 and 49 by about twenty years. Furthermore, the life expectancy in many parts of Africa is declining, largely as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic with life-expectancy in some countries reaching as low as thirty-four years.
Stephen Henry Lewis is a Canadian politician, public speaker, broadcaster and diplomat. He was the leader of the social democratic Ontario New Democratic Party for most of the 1970s.
Peter Karel, Baron Piot, KCMG, FRCP, FMedSci is a Belgian microbiologist known for his research into Ebola and AIDS. After helping discover the Ebola virus in 1976 and leading efforts to contain the first-ever recorded Ebola epidemic that same year, Piot became a pioneering researcher into AIDS. He has held key positions in the United Nations and World Health Organization involving AIDS research and management. He has also served as a professor at several universities worldwide.
Criminal transmission of HIV is the intentional or reckless infection of a person with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This is often conflated, in laws and in discussion, with criminal exposure to HIV, which does not require the transmission of the virus and often, as in the cases of spitting and biting, does not include a realistic means of transmission. Some countries or jurisdictions, including some areas of the U.S., have enacted laws expressly to criminalize HIV transmission or exposure, charging those accused with criminal transmission of HIV. Others, including the United Kingdom, charge the accused under existing laws with such crimes as murder, fraud (Canada), manslaughter, attempted murder, or assault.
The Caribbean is the second-most affected region in the world in terms of HIV prevalence rates. Based on 2009 data, about 1.0 percent of the adult population is living with the disease, which is higher than any other region except Sub-Saharan Africa. Several factors influence this epidemic, including poverty, gender, sex tourism, and stigma. HIV incidence in the Caribbean declined 49% between 2001 and 2012. Different countries have employed a variety of responses to the disease, with a range of challenges and successes.
Since the arrival of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Italy in the 1980s, 120,000 cases of people testing positive for HIV have been registered with the Ministry of Health. Every year, 4,000 new infections are registered. Since the 1980s, 58,400 diagnoses of AIDS have been recorded, of which 35,300 have resulted in mortality. From the height of the epidemic in 1995 to today, the number of registered cases of AIDS has fallen from 5,600 to 1,200. The decline in incidence of AIDS is directly attributable to the efficacy of combined antiretroviral drug therapy, which has resulted in an increase in the number of people living with the diagnosis. The effectiveness of the drug therapy means that the 23,000 Italians diagnosed with HIV have better chances of not progressing to AIDS.
The recent state of health in Venezuela has seen that from 1992 to 1993, there was a cholera epidemic in the Orinoco Delta and Venezuela's political leaders were accused of racial profiling of their own indigenous people to deflect blame from the country's institutions, thereby aggravating the epidemic. During the 1990s, the mortality rate was 318 per 100,000 people for heart and heart-related diseases, 156 for cancers, 634 for external causes, 1,126 for communicable diseases such as chest infections, syphilis, and meningitis, and 654 for certain congenital conditions.
HIV/AIDS in Lesotho constitutes a very serious threat to the Basotho people and Lesotho's economic development. Since its initial detection in 1986, HIV/AIDS has spread at alarming rates in Lesotho. In 2000, King Letsie III declared HIV/AIDS a natural disaster. According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in 2016, Lesotho's adult prevalence rate of 25% is the second highest in the world, following Swaziland.
Infection rates of HIV/AIDS in Mali are estimated to be under 2%, which is relatively low compared to other parts of Africa, although the infection rate is higher among women of childbearing age. However, this figure is most likely deceptive; the problem in attempting to estimate infection rates is that voluntary testing is rare. Women who give birth in a hospital are automatically tested, but others in the general population rarely present themselves for testing. National education campaigns have targeted the general population since the late 1990s, as government and international organizations are concerned that Malians may be vulnerable to the spread of the pandemic. Since 2002, the Supreme National Council for AIDS (HCNLS) has coordinated educational campaigns around sexual activity and condom use to stem HIV infection. Condom use remains low by international standards.
Although Senegal is a relatively underdeveloped country, HIV prevalence in the general population is low at around 0.08 per 1000 people, under 1% of the population. This relatively low prevalence rate is aided by the fact that few people are infected every year– in 2016, 1100 new cases were reported vs 48,000 new cases in Brazil. Senegal's death due to HIV rate, particularly when compared it to its HIV prevalence rate, is relatively high with 1600 deaths in 2016. Almost two times as many women were infected with HIV as men in 2016, and while almost three times as many women were receiving antiretroviral therapy (ARV) as men, only 52% of HIV positive people in Senegal received ARV treatment in 2016.
As of 2012, approximately 1,100,000 people in Malawi are HIV-positive, which represents 10.8% of the country's population. Because the Malawian government was initially slow to respond to the epidemic under the leadership of Hastings Banda (1966–1994), the prevalence of HIV/AIDS increased drastically between 1985, when the disease was first identified in Malawi, and 1993, when HIV prevalence rates were estimated to be as high as 30% among pregnant women. The Malawian food crisis in 2002 resulted, at least in part, from a loss of agricultural productivity due to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS. Various degrees of government involvement under the leadership of Bakili Muluzi (1994–2004) and Bingu wa Mutharika (2004–2012) resulted in a gradual decline in HIV prevalence, and, in 2003, many people living in Malawi gained access to antiretroviral therapy. Condoms have become more widely available to the public through non-governmental organizations, and more Malawians are taking advantage of HIV testing services.
Mozambique is a country particularly hard-hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In fact, according to 2008 UNAIDS estimates, this southeast African nation has the 8th highest HIV rate in the world. With 1,600,000 Mozambicans living with HIV, 990,000 of which are women and children, Mozambique's government realizes that much work must be done to eradicate this infectious disease. To reduce HIV/AIDS within the country, Mozambique has partnered with numerous global organizations to provide its citizens with augmented access to antiretroviral therapy and prevention techniques, such as condom use. A surge toward the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS in women and children has additionally aided in Mozambique's aim to fulfill its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Nevertheless, HIV/AIDS has made a drastic impact on Mozambique; individual risk behaviors are still greatly influenced by social norms, and much still needs to be done to address the epidemic and provide care and treatment to those in need.
UNAIDS has said that HIV/AIDS in Indonesia is one of Asia's fastest growing epidemics. In 2010, it is expected that 5 million Indonesians will have HIV/AIDS. In 2007, Indonesia was ranked 99th in the world by prevalence rate, but because of low understanding of the symptoms of the disease and high social stigma attached to it, only 5-10% of HIV/AIDS sufferers actually get diagnosed and treated.
Nepal's first cases of HIV/AIDS were reported in 1988 and the disease has primarily been transmitted by intravenous drug use and unprotected sex. Among the two, HIV epidemic is largely attributed to sexual transmissions which account for more than 85% of the total new HIV infections.Available data indicate that there was a sharp increase in the number of new infections starting in 1996, coinciding with the outbreak of civil unrest. The infection rate of HIV/AIDS in Nepal among the adult population is estimated to be below the 1 percent threshold which is considered "generalized and severe". However, the prevalence rate masks a concentrated epidemic among at-risk populations such as female sex workers (FSWs), male sex workers (MSWs), injecting drug users (IDUs), men who have sex with men (MSM), Transgender Groups (TG), migrants and Male Labor Migrants(MLMs) as well as their spouses. Cultural factors have also been shown to play a significant role in the spread of HIV and AIDS in Nepal. Some of these cultural factors are related with social taboos which creates challenges for open discussions regarding sex and sexual habits, as do denial, stigma, and discrimination that surround HIV and AIDS. Other factors such as poverty, low levels of education and literacy, political instability combined with gender inequality make the tasks challenging.
Since HIV/AIDS was first reported in Thailand in 1984, 1,115,415 adults had been infected as of 2008, with 585,830 having died since 1984. 532,522 Thais were living with HIV/AIDS in 2008. In 2009 the adult prevalence of HIV was 1.3%. As of 2016, Thailand had the highest prevalence of HIV in Southeast Asia at 1.1 percent, the 40th highest prevalence of 109 nations.
With less than 1 percent of the population estimated to be HIV-positive, Egypt is a low-HIV-prevalence country. However, between the years 2006 and 2011, HIV prevalence rates in Egypt increased tenfold. Until 2011, the average number of new cases of HIV in Egypt was 400 per year. But, in 2012 and 2013 it increased to about 600 new cases and in 2014 it reached 880 new cases per year. According to UNAIDS 2016 statistics, there are about 11,000 people currently living with HIV in Egypt. However, unsafe behaviors among most-at-risk populations and limited condom usage among the general population place Egypt at risk of a broader epidemic.
The relationship between religion and HIV/AIDS is complicated, and often controversial. Controversies have mainly revolved around LGBT people and condom use.
Malawi ranks 170th out of 174 in the World Health Organization lifespan tables; 88% of the population live on less than £2.40 per day; and 50% are below the poverty line.
The portrayal of HIV and AIDS in the media refers to events and trends in the discussion of HIV and AIDS in mass media. HIV leads to a large amount of illness and many deaths. It is unique from most other diseases because there is stigma and discrimination surrounding those affected with the disease. The transmission of HIV, however, is extremely preventable and the media is a very effective way to convey this information. The UNESCO report on Journalism Education says, “Well researched television content can create public awareness about HIV prevention, treatment, care and support can potentially influence the development and implementation of relevant policies.”
The Three Amigos is a series of 20 public service announcements (PSA) using three animated condoms to promote the use of safe sex as protection from contacting the HIV/AIDS virus. First shown at Bangkok's XV International AIDS Conference in 2004, the series was officially launched at the United Nations in 2005 in six languages. By 2012 it had been broadcast or used by NGOs, educational institutions, hospitals and others in 150 countries in 45 languages.
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