#ZeroHIVStigmaDay Zero HIV Stigma Day is a new international HIV awareness day whose inaugural commemoration will be today, 21 July 2023. The day aims to unite people, communities, and entire countries to raise awareness about and take action to end HIV-related stigma that both violates human rights and jeopardizes efforts to end the global HIV epidemic.

Faith communities and faith-based organizations have a long history of caring for children and adolescents living with and affected by HIV. However, these efforts have not been well documented and hence their contributions have not been well understood nor resourced.

This year’s theme for Men’s Health Week, which was from the 12th to the 18th of June 2023, was ‘men’s health and the internet’, which emphasised the importance of technology and social media on mental health.

The PEPFAR/Eswatini (PEPFAR/E) COP23 vision centers around evolving service delivery support to close gaps to 95-95-95 in sub-populations and increase the sustainability of the National response while strengthening health systems and facilitating an enabling environment to increase domestic responsibility and maintain HIV epidemic control.

Although great strides have been made in tackling HIV in recent years, Africa remains the continent most affected by HIV and progress towards ending AIDS is stalling. The COVID-19 pandemic, global inflation, growing debt levels, and a retreat from overseas development assistance by some donors are hampering Africa’s efforts to ramp up national HIV responses and are jeopardizing broader outcomes for health, social development and economic growth.

SIBANE HOTEL - This week, the SADC LUCT HIV Prevention Project for the youth, dubbed THPPY, received a special visit from its counterparts from Botswana. This follows a recommendation by the National AIDS Councils of the 3 countries where the project is being implemented (Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini). The THPPY is an initiative aimed at increasing HIV knowledge on social and digital media, targeted at the youth.

The past two months have been quite eventful for the National HIV and AIDS Response, as it saw the major launch of a MEN ENGAGE Campaign by 2 critical sectors, being the private and public sector. The campaign theme is; Ngingubabe ngiyisukumele imphilo yami which seeks to encourage men to stand up for their health so they live longer, healthy and productive lives.

Today we have a motivational piece from Fiji, told from the perspective of a person living with HIV. We hope this testimonial will change the way we view HIV and be encouraged to live positively with HIV and bring about change in the communities we live in. We bring you the story of Jokapeci Cati who is the Program Manager and founder of the Fiji Network for Positive People (FNP+). This is her self-told story of how she became the first person living openly with HIV in Fiji.

2023 theme is, “Save lives: Decriminalise”.  UNAIDS is highlighting how the decriminalisation of key populations and people living with HIV saves lives and helps advance the end of the AIDS pandemic.

The words people use to talk about HIV affect the way people living with HIV feel about themselves. These words also have an impact on how others view people living with HIV.