he starting point for this guideline is the point at which a woman has learnt that she is living with HIV and it therefore covers key issues for providing comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights-related services and support for women living with HIV. As women living with HIV face unique challenges and human rights violations related to their sexuality and reproduction within their families and communities as well as from the health-care institutions where they seek care particular emphasis is placed on the creation of an enabling environment to support more effective health interventions and better health outcomes. This guideline is meant to help countries to more effectively and efficiently plan develop and monitor programmes and services that promote gender equality and human rights and hence are more acceptable and appropriate for women living with HIV taking into account the national and local epidemiological context. It discusses implementation issues that health interventions and service delivery must address to achieve gender equality and support human rights.

From their posts at the center of the pandemic - in the laboratory, the academy, clinics, and community based organizations - experts such as Evelynn Hammonds, Risa Denenberg, Michelle Murrain, and Paul Farmer criticize blind spots in the recognition and treatment of HIV in women and articulate accessible and practical solutions to specific areas of difficulty.

Confronting Discrimination and Inequality in China focuses on the most challenging areas of discrimination and inequality in China, including discrimination faced by HIV/AIDS afflicted individuals, rural populations, migrant workers, women, people with disabilities, and ethnic minorities. The Canadian contributors offer rich regional, national, and international perspectives on how constitutions, laws, policies, and practices, both in Canada and in other parts of the world, battle discrimination and the conflicts that rise out of it. The Chinese contributors include some of the most independent-minded scholars and practitioners in China. Their assessments of the challenges facing China in the areas of discrimination and inequality not only attest to their personal courage and intellectual freedom but also add an important perspective on this emerging superpower.

This open access book is a collection of 12 case studies capturing decades of experience improving health care and outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. Each case study is written by healthcare managers and providers who have implemented health improvement projects using quality improvement methodology, with analysis from global health experts on the practical application of improvement methods. The book shows how frontline providers in health and social services can identify gaps in care, propose changes to address those gaps, and test the effectiveness of their changes in order to improve health processes and outcomes. The chapters feature cases that provide real-life examples of the challenges, solutions, and benefits of improving healthcare quality and clearly demonstrate for readers what quality improvement looks like in practice:Addressing Behavior Change in Maternal, Neonatal, and Child Health with Quality Improvement and Collaborative Learning Methods in GuatemalaHaiti’s National HIV Quality Management Program and the Implementation of an Electronic Medical Record to Drive Improvement in Patient CareScaling Up a Quality Improvement Initiative: Lessons from Chamba District, IndiaPromoting Rational Use of Antibiotics in the Kyrgyz RepublicStrengthening Services for Most Vulnerable Children through Quality Improvement Approaches in a Community Setting: The Case of Bagamoyo District, TanzaniaImproving HIV Counselling and Testing in Tuberculosis Service Delivery in Ukraine: Profile of a Pilot Quality Improvement Team and Its Scale‐Up JourneyImproving Health Care in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Case Book will find an engaged audience among healthcare providers and administrators implementing and managing improvement projects at Ministries of Health in low- to middle-income countries. The book also aims to be a useful reference for government donor agencies, their implementing partners, and other high-level decision makers, and can be used as a course text in schools of public health, public policy, medicine, and development. ACKNOWLEDGMENT:This work was conducted under the USAID Applying Science to Strengthen and Improve Systems (ASSIST) Project, USAID Award No. AID-OAA-A-12-00101, which is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). DISCLAIMER:The contents of this book are the sole responsibility of the Editor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government. div=""^

This book examines HIV/AIDS vulnerabilities, impacts and responses in the socioeconomic and cultural context of Sub-Saharan Africa. With contributions from social scientists and public health experts, the volume identifies gender inequality and poverty as the main causes of the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa.

Carole Campbell examines the position of women in the AIDS epidemic (women living with HIV, and women caring for HIV-infected family members) in a sociocultural context. Campbell draws a connection among women's risk of AIDS, gender roles (particularly adolescent gender role socialization), and male sexual behavior, demonstrating that efforts to contain the spread of the disease to females must also target the male behavior that puts women at risk. This study concludes that compared with men, HIV-infected women face unequal access to care and unequal quality of care. Informed by the moving personal accounts of eleven HIV-infected men and women, this book offers a rare, broad picture of the sociocultural causes and the impact on American society of AIDS among women.

HIV/AIDS is holding firm as one of the worst diseases in history and the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa. This collection of essays shares various case studies from sub-Saharan Africa and one from the African Diaspora that demonstrate how multi-faceted women's lives, and thus their HIV risk, are. Notwithstanding women's marginalisation, the essays in this volume maintain that women in Africa are not merely puppets of globalisation, cultural norms, or biological imperatives, but rather agents in their own livelihoods. In each case we see women presented with many challenges that they must navigate in order to mitigate their HIV risk. Some of the most trying challenges are based on economic and political structures that occur at various scales, from the global to the household. While structural factors are indeed important, the authors in this volume also show that traditional norms, cultural beliefs, and gender roles are equally necessary to consider when planning HIV prevention programs. Gender disempowerment is of particular importance, as it is seen in all of these case studies. In order for the HIV epidemic to dissipate in sub-Saharan Africa, prevention programs that truly understand the local circumstances and strive for gender equality must be instituted immediately and broadly. The book is divided into three parts, each concentrating on a different aspect of women and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. The first part provides case studies of the social, political, economic, cultural, and geographic dynamics that play into women's and girls' risk for the virus. The second part transitions into case studies of prevention, concentrating on condom use. The chapters in the final section expand on Part II by highlighting other ways of promoting HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention across the region. In short, the papers in this volume highlight the complicated decision making processes that women in countries of sub-Saharan Africa must make when it comes to HIV risk. In many cases, women find themselves in economically dependent relationships with men whereby they must stay in sexually risky situations to be able to feed themselves and, very often, their children.