Stories

In Bangladesh, mobile clinics help fight malaria in remote hills

Joykumar Chakma, 28, has never been treated by a doctor. “My father was the village mendicant. If we got seriously ill, the family sacrificed a pig or a hen and he believed the illness would pass. This was the custom in my community,” said Joykumar. “So many children used to die of malaria in those more

Haiti’s fight against AIDS and tuberculosis

Mirlande Louis, a young sex worker in Haiti, is among the groups most vulnerable to HIV and AIDS with a prevalence rate of 8 percent as compared to 1.9 percent for the Haitian population in general. But thanks to the training she has received at the UNDP-supported Foundation for Reproductive Health more

Iran gains ground in battle against malaria

Torah, a construction worker in search of a new job and better prospects, was travelling west into Iran from Afghanistan. His second day on the move, he was hit with fever and chills, then excruciating pain – the first signs of malaria. He asked locals for help and was referred to Sadegh, a voluntee more

AIDS in Gaza: “I know, so I am not afraid”

Fifty-year-old Um Mohammad, a mother of nine, has been living with HIV for 16 years in the Gaza Strip in the occupied Palestinian territory. She was nursing her baby girl when tests revealed she was HIV positive. “We found out that I got the HIV while I was still breastfeeding my youngest. I got it more

Zimbabwe: Turning the tide in the fight against HIV and AIDS

Working as a volunteer at the Kuwadzana Polyclinic, a public health centre in Harare, Timothy Sandramu, 35, painfully recalls his distress in 2005 when he tested HIV-positive. “I was brought here in a wheelchair by my mother,” Timothy says, noting that he had been ailing for some time, culminating more

Improving the lives of people living with HIV and AIDS in the Pacific

J.* learned she was HIV-positive when she was tested during an antenatal care visit. She returned to her village in Fiji and disclosed her status to her mother. Because of stigma associated with HIV and AIDS, her mother rejected her and she was ultimately forced to leave her community and home. She more