AFRO-NETS> The Society for African Women and AIDS

The Society for African Women and AIDS
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The Society for African Women and AIDS (SWAA) has teamed up with the
GENDER-AIDS email forum and the Fondation du Present for their VIIth
Annual Conference to be held in Dakar, Senegal from 14-17 December
1998.

The main theme for the conference is: Expanding the HIV/AIDS Response
to Enhance Men's Participation.

Over the past few weeks the forum has supported the conference by fo-
cusing discussions on men's involvement and participation in the re-
sponse to HIV/AIDS. You can read follow the discussion so far at:

http://www.hivnet.ch:8000/gender-aids/thread?216

The aims of the SWAA conference initiative are to:
- Increase awareness of SWAA, the conference and some of the main is-
  sues likely to be addressed at the conference;
- To enable the 900 GENDER-AIDS members to participate virtually in the
  conference and to share experiences before, during and after the con-
  ference;
- Encourage input from national and regional networks and organisations
  who cannot attend the conference.

Some of the conference sub-themes are familiar to forum members and in-
clude:
1. Vulnerability to infection men, women and youth;
2. Men in the response to HIV infection;
3. Obstacles to men s participation;
4. Strategies for community-based communication;
5. Vertical transmission;
6. Risk factors;
7. Factors of behaviour change;
8. Condom issues;
9. Accessibility to antirectroviral therapeutics;
10. Socialization of youths;
11. Ethical, legal and psychosocial reponses;
12. Responses for a greater participation of men and young people;
13. PHIV testimonies;
14. PHIV sexuality.

During the conference daily bulletins will be posted and the rappor-
teur's summary will be made available soon after.

To join the discussion and receive daily bulletins, send and email to:
<gender-aids@hivnet.ch>
with the word 'join' in the subject line.

To support this initiative and the conference you are invited to par-
ticipate in discussions by sharing:
- general information and experiences from individuals, organisations,
  countries or sub-regions (including electronic resources);
- examples of successful and unsuccessful approaches in the area of
  male involvement or on any of the 14 sub-themes;
- information about existing abstracts and presentations in these areas;
- bibliographic listings of relevant papers/database searches;
- any issues you would like to see raised at the conference itself.

Please send all contributions, comments or questions about this initia-
tive, to GENDER-AIDS at <gender-aids@hivnet.ch>

With best regards,

SWAA Senegal
mailto:swaa@telecomplus.sn

Moderator, GENDER-AIDS
mailto:gender-aids@hivnet.ch

Fondation du Present
mailto:aids98.community@hivnet.ch

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The SWAA Conference Initiative is supported by the Fondation du Pres-
ent, SWAA and UNAIDS.

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