Publications

In 2010, the eight round of Behavioral Sentinel Surveillance (BSS) has been conducted. The study was conducted in 5 main cities/provinces among female entertainment workers, moto-taxi driver and AIDS patients receiving care in the AIDS treatment centers. As results, the consistent condom use with paying clients and with sweethearts has remained relatively stable in the past five years among female entertainment workers who reported having more than 2 clients per day. Still, there are some indications of a slow but steady decline in consistent condom use, and this will need to be addressed in future prevention interventions.

WR Carpenter Estates operates in an area of higher HIV prevalence in Western Highlands Province. The various tea and coffee estates are situated in proximity to and along the Highlands Highway and they employ large numbers of workers from the Highlands provinces. WR Carpenter Estates was invited as a prioritized site for national behavioural surveillance research by the National Department of Health and the NRI BSS team who collected the data that this report is based on in late 2008. The data from this report creates a baseline to support NDoH national behavioral surveillance monitoring and trend data collection. The data also create a baseline for monitoring the NDoH/ADB HIV Prevention in Rural Economic Enclave Project with the WR Carpenters coffee and tea plantation workforce.

A pilot rapid situation assessment was carried out in Thimphu by the Centre for Global Public Health (CGPH), University of Manitoba, Canada with the funding support from Government of Bhutan during October 2009 to January 2010. The overall goal of this assessment was to develop and test field methods designed to assess the location and nature of sexual behaviours and networks in urban settings in Bhutan.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPR Korea) Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS 2009) was carried out in 2009 by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) of DPR Korea with financial and technical support from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). MICS is an international household survey programme developed by UNICEF. MICS provides up-to-date information on the situation of children and women and measures key indicators that allow countries to monitor progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other internationally agreed-upon commitments. MICS 2009 is part of the fourth global round of MICS surveys (MICS4). It follows the national nutrition survey in 2004 and previous MICS conducted in DPR Korea in 1998 and 2000. For the first time, MICS 2009 surveyed all 10 provinces of DPR Korea.

Violence against women and their children (VAWC) occurring in intimate partner relationships in domestic situations is a serious problem. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that half of the women who died from homicide were killed by their current or former husbands and partners. They succumbed to gunshot wounds, burns, hemorrhages and other physical injuries resulting from various forms of abuse. In the Philippines, the extent of VAWC can be gleaned from the varying trends in the number of general violence against women (VAW) cases from different government agencies. The number of VAW cases reported to the police increased seven-fold from 1,100 in 1996 to 7,383 in 2004.

People who inject drugs should benefit from the large increases in the global resources available for HIV. However, it is difficult to measure how much of global HIV spending actually goes into harm reduction. Although harm reduction is relatively invisible in national and international budgets, it is possible to calculate a plausible estimate of HIV-related harm reduction expenditure in low and middle income countries between 2007 and 2009. These results demonstrate the degree to which the international community is failing to address the issue of HIV among injecting drug using populations. Despite the difficulties in identifying harm reduction expenditure, and of obtaining accurate estimates, there is no doubt that the overall volume of spending on HIV-related harm reduction is small. 

This study will enable the Government of Nepal, MoHP, national programme management entity namely HSCB and NCASC to track the influx of and distribution of resources from various donor agencies to HIV Programmes and assess the gap to meet the involved population coverage. This study complements the National AIDS Spending Assessment (NASA) which is more focused on the spending aspect of HIV response /programmes in Nepal.

In this report, WHO outlines how countries can modify their financing systems to move more quickly towards universal coverage and to sustain those achievements. The report synthesizes new research and lessons learnt from experience into a set of possible actions that countries at all stages of development can consider and adapt to their own needs. It suggests ways the international community can support efforts in low-income countries to achieve universal coverage.

The Violence Against Women (VAW) project team was commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) South Pacific office in July 2010, to conduct a host of VAW activities as components of the Project in Fiji. This report is one of the main outcomes of that partnership between the College of Medicine, Nursing & Health Science (formerly known as Fiji School of Medicine) /Fiji National University, Ministry of Health Fiji and WHO.

Violence against women stems from discriminatory social attitudes, norms and practices that perpetuate structural gender inequality. Grantees of the UN Trust Fund target prevention approaches to confront these views at the individual, family and community level. This report highlights practices from 2010 that contribute substantially to our understanding of what works, and what doesn’t, in ending violence against women. Results focus on the UN Trust Fund’s investments in three key areas: prevention, expanding access to survivor services, and strengthening implementation of laws, policies and action plans to end violence against women.