Seven years ago, HIV and AIDS were having a devastating impact on Africa’s truck drivers. Without access to health services along their routes, HIV was left unchecked, and, just like the goods drivers were transporting, able to move along corridors into communities across the continent. The impact of this was not only being felt by…
On June 3, Kenya’s new ‘National Strategy on HIV and AIDS and STI Programming along Transport Corridors in Africa’ was launched by the National AIDS Control Council (NACC) and the National AIDS and STI Control Programme (NASCOP) with support from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). North Star Alliance has long been a staunch advocate for the inclusion…
Tuberculosis (TB) is both preventable and curable. Despite this, 8.7 million people contracted TB in 2011, and 1.4 million people died from the disease. Forty percent of the global toll was in Africa alone. This week, in recognition of World Tuberculosis Day, we would like to call attention to the devastating effects TB is having…
Sustainability is word that is often thrown around in the non-profit sector. In fact, we get asked about the sustainability of our Roadside Wellness Centres quite often. Since mobile workers, like truck drivers, are constantly on the move, it can be challenging to incorporate income generating activities to help offset the cost of some of…
Last November we featured the launch of an exciting and innovative pilot project aimed at delivering important health and safety information to 75 truck drivers in South Africa. The pilot, which ran for two months between November and December 2011, reached truck drivers via text messages covering a range of topics with one SMS per day,…
This year, we enter the fourth decade of an epidemic that has had a profound impact on humanity. While part of this impact reflects the devastating human toll AIDS has had in communities around the globe, more recently it has also reflected tremendous feats of innovation and growing leadership from a diverse group of stakeholders….
Good day. Welcome to North Star SMS wellness support. If you want to stop getting the SMSs, send a please-call-me at any time. This month, North Star Alliance and Cell-Life, a not-for-profit organisation that provides technology for the management of HIV, launched an innovative SMS-based pilot programme designed to deliver important health training information to…
On 26-27 August, North Star Alliance and global security services company G4S teamed up to conduct cricket clinics with young people focused on raising awareness about sexually transmitted infections (STI) and HIV in Malawi, and about North Star Alliance’s local roadside health clinic. The event was hosted by Mpumelelo “Pommie” Mbangwa, a former cricketer with…
This photo was taken in Mwanza, Malawi by Audhriech-Kadyakapita, North Star Alliance clinician at our Mwanza Wellness Centre, where, this week, we launched a brand new HIV testing centre (on the right side). The opening of this new HIV Testing Centre is both exciting and significant, not only because it will allow us to greatly…
On 26-29 July, North Star Alliance teamed up with Art for AIDS International to pilot a series of innovative visual-arts-based HIV workshops with truck drivers and sex workers in the community of Beitbridge, Zimbabwe. These workshops, led by Art for AIDS International Executive Director Hendrikus Bervoets, use a combination of fact-based knowledge sharing, experiential learning, peer-peer…
