How to start SCORA in your own country Think globally and act locally!
One of the strengths of IFMSA/SCORA is that we work together locally, world wide. Through campaigning, workshops and peer education we intend to increase the awareness among medical students, as well as in the general population, of safe sexual behaviour and HIV prevention, of gender equality and women’s health. Knowing that these are global issues, yet complex and multifaceted, we encourage medical students to voluntarily take active part in local campaigning for better health as a crucial aspect of our work.
Step-by-step Starting up SCORA • • •
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Find out about your National Member Organisation of IFMSA. Get in contact with the President and find out about the structure of the organisation. Find a few students interested in Reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. Learn about the situation in your own country and about the local/national organisations involved in reproductive health: what has been done so far concerning reproductive health and HIV/AIDS? Are there peer education projects on sexual health? Get in contact with an active SCORA from another country that can share its experience, the problems faced and the success achieved (The Buddy system). Contact the International SCORA director (scorad@ifmsa.
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org) who can provide you with up-to-date information about current SCORA activities and subscribe you to the international SCORA mailing list for exchange of ideas with other NORAs (National Officer on Reproductive Health including AIDS). Now that you have a team, local connections with other organisations, a SCORA network internationally, you are ready to act locally.
What to do?
With a dedicated team, take part in on-going activities in you universities or other universities, and organisations. • Look in your university for the programs concerning reproductive health and try to organise an event: lecture about sexual education, sexually transmitted diseases. • Sell ribbons on World AIDS Day (Dec 1st) • Arrange a discussion about women’s empowerment on the International Women’s Day (March 8th) • Start a mailing list between students in your university to exchange ideas and enthusiasm. • Suggest a talk show. Now that you have an idea about “how to start SCORA in your own country”, all you need is a couple of students, enthusiasm, and dedication!
Introduction to some reproductive health related topics HIV/AIDS
SCORA does its best to raise awareness among medical students as well as the general public.on all aspects of HIV/AIDS with the help of a variety of actions, such as lectures, exhibitions, distribution of condoms and pamphlets, charity concerts or parties. Recently, we started emphasizing the importance of human rights approach when it comes to tackling HIV/AIDS issues. Medical students all over the world have witnessed how human rights of PLWHA are being neglected and violated by means of care refusal, suboptimal care, excessive precautions and humiliation too often. Therefore, providing the training on all aspects of HIV for health care students and professionals is crucial in achieving universal access to treatment, care and support of PLWHA. Stigma and discrimination towards PLWHA among general population still, after over 25 years since the beginning of the epidemic, remains high in all the regions of the world. This still represents a major obstacle in decreasing the number of people affected by HIV. How important is to deal with the problem of stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS, says new UNAIDS vision statement: “zero new HIV-infections, zero new AIDS-related deaths, zero discrimination.“ IlluminAIDS is a recently started SCORA project that wants to
address the problem of stigma and discrimination People Living With HIV/AIDS face in their life.
Gender
What is the difference between sex and gender? Sex includes the biological and physiological characteristics of men and women while gender is socially constructed roles and behaviours. The UN has approved, as one of the Millennium Development Goals, to promote gender equality and empower women. Why is gender important? Women make up 70% of the worlds poor and only hold 6 % of seats in National Cabinets. This gives them less power to protect their rights. Women have less access to education which is proved to be an important factor for good health. Gender issues concerns both men and women. The culture could expect men to be more risk taking and there is an expectation of men to be more violent. This leads to harm for both men and women. HIV/ AIDS increases more among women today but they have less access to treatment.