Hadassah-Israel Seeks Volunteers to Offer Support to HIV-Positive Women in Israel

-- an Israeli women's Zionist volunteer organization -- is seeking volunteers to offer personal and emotional support to some of the approximately 1,000 HIV-positive women in Israel, the Jerusalem Post reports. The Hadassah-Israel effort -- announced on Sunday in Jerusalem at Hadassah University Hospital -- will connect volunteers with HIV-positive women who are "married, single, childless, with healthy children or those who themselves were infected at birth," according to the Post. The majority of HIV-positive women in Israel are former immigrants, mostly from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union. Dr. Dan Englehard, head of Hadassah's children's AIDS clinic, at the announcement said that "unfortunately" in Israel only pregnant women who are considered to be at high risk of HIV infection are tested for the virus, and even then some HIV-positive women give birth to HIV-positive infants because the women are not considered at risk and are not tested, according to the Post (Siegel, Jerusalem Post, 1/3).

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