UK promises more Aids funding
The UK government has pledged to spend an extra £1 billion up to 2015 in aid to HIV and Aids programmes around the world. Secretary of State at the Department for International Development (DfID) Douglas Alexander said this represents a 20 per cent increase in our commitment to the Global Fund for Aids, TB and Malaria.
The UK is now the second largest bilateral donor on HIV and Aids and has also pledged £105 million to support UNICEF’s ‘Born free from HIV’ campaign for children in developing countries.

Thailand to keep generic HIV drugs scheme
Thailand’s new public health minister Chiya Sasomsub promised last month to keep the country’s controversial generic drugs programme. Compulsory licenses have been issued in Thailand which temporarily suspend drug patent protection and allow production of copycat drugs but they have angered western pharmaceutical giants. Thailand already produces generic copies of two key HIV medicines – Kaletra and Efavirenz and is planning to expand the scheme to include cancer drugs.

Chinese activist faces subversion trial
Veteran Chinese HIV activist Hu Jia is facing charges of incitement to subvert state power. He was arrested in late December and human rights activists say his detention is part of a crackdown on government critics by Beijing authorities leading up to the Olympic Games in August. Jia has led the campaign for the rights of HIV positive people in China, many of whom received the virus whilst donating blood.

‘Women of Africa bear the brunt of human rights abuses’
Activists from 30 sub Saharan African countries rallied in Burkino Faso last month against the abuse of women with HIV and Aids.
“There is no doubt that lots of human rights violations characterise the HIV/Aids pandemic,” Bernice Heloo, president of the Society for Women and Aids in Africa (SWAA) told the meeting.

“Women are the ones who most severely bear the brunt of human rights abuse, have been prone to violence and other atrocities related to their gender and seropositive status,” she said.

“Many women have been driven from their marital homes, stripped of their hard-earned possessions and separated from their children and people they love.”

Although sub-Saharan Africa is home to just 10 per cent of the world’s population, it is the area of the world most ravaged by HIV and Aids.

Over 60 per cent of the 30-odd million people in the world with HIV live in the region and young women are now the most affected.

India & Saudi Arabia back HIV marriage tests
The government of the Indian state of Maharastra, including the vast urban conurbation of Mumbai, has approved a move to make force HIV testing of all couples before marriage. If the move becomes law it will be the first state in India to have compulsory HIV tests before marriage.

“There are an increasing number of cases where a person does not know, or deliberately hides, his or her HIV status and goes ahead with an arranged marriage,” lawyer Jaya Nair told the BBC.

Whilst India has the second highest number of HIV cases in the world, after South Africa, so far the government has not enforced mandatory HIV tests.

Whilst families rich and poor go through horoscopes and planet charts before arranged marriages, few consider HIV testing, Prajakta Bengali said.

Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia premarital HIV tests have become compulsory from this year.

Eire lowers tax on condoms
The Irish Republic government has cut the VAT rate on condoms from 21 per cent to 13.5 per cent following campaigns by
safe sex and pregnancy advice groups.

The reduction should see the price of a 12 pack of condoms coming down from 13.20 to 12.40 Euros and a three pack from 4.20 to 3.9 Euros.

Caroline Spillane, director of the Irish Crisis Pregnancy Agency, said that condoms in Ireland were among the most expensive in Europe and not free under the country’s National Health service.

A national study in Eire last year found that 20 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds said that the high cost of condoms would discourage their use of them.

But the Irish Family Planning Association said more should be done.
“It would be better if condoms were sold tax free,” said the IFPA’s Audrey Simpson: “They are not luxury items, they are essential in reducing rates of sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies.”

Preparing for Mexico...
A meeting in Monaco in January brought together HIV community leaders from across the world to prepare for ‘Living 2008: The Positive Leadership Summit’, to be held in Mexico City in the days before the XVII International Aids Conference this August.

Hosted by Princess Caroline of Monaco and co-organised by the Global Network of HIV Positive People (GNP+) and the International HIV/Aids Alliance, the meeting laid plans to bring 350 HIV community leaders from around the world to Mexico to campaign further for the rights of all HIV positive people.

If it goes ahead the conference will be the twelfth international conference for people with HIV. The last HIV international community conference planned in 2005 in Peru by GNP+ was cancelled at the last minute because of a shortage of
financial sponsorship.

Zimbabwe facing HIV drug shortages
Pharmacies in Zimbabwe are facing serious drug shortages as result of the country’s ongoing economic crisis and rampant inflation. And at least half of the country’s pharmacies are out of stock, local media reported in January.

Drugs for HIV, TB and Malaria are now only to be found in only a quarter of pharmacies across the country and the remaining drugs are too expensive for even higher-paid workers to afford.

“Most pharmacies can no longer afford to import drugs so the few that are still importing tend to be expensive,” said Ishe Nkomo, president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Zimbabwe.

One month’s supply of a common antiretroviral drug now costs over 85 million Zimbabwe dollars or US$2,800 and bottles of simple mosquito repellents are selling for as much as US$667 each. As the population of the country starve and die, President Mugabe clings to power and refuses to step down. The country which was once one of the richest in Africa has been reduced to a hyperinflation basket case.

And an estimated 16,000 Zimbabwean nurses have been granted visas to work in Britain during the last eight years.

Homophobic mob abuse in Jamaica
HIV and gay rights activists have called on the Jamaican government to do more to protect homosexual men and lesbian women.

The move comes after an angry mob attacked men at their home in Mandeville at the end of January, leaving one man seriously injured and another missing.

The men who were attacked called the police for protection but it took 90 minutes for them to arrive. HIV positive people and men who have sex with men are discriminated heavily in Jamaica. Many are reluctant to reveal their sexuality or their HIV positive status because of fears of violence. Meanwhile rates of new transmissions of HIV in Jamaica are now among the highest in the world.