compiled by Bruce Wainwright and Martin Flynn
Russian response to HIV ‘virtually non-existent’
The Russian response to the HIV/Aids epidemic has been
“virtually nonexistent,” according to the US Christian Science
Monitor newspaper. One million Russians are estimated to have HIV and the
World Bank says the number of cases could reach between 5.4 and 14.5 million
by 2020.
US abstinence ‘has no effect’
In a recent 10-state survey in the US, the organisation Advocates for Youth
found abstinence programmes no long-term success in changing teenage sexual
behaviour, and only short-term success in delaying the initiation of sex.
Some abstinence programmes even increased the amount of sex teenagers had,
the survey found.
HIV progress in Chile
Chile has succeeded in reducing the rate of HIV infections, despite a conservative
environment which has hindered many prevention efforts. Unlike many other
Latin American countries, “Chile has all of the elements needed to win
the fight against Aids,” according to a Global Fund representative.
Aids widow burned to death
Losing first her husband and then her two daughters to Aids, a widow in the
Indian state of Orissa was then burned to death by her in-laws. Social ostracism
and mistreatment by family
and community members
is common in India.
‘HIV-like virus’ passed on by eating bushmeat
A retrovirus from the same family as HIV has been found in more than a thousand
African hunters, according to Professor Nathan Wolfe of Johns Hopkins University.
The Simian Foamy Virus (SFV) appears to have passed from apes to humans from
bushmeat of the kind that
is being sold illegally in the
UK, Professor Wolfe
warned in the Lancet.
“It must be a contradiction for a prince to be a playboy and a philanthropist:
to be rude to the paparazzi but be kind to Aids victims.”
Jemima Lewis, on Prince Harry’s clash with
photographers outside a London nightclub.
“The Bush administration has been a disaster for Aids.”
Nathan Geffen, South Africa’s Treatment Action Campaign.
“Programmes of abstinence are out of touch with the reality of the
Aids epidemic in Africa.”
Human Rights Watch
“We found that for $27 billion, we could prevent 28 million cases
of HIV by 2010. It was the best investment that humanity could do.”
Bjorn Lomborg, Danish Environmental Assessment Institute.
“The Black media has to get out in front on HIV/Aids. Without the
media, the civil rights movement would be a bird without wings.”
John L Lewis, Georgia civil rights leader.
“For 20 years in this country, gay black men have been dropping
like flies from HIV/Aids...Now HIV/Aids has reached the heterosexual community
they can’t turn their back on it.”
Kevin Bynes of AID Atlanta.
“The [pharmaceutical] industry has a clear agenda: that of profit,
and that is in direct conflict with the responsibilities of the NHS.”
Glasgow GP Dr Des Spence.
“Aids is not a curse from God to Africans or the black people. It
is a tool to control them designed by some evil-minded scientists.”
Wangari Maathai, Kenyan ecologist and 2004 Nobel Prize laureate.
