Compiled by Martin Flynn and Bruce Wainwright
Ex South-African President Nelson Mandela met British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown in London last month to work together to cancel debt and bring trade justice to the poorest nations.
Mandela addressed a Make Poverty History rally in Trafalgar Square saying 2005 offered ‘a unique opportunity’ to fight world poverty and tackle HIV and Aids. Meanwhile, Brown used the UK’s position as chair of the G8 richest countries and president of the EU this year to launch a £5.5 billion Aids fund. He pressurised other finance ministers at the economic summit in Switzerland and pledged nearly £1 billion of British money to help fund an international vaccine and immunisation programme.
Attempts by the new Spanish government of Jose Marie Zapatero to liberalise
the country have run into stiff opposition from the Roman Catholic Church.
In particular, the two have clashed on the issues of gay civil rights and
promoting condom use to cut record HIV and STI rates.
Zapatero came to power in a general election last March, just days after a
devastating bomb killed 200 commuters at Madrid's Atocha railway station.
Spain then withdrew its troops from Iraq and incurred the wrath of the Bush
administration in the US as well as the Catholic Church at home.
Speaking on behalf of the Spanish Bishops' Conference in January, Bishop Martinez
Camino was reported to have said, “condoms have a place in the global
prevention of Aids”.
He added that the Spanish Roman Catholic Church was willing to cooperate with
the government of Jose Maria Zapatero which has launched a campaign promoting
condom use to tackle the problem of HIV/Aids.
But after just a few hours, a further unsigned statement from the Bishops’
Conference appeared to retract this and stated: “It's not true that
the church has changed its doctrine on condoms,” and added that Bishop
Camino's comments “must be understood in the context of Catholic doctrine,
which holds that the use of contraceptives implies immoral sexual behaviour.”
They further added that sexual abstinence and monogamy were the “only
successful” way to prevent the spread of HIV.
A spokesperson for the Spanish government in the Congress of Deputies responded: “It seems that [Martinez Camino] has received instructions to retract
what had been common sense.” And the Catalan daily newspaper El Periodico
added in an editorial: “What is truly immoral is the Church's rejection
of a method that saves lives.”
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero (pictured) has incurred the wrath of both US President Bush for withdrawing the troops from Iraq and with the Catholic Church at home for agreeing equal rights for lesbians and gays and advocating condom use to fight HIV and Aids.
Far too many businesses in Africa, Asia and Russia are reacting too
slowly to the threat of economic damage posed by the Aids crisis, according
to a recent survey.
The survey by the Harvard School of Public Health was published at the recent
World Economic summit in Davos.
With 14,000 new HIV cases worldwide each day, the potential to cripple economies
and destroy workforces has been largely ignored.
Of 9,000 corporate leaders in 104 countries surveyed, more than 70 per cent
had no HIV/Aids strategy of any kind, and only 14 per cent of companies had
carried out 'quantitative HIV-Aids risk assessments'.
Two-thirds of business leaders did not know, or could not estimate, the HIV
prevalence rate within their own work forces and did not know how to prevent
the spread of HIV among their employees.
Only in countries where the HIV prevalence rates are above 20 per cent did
businesses become sufficiently concerned enough to offer advice and treatment,
the report found.
Among the 'next wave' of countries expected to be hit by the epidemic, including
China, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Russia, the lack of formal HIV and Aids
policies is even more marked.
The survey concludes that a key priority for businesses worldwide is to establish
policies based on 'non-discrimination and confidentiality'.
UNAIDS deputy executive director, Kathleen Cravero added: “We know it
is not just socially responsible, it is also a good investment. Any company
that has really taken this seriously and reached out… has not only made
a difference for their employees but for an entire community.”
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is facing a funding shortfall of
US$2 billion, according to a study published by the charity ActionAid.
This means the WHO commitment to put three million people with HIV/Aids on
antiretrovirals by the end of 2005, is now likely to be knocked off course.
But a joint statement from the WHO, UNAIDS and the Global Fund pointed out
that by the end of last year, 700,000 people were receiving treatment with
antiretroviral drugs; seventy-five per cent higher than in 2003.
“2004 was the year that we moved from tens of thousands in treatment
to hundreds of thousands,” said UNAIDS director Dr Peter Piot.
Although many donors have promised major funding increases, these have not
been forthcoming.
The Bush Administration is likely to include a request for $3.2 billion in
Aids funding for the 2006 budget, but the US fair share of funding should
be twice that amount, according to activist group Health GAP.
Meanwhile, South Africa, India and Nigeria between them make up forty-one
per cent of the gap between the number of sufferers currently treated and
the three million target.
“The rhetoric from India, Nigeria and South Africa has got better,”
said Dr Jim Kim, director of the WHO’s HIV/Aids department. “But
they still have to become much more serious about scaling up treatment.”
He added that countries had to start investing their own money to kick-start
treatment, rather than sitting back and waiting for grants from the Global
Fund.
An HIV positive South African mother's struggle to bring up her daughter alone
in rural poverty is the tragic tale for Oscar nominated movie Yesterday. Director
Darrell Roodt shot the film in the Zulu language in an area which has HIV
rates of over 40 per cent. Yesterday is the name of the lead character, who
is abandoned by her miner husband and has to fend for herself and raise her
daughter whilst facing an imminent death from Aids.
“This story is lived every day in South Africa,” Roodt said. Producer
Anant Singh added: “We had the apartheid struggle now here is another
struggle as we try to defeat HIV and Aids.”
No Incapacity Benefit cuts before 2008
Government plans to overhaul Incapacity Benefit (IB) are unlikely to come
into effect
until 2008. The government hopes to cut the number on the benefit by a million.
At the moment 2.7 million people are on IB, at a total cost of £7.6
million a year, and most were transferred onto it and off Unemployment Benefit
in the 1980s and 1990s. It is estimated that only a few thousand HIV positive
people are on IB but the government is proposing cutting the rate
to that of Income Support.
Family planning and GU services in Wales are to be combined and an extra half million pounds will be spent in addition to the £14.1 millions already ring-fenced, according to Welsh health minister Jane Hutt. She said extra investment and modernisation of sexual health services was necessary and the 48-hour target for STI testing could still be met.
Record numbers are HIV positive in Scotland “The message that people should not have casual, unprotected sex has never been more important” said Professor David Goldberg, a consultant who helped to compile Scotland's record HIV figures. Hitting the all-time high of 365 new cases diagnosed last year, the figures surpass those recorded during the HIV panic in 1986 and some experts fear that the real figure may be much higher.
Based on 60 school visits, Ofsted inspectors report that some
high schools in England are failing to provide sex
education and information on other vital health issues. They say that there
is a shortage of suitably trained staff and time is often used to teach other
subjects such as citizenship.
Although the last case of a healthcare worker being infected with HIV through a needlestick injury was in 1999, there have been around 2,140 incidents of occupational exposure between 1996 and 2004. Nine UK healthcare workers have been infected with hepatitis C by such injuries over the period. NHS workers affected by needlestick injuries are given routine post exposure prophylaxis (PEP) of a combination of antiretroviral drugs
Health Secretary, John Reid, has promised that those with long-term conditions such as HIV could soon be receiving information by text messages and emails on how to stay fit and healthy, or even pick up health advice at their local barber.
A new BMA report suggests that many policies designed for urban areas, simply do not work in rural areas. Healthcare in a Rural Setting found lack of transport and the centralisation of health services meant many people living in the “rural idyll” had difficulty accessing the services.
Even though HIV is increasingly prevalent amongst women giving birth, and
the number of births to HIV positive mothers is increasing, the number of
babies being born with the virus shows a dramatic fall,
according to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. This is
due, in part, to the 80 per cent
of pregnant women now being diagnosed and treated pre-delivery across Britain.The
Royal College charted
over 5,000 pregnancies among HIV positive mothers between 1989 and the end
of 2004 and found that just eight babies were born with the virus and none
had died last year.
Although unsafe sex may be dangerous, it does not constitute criminal liability in itself, according to a ruling by the Dutch Supreme Court. This, in effect, means the end to the prosecution of people with HIV who have unsafe sex without disclosing their status in the Netherlands.
The number of people dying of Aids in South Africa is more than three times higher than government figures suggest, the country’s medical research council has said. 112,000 died of HIV-related illnesses in 2000-1, almost three times the number given by the Department of Home Affairs.
Following an application to the courts by a local medical officer, Eie Enhorn, a Swedish man with HIV, was detained for a year-and-a-half in a compulsory isolation hospital. The European Court of Human Rights has since ruled that Sweden was in violation of the European Convention and awarded Enhorn damages and costs.
Aids kills about ten people every hour in Malawi and the government is increasingly unable to cope with the crisis, according to health minister Heatherwick Ntaba. Spending $12 per capita on healthcare, Malawi is unable to find the money necessary to develop proper strategies against HIV, while simultaneously losing medical personnel to illness or better jobs overseas.
Immigration minster Des Brown has admited that medical checks are routinely carried out on migrants in UK airports. 170,000 TB tests were done at Heathrow and 10,000 at Gatwick in 2004. 10,000 migrants were found to be positive to TB.
“It was spectacular footage, those huge waves, the crushed buildings.
With Aids in Africa, you can’t see the tidal wave of despair.”
Actress Kristin Scott Thomas
“Eight thousand people die of Aids each day; in terms of mortality,
that’s a tsunami every fortnight.”
Annick Hamel, of Medecins Sans Frontieres.
“This was the worst experience of my life. When I went for my HIV test
results, they gave me a paper with a red cross inscribed on it. I felt that
my life had come to an end.”
Nihobavuka Esperance, a Rwandese widow of 44.
“High quality personal, social and health education is vital to young
people’s development in and out of the classroom.”
David Bell, Ofsted Chief Inspector.
“People whose condition causes them pain or fatigue should not be forced
to look for employment.”
Jon Knight, of the disability charity Leonard Cheshire.
“Other sick people club together to lobby parliament, but no one wants
to join a gonorrhoea action group.”
A letter published in the Times newspaper.
“Trying to talk to young people about HIV/Aids is like trying to fight
a dead animal.”
A health worker in Gaborne, Botswana.
