Compiled by Martin Flynn & Bruce Wainwright
Law & Order slammed for increasing HIV stigma
Popular
TV show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has been criticised by US activists
for perpetrating false science about HIV as well portraying HIV positive people
as both murderers and victims.
An episode of the NBC New York-based cop series entitled ‘Strain’,
aired in the US in October, told the story of a string of murders of gay men
carried out by a gay Aids activist. The killer targets the men because they
have contracted a new ‘super-strain’ of HIV while having unsafe
sex fuelled by crystal meth. His lawyer tries to justify his actions saying
the HIV positive gay men were infecting other gay men with a drug-resistant
virus.New York’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis called the show irresponsible
for failing to acknowledge that the ‘supervirus’ hyped by US health
officials earlier this year, and believed to be the basis of the show’s
plotline, has never actually materialised.Damon Romine, of the Gay and Lesbian
Alliance Against Defamation, said: “The Law & Order franchise has
long made gays and lesbians the victims or villains. In this episode, they
managed to do both with a story based on an untruth about an HIV ‘super-virus’.”
HIV back on the increase in Thailand
Despite substantial expenditure on medical care and free antiretroviral drugs,
Thailand’s infection rates are, once more, on the increase. Following
a highly effective campaign in the 1980s and 90s led by Senator Mechai Viravaidya,
widely known as ‘Mr Condom’, Thailand’s HIV epidemic appeared
to be under control and infection rates were falling. Infections officially
rose to 19,000 last year, but are estimated to be nearer 25,000. However,
the figures are still well below the 143,000 infections recorded in 1991.
Viravaidya said the number of diagnoses was growing fast because of unprotected
sex, especially among young people. “We are going back to the days of
ignorance. There’s no reason why next year it won’t be 100,000
cases.” Viravaidya went on to blame government inactivity for the rising
figures, though a government spokesman pointed out: “In the past two
to three years, there has also been bird flu and dengue fever prevention,
as well as disease prevention because of food safety and cigarettes.”
But with spending on HIV programmes in Thailand falling from $82 million in
1997 to $25 million last year, the UN Development Program has warned that
there were clear signs of a resurgence of Aids.
1,400 children dying each day from HIV
Each day, 1,400 children under the age of 15 die of Aids, according to a UNICEF
report launched to coincide with World Aids Day alongside a global campaign,
‘Unite For Children’.
The vast majority of deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa and by the end of
2010, the report estimates that there could be 18 million Aids orphans. “The
needs of children are being overlooked when strategies on HIV prevention and
treatment are drafted,” suggests the report, “and investments
in prevention continue to be pitifully inadequate.”Paediatric antiretrovirals
cost four to eight times more than those for adults, and less than one per
cent of the four million HIV-infected children receive medicines such as antibacterial
agents which prevent pneumonia and cost just three cents a day. UNICEF’s
executive director Ann Veneman said that children were the “invisible
face” of a very visible disease and were missing out on the help that
adults received.
Fewer than five per cent of HIV positive children have access to treatment
and only 10 per cent of pregnant women have access to services that can prevent
mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
However, although Sub-Saharan Africa is the focus, UNICEF says that 80 per
cent of all those living with HIV in eastern Europe and central Asia are under
30 and that rates of infection are climbing faster there than anywhere else
in the world.
HIV positive UN staff win support from Kofi Annan
UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan (pictured front, centre) held a meeting in Geneva
last month with openly HIV positive staff from the organisation and praised
them for their courage and leadership.
Pictured with the Secretary General are Dr Peter Piot (to the right of Annan)
and (extreme right standing) British worker Kate Thomson.Thomson said: “The
Secretary-General’s gesture of support of the group sends a clear message
that people living with HIV are valued members of the UN family, and is of
immense significance to those thousands of positive colleagues who are among
us, often too afraid to reveal
their status.”To find out more about the UN HIV positive staff group,
email Kate Thomson at
thomsonk@unaids.org
Save the lives of women through better equality
Gender equality and better reproductive health could save the lives
of two million women and 30 million children over the next decade, and help
lift millions more around the world out of poverty, according to the annual
UN State of World Population report, published in October.
Enhancing the position of women would lead to “improved economic prospects,
smaller families, healthier and more literate children, lower HIV prevalence
rates and reduced incidence of harmful traditional practices,” the report
said.“We cannot make poverty history until women enjoy their full social,
cultural, economic and political rights,” said the fund’s executive
director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid.
This conclusion was illustrated by a group of half a dozen HIV positive women
in the Indian city of Madurai, learning to negotiate safe sex practises, spreading
information among housewives and breaking down the barriers of stigma and
discrimination. As a result, in a country where sex is still regarded as a
taboo subject, there are fewer family break-ups, parents are accepting their
HIV positive children instead of dumping them at orphanages, and uninfected
people are standing by their partners.Another example of good practise cited
by the UN was at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Here
Nikkole Salter, who was raised in a struggling Los Angeles neighbourhood,
and her friend Danai Gurira, have teamed up to write and produce In the Continuum,
a play about Aids from the perspective of both an African-American woman and
an African woman. They wanted to humanise the statistics without preaching
and the show opens with the actresses as children chanting:“Cousin’s
on the corner in the welfare lineBrother’s in the slammer, he committed
a crime Preacher’s in the club on the down low creepAnd yo mama’s
in the gutter screamin’ HIV”
• www.unfpa.org
Voice of black gays with HIV dies
LeRoy Whitfield, a famous US HIV activist and columnist, died in New York
last month of Aids-related complications. He was 36 and had lived with HIV
for 15 years.
A rare visible voice of Aids among black Americans, Whitfield was a long-term
survivor who would not take HIV medications because of possible side effects.As
his health deteriorated he told the story of his struggle with the illness
in regular columns for HIV Plus, Vibe and Poz magazines. In one of his last
articles for HIV Plus, he wrote: “I’ve argued against taking meds
for so many years that now, with my [T-cell and viral load] numbers stacked
against me, it’s hard to stop.”
words
“HIV prevention
programmes are too often aimed at non-positive people, leaving people with
HIV, many of whom lead active, healthy lives, with very little information
to enable them to make informed decisions about how to protect both their
own health and other positive peoples.”
Deborah Jack, chief executive of National Aids Trust, commenting
on the ‘Poz Party’ row
“When I go to China to address the problem [of HIV and Aids] I’m
reminded of the
practises in the early 1980s in America. There (China) stigma and
discrimination are rampant. There’s a lot of misunderstanding of this
disease.”
Dr David Ho, leading HIV researcher
“What we do is, we tell them to lie because we don’t want them
(children) thrown out of school. So the schools aren’t given any information.”
Donna Marie Ross, chair of the St James Parish Aids Action Committee,
on why parents of children with HIV are being forced to lie to prevent their
children being thrown out of school
“A recent Centers for Disease Control study found that more than half
of 15-to-19-year-olds have received or given oral sex. Sixty per cent believed
oral-genital contact did not constitute having sex.”
USA Today
