Compiled by Martin Flynn & Brucec Wainwright
In South Africa cricketers have joined the bid to fight the AIDS epidemic. Players from South Africa and the West Indies took time out from the recent Twenty20 cricket world championship in Johannesburg to deliver an AIDS prevention message to local youths. “It is important for us to play a role in educating these young ones on HIV/AIDS,” said Graeme Smith, captain of the South African team. While Ramnaresh Sawran, captain of the West Indian team added: “We are trying to help the kids to be aware of HIV/AIDS and to encourage people not to discriminate against HIV carriers.” The International Cricket Council, UNAIDS, UNICEF, and South Africa’s LoveLife programme are currently working together on the five-year AIDS prevention campaign.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu features in a new song to raise money for HIV charities. The gospel-inspired single, ‘Prayer’, was released as a download on eBay in September. It hopes to generate funds for UK-based Christian HIV charity The Mildmay Mission Hospital and the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation in South Africa. The charity download is also being tipped to set a Guinness World Record as the first charity single to achieve one million sales by download only. Sung by South African singer-songwriter James Stewart and featuring the talents of Archbishop Tutu, who voices one of the verses, the release is being championed by the Anthem for AIDS campaign. Speaking at the official launch last month, composer James Stewart said: “Each of us needs to go home and tell five million of our friends about Anthem for AIDS. Let’s see if we can kick this savage disease into touch where it belongs.”
Officials are investigating reports in Papua New Guinea by Margaret Marabe who said that families were resorting to burying loved ones sick from HIV/AIDS, because they could no longer provide care for them, or were terrified of catching the disease themselves.
Ms Morabe, who is a health worker for the Igat Hope (‘I’ve Got Hope’) HIV/AIDS network in the capital Port Moresby, said that people living in remote parts of the country remained ignorant about HIV/AIDS and begged the government to take urgent action.
Marabe said she witnessed the live burials during a recent five-month trip to the country’s remote South Highlands region. “I saw three people with my own eyes,’ she told reporters as she appealed to the government and aid agencies to ensure awareness programmes reached rural areas. “When they got very sick and people could not look after them, they buried them.” Marabe told how she heard one victim calling out “mama, mama” as they were covered over with soil. Local villagers told her that such action was commonplace.
One of the people Marabe saw being buried alive was her own cousin, she told Agence France-Presse reporters.
“I said, ‘Why are they doing that?’ And they said, ‘If we let them live, stay in the same house, eat together and use or share utensils, we will contract the disease and we too might die’.”
HIV/AIDS has hit epidemic proportions in Papua New Guinea, with new HIV diagnoses rising by about 30 percent each year since 1997, according to a UN report. UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot has described it as “the new frontline’ of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Asia-Pacific region.
Ignorance and superstition are rife in Papua New Guinea, and sufferers are often thought to be victims of witchcraft and black magic.
Dr Nicholas Mann, Papua New Guinea’s Secretary for Health, admitted in an interview only last year that Papua New Guinea’s many languages and cultures made it especially difficult to get the HIV/AIDS message across.
In a statement, Romanus Pakure, acting director of Papua New Guinea’s National AIDS Council, said police and health workers were being sent to the Southern Highlands to investigate Marabe’s alarming allegations.
China needs urgent international assistance to upgrade the safety of its blood supply, and should establish a national fund to compensate people infected with HIV through blood transfusions, Asia Catalyst reported this September.
Seven years since the exposure of mass infections of HIV/AIDS in central Henan province through blood sales, the Chinese government’s system to ensure the safety of its national blood supply remains dangerously inadequate, while thousands of those living with HIV/AIDS are impoverished due to lack of a national compensation system, said Sara (Meg) Davis, director of Asia Catalyst and co-author of the 38-page report, AIDS Blood Scandals: What China Can Learn From the World’s Mistakes.
“China is not alone,” said Davis. “Most developed countries have dealt with similar AIDS blood scandals, and they should step forward to offer assistance to China.”
In the 1980s and early 1990s, thousands of people in the U.S., Japan, France and Canada contracted HIV/AIDS through contaminated blood supplies. Most governments were slow to respond. While many victims took their cases to courts, some died before winning their cases, and many lost a large part of their recoveries to attorneys. Court cases proved to be costly and ineffective for both victims and governments.
“Most countries, held investigations, established national compensation funds for victims, and centralized control of the blood supply. China needs international assistance to address its blood safety”, said Evan Anderson, research consultant for Asia Catalyst and co-author of the report.
HIV infection rates among young gay men are on the rise, according to New York City health officials. A recent report by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene shows that new diagnosis among gay men under 30 has gone up by 33 percent in the last six years. The report states that new infection rates have doubled among men who have sex with men in the 13 to 19 age bracket, but declined among older men.
“We are very concerned about the increase in HIV among young men who have sex with men,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, Health Commissioner for New York City. “We’re headed in the wrong direction. Unless young men reduce the number of partners they have, and protect themselves and their partners by using condoms more consistently,’ he says, “we will face another wave of suffering and death from HIV and AIDS.”
Every New York borough except Staten Island saw increases in HIV rates among young gay men. While at one teen clinic in the Bronx, the number of new patients doubled in the first half of this year, reported Dr. Donna Futterman, director of the adolescent AIDS program at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore.
The new data indicates that the city’s gay African-American and Latino youth are the hardest hit, counting for 90 percent of new cases in the last year. Futterman thinks this could be because African-American and Latino youths are more likely to be hiding their sexual orientation from family and friends. “The pressure to hide their identity puts them in riskier situations than if they could openly date and express their wishes and expectations,” Futterman said.
Debra Fraser-Howze, president of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS described the figures as “devastating”. “After 26 years of AIDS, we cannot drift backward. We must ask all New Yorkers to accept some responsibility for helping our young people protect themselves,’ she said. “Their lives are not dispensable.”
Rejoice, is a small HIV charity that’s been working in the busy Chiang Mai province of Northern Thailand for nine years. Co-founded by British businessmen and former nurses, Derek Hallam and Gareth Lavell the charity now runs up to 30 outreach clinics a week. These provide HIV advice and counselling, safe sex advice, condoms, the supply of baby milk, vitamins, antibiotics, antifungal treatments, painkillers, disinfectants and First Aid. They distribute clothes and toys, offer school sponsorship, family assistance and medical advice on sickness care.
“Our service improves lives, keeps people strong, and cures and prevents opportunistic infections,” explains Derek Hallam. “The clinics have a self-help function too,” he says, “as they are a meeting point for people to share and exchange their own findings and views about HIV and its care.”
So how much government support is there for people living with HIV in Thailand?
“The Thai government is a leader in the campaign to get access to cheap medications for developing countries,” Hallam says, “but the country lacks a developed welfare state. To receive state-funded anti-retrovirals, people must have CD4 counts of less than 300,” he says, “otherwise they are on their own.”
Even for those receiving free treatment, only first generation drugs are readily available due to restrictions from US and European governments and companies on manufacturing licences. “If the available combinations fail or cease to work, as they often do, the only choice left is to pay the set price for patented drugs,” says Hallam, “an impossible situation for all but the very wealthy. With money you can buy services and drugs privately,” Hallam says, “but Rejoice focuses on the poor, of whom there are many in Chiang Mai province. For this group, there are classic problems of poverty - lack of decent food, education for the orphaned kids, and little or no access to medications for everyday infections.”
Yet even though Rejoice provides a lifeline to some of Chiang Mai’s most disadvantaged people, the charity finds itself increasingly under threat of closure. “We are a small organisation and are very good value for money,” says Hallam, “yet we have enormous difficulty raising it. Our UK supporters are volunteers with only limited free time and resources for fundraising. It’s pretty much all down to volunteer effort, though there are some small grants from institutions. Things got so bad this summer,” he admits, “we almost had to close; but thanks to the efforts of long-term supporters and one exceptionally large individual donation, we now have enough to keep us going for the next quarter. It would seem that HIV doesn’t attract the support it used to,” Hallam says, “just at a time when the problem is getting much bigger.”
Mick Kelly has been a Rejoice volunteer for the past five years. “Being a small organization with its open door to visitors and transparent working activities, Rejoice is easy to come to know and respect,” says Kelly. “The enduring cheerfulness and kindness of clients and staff,” he says, “give me enormous resources to draw upon in dealing with my own condition.”
For information on Rejoice, or to make a donation see www.rejoicethailand.org or contact Mick Kelly here in UK on 0845 159 834, mick.p.kelly@gmail.com
Minister Warns Of Fake Drugs
In Zimbabwe a health minister has warned of the dangers posed by counterfeit HIV drugs. Zimbabwean Minister of Health David Parirenyatwa has urged the country’s HIV/AIDS community to buy their medicines only from registered pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals. Zimbabwe’s growing economic crisis and the resulting anti-HIV drug shortages have driven some people into the arms of blackmarket traders.
Fake and potentially dangerous AIDS drugs are being sold at flea markets and hair salons. some batches are reported to be contaminated, faked or diluted. “These fake drugs increase chances of one becoming resistant to treatment,” Parirenyatwa told state-run Herald newspaper.
Rwanda To Launch Mass Male Circumcision Program
Rwanda recently announced that it plans to launch a male circumcision program as a way of reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, the New Times/AllAfrica.com reports. A Ministry of Health document said the program initially would target the army, police and higher education students.
According to final data from two NIH-funded studies - conducted in Uganda and Kenya and published in the Feb. 23 issue of the journal Lancet - routine male circumcision could reduce a man’s risk of HIV infection through heterosexual sex by 65%. The results of the Uganda and Kenya studies mirrored similar results of a study conducted in South Africa in 2005. In response to the findings, the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS in March recommended the procedure as a way to help reduce transmission of the virus through heterosexual sex.
Peru Blood Bank Suspected Of HIV Outbreak
In Peru dozens of blood banks were shut down after people receiving blood transfusions were apparently infected with the HIV virus. The crisis was first made public by Judith Rivera Diaz, 46, who became infected, she claims, during a routine operation at the Alcides Carrión Hospital in the Peruvian city of Calloa. Mrs Rivera, a mother of four is said to be setting up a foundation to help all those affected by medical negligence, or mistreated in a state institution. The government has already offered to cover all medical expenses for Rivera Diaz. Health officials later revealed that three other patients may also been infected through transfusions, including a child of 11 months. Although all the contaminations occurred at the same hospital, the government said that all 240 of the country’s facilities would be closed and screened. News of a separate incident, in which 30 diabetics attending a dialysis treatment centre had been infected with Hepatitis C, caused nationwide panic. These incidents are not the first time patients have been infected at medical facilities in Peru. In 2004, seven newborn babies were infected with HIV at a maternity hospital in Lima. According to the Pan American Health Organisation, about a quarter of the blood in Peruvian banks is not being properly screened.
New condom launched in Portugal
A new brand of female condom, the VA w.ow. (worn-of-women) Condom Feminine, has been launched in Portugal. The Condom Feminine, manufactured by Medtech Products Ltd of Chennai, India, is the first new condom for women to be launched in Europe for fifteen years.
New Finds Brings HIV Vaccine Hope
Scientists are a step closer to finding an AIDS vaccine thanks to research by a team from Oxford University and the UK Medical Research Council in Gambia. Their study of the genetic code of the HIV-2 strain might explain why it is less virulent. In sub-Saharan Africa the HIV-2 goes on to cause full-blown AIDS in only 20 percent of infected people who do not take anti-HIV drugs. In contrast the more common HIV-1 strain progresses to AIDS in 98 percent of cases. The West African study, centred on a group of women with the HIV-2 virus, found that HIV-2 contained a ‘gag’ gene that makes it less likely to mutate and more vulnerable to attack from the human immune system. The gag gene seems to prompt the body’s own immune system to attack the HIV virus. The findings suggest a focus for further research that could ultimately lead to the development of a vaccine.
Concerns Over Brown’s Healthcare Initiative
Anti-poverty agency, Action Aid, has expressed concerns over the Prime Minister’s recent international healthcare initiative. The government’s International Health Partnership, launched by Gordon Brown last month, seeks to improve the health systems of developing countries. It plans to achieve this by encouraging better planning, co-ordination and accountability in countries receiving aid. Action Aid says that while the initiative does have groundbreaking potential, it needs to attract better international funding, technical support and political backing. “More bilateral donors need to sign up,’ says Action Aid, “and the UK government should continue to ensure that big and influential health donors, such as the US government, fully support the initiative.’
New Drugs Brings Hope To HIV Positive Kids
(pic: product image requested from www.cipla.com. Being sent to Isabel by email)
HIV positive children can now be treated with an anti-retroviral drug designed especially for them. Triomune Baby and Junior are to receive tentative ‘prequalification’ status from the World Health Organisation (WHO) to make it available more quickly. The single pill formula is a combination of the commonly used anti-HIV drugs Stavudine, Lamivudine and Nevirapine. There is an urgent need for anti-HIV drugs for children. The WHO reports that well over two million children are living with HIV around the world, 90 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s thought the new drug produced by the pharmaceutical company Cipla, will reduce a number of problems, such as dosage, which are associated with adapting adult formulations for children.
