'Rent-A-Dread' makes Caribbean Aids Crisis worseAt least 1,400 drug users have already been murdered in Thailand so far this year, reports Julian Hows from the 14th International Harm Reduction Conference in Chiang Mai. The Caribbean's growing sex industry is contributing to the region becoming the world's second-highest rate of HIV infection, local experts say. Prostitution catering to tourists, and the growing trend of 'rent-a-dread', is helping to push the Caribbean's HIV higher than in any area of the world outside sub-Saharan Africa. "There's a mystique that apparently comes attached with the dreadlocks," said Ian Edwards at a recent conference on sustainable tourism held in Jamaica. "Sex tourism is a growing reality and denying won't make it go away," said Lelei Le Laula. In the Caribbean 2.4 per cent of people aged 15 to 19 have HIV, according to UN figures, compared to 0.3 per cent in Europe and 0.6 per cent in North America. |
The G8 summit has left Africa waiting yet again, say international Aids campaigners, and all that is being promised are conditional offers and post-dated cheques.
Development charity ActionAid say that the $6 billion in aid to Africa from the G8 countries is still only a quarter of the $15 - $20 billion the continent needs.
The US has now offered $1 billion to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria, but only if other counties match their contribution twice over. The EU has pledged a further $1 billion a year to the Fund.
Britain's contribution of a further $80 million up until 2008, on top of the $200 Million pledged until 2005, has been criticised as being too measly.
Last month US President Bush signed a Bill which authorised a $15 billion package to fight HIV and Aids. It has been hailed as a breakthrough by some observers, but inadequate by others.
Abimola Akinyemi, of ActionAid Nigeria, said: "All Africa takes away from the G8 meeting is a fistful of conditional offers and post-dated cheques."
"The good news from the summit is that billions are now on the table," said Bernard Pecoul of Doctors Without Borders, "but the objectives set out in 2000 are far from being reached and the situation has since deteriorated."
In Evian there was some good news from the G8 on generic HIV drugs, with a commitment to provide discounted medicines to developing countries; but optimism was marred by the decision to postpone any decision on patent issues.
But Oxfam has slammed the G8 declaration as little more than a "bland statement of intent."
"The issue of patents is the most significant running sore in the health debate," said Phil Twyford.
Meanwhile, the Global Network of People Living with HIV/Aids (GNP+) has launched its own campaign to persuade HIV positive people themselves to contribute to the beleaguered Global Fund.
The campaign, entitled 'It Starts With Us', calls on people living with the virus to send in as much cash as possible for the Fund.
"If we lose the Global Fund we are losing a critical opportunity to turn the tide of HIV," said GNP+ co-ordinator Stuart Flavell. "'It Starts With Us' shows that people with HIV/Aids are doing their fair share. Now the donor countries and the private sector must do theirs."
To contribute to 'It Starts With Us', visit: www. gnpplus.net
18th New York Aids Walk
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An HIV positive scientist is alive and well two years after receiving a heart transplant, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) reported last month.
39-year-old Dr Robert Zackin, a researcher at Harvard, received his new heart at the Cleveland Centre in 2001 after other medical centres turned him down.
By then his heart had been failing and he was so weak that a balloon pump had to be implanted into his aorta to keep him alive.
There have been a number of studies published recently which show an increased incidence of heart disease for every year that a patient is on antiretroviral treatments.
The Cleveland case shows the feasibility of difficult transplant surgery among patients who are HIV positive and shows that even people with advanced Aids who are kept alive with antiretrovirals can now be candidates for organ transplants.
The NEJM reports that 150 kidney and 125 liver transplants have already been carried out on HIV positive patients in the USA.
"Liver and kidney transplants showed it was feasible," Dr Leonard Calabrese of the Cleveland Centre told Reuters, "We've gone from giving people a pat on the back and watching them die 20 years ago, to being able to treat infections, to now having the prospect of transplanting a vital organ such as a heart."
Calabrese said that Zackin has had two years of high quality life since his heart transplant and is now back working full-time and exercising regularly.
The NEJM report is expected to spark debate on whether people with HIV should be eligible for transplant surgery.
In the past HIV positive patients were thought ineligible for transplants due to a poor expected prognosis but studies are now providing hope that people with the virus can benefit from such surgery in the longer term.
"Twenty years ago, people would have said the same thing about a diabetic," Dr Calabrese said, "but diabetes is no longer a bar to transplantation surgery."
The real question is whether a person with HIV can get good use from the new organ, he said, but transplant centres do not give new lungs to smokers or new livers to heavy drinkers or recreational drug users.
African Aids campaigners win 2003 Jonathan Mann Award
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Brazil's successes in HIV treatment and prevention work have now been held up as a model for other countries in the developing world.
"What Brazil has shown is that a middle income country without massive funding can combat Aids," leading researcher Mauro Schechter told the Boston Globe newspaper, "Here life expectancy has increased and many deaths have been avoided."
In the last three years over 30 developing countries have adopted Brazil's guidelines for prevention and treatment of HIV and Aids. Forceful action in HIV prevention and treatment has allowed the country to avoid the crippling fate of many African and Caribbean countries.
Brazil has shown that massive publicly funded HIV prevention programmes and free condom distribution does work at slowing the spread of the virus. This has kept the country's HIV rate lower than most countries in the developing world.
Hand in hand with this, is the availability of free antiretroviral drugs to all people in the country with the virus who need them, provided at a fraction of the cost by local generic manufacturers. These manufacturers are also now exporting cheap copies of the anti-HIV drugs to other countries in Latin America and Africa.
Brazilian generics makers sell a triple antiretroviral combination therapy at less than $2,000 per patient per year, which compares with a $10,000 to $15,000 cost for patients in the US or Europe.
"Certainly much can be learned from Brazil," said Nils Daulaire of the Global Health Council. "Brazil has really shown a viable path for addressing Aids comprehensively."
Brazil was recently awarded a $1 million prize from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in recognition for its groundbreaking work in tackling the disease so effectively.
New York's Gay Men's Health Crisis held its 18th annual Aids Walk fundraiser last month on a day of beautiful weather. Over 40,000 people took part and raised a record $4.8 Million. Actor Hal Sparks was among celebrities participating in this year's event.
Dr
Frenk Guni, former executive director of the Zimbabwean Network of People Living
with HIV/Aids, joined the South African TAC stalwart Zackie Achmat (