7-yr-old HIV positive thrown out of school

Seven-year-old Sarbjit Kaur is playing with her doll oblivious of the fact that she is an HIV positive. She is not aware what future has in store for her, especially after the local government high school struck off her name from the rolls. The school-leaving certificate gives no reasons for striking off her name.

She had lost her parents to AIDS three years back and is now being brought up by her aunt Kaushalya, who also has her three children to look after. "Her schoolteacher one day summoned me and inquired if Sarbjit is HIV positive. I nodded in affirmative. She said as Sarbjit has a cut near her eye that is not healing, so other children might get infected, and she should not be sent to school. What could I do, I stopped sending her to school and they sent home her school-leaving certificate," said Kaushalya. Sarbjit, a class II student, was good in studies, says her cousin Kulwinder Kaur, who studies in the same school. "Everyone in the school feared her. They knew that her parents died due to AIDS and she is carrying the deadly virus too. There was a panic when she got a cut on her face," she said, adding that she told her classmates and even teachers that the virus does not spread out by sitting beside or shaking hands, but no one paid heed.

Kaushalya, who has been taking care of the child for the last three years following her parents' death, said she never discriminated Sarbjit from her children. "I have two daughters and a son and they sleep together, play together and eat together. I am not worried. I do not know why the school is overanxious to throw her out," she said.

When asked if she had filed any complaint, she said she was illiterate and did not know whom to complain. "We are helpless," she added.

Sarbjit said, "I am studying at home now. My cousins teach me and I am learning ABC." The school-leaving certificate, dated July 3, 2007 (a copy available with The Indian Express), bears signatures of headmistress Sawinder Kaur.

The principal said the school was aware that the girl child was infected with HIV, but her injury was causing panic. She, however, added that they struck off her name following the request from her guardians. She said they were not happy that she was not coming to the school and wanted to help her, but the child's aunt was not willing to send her to school.

Asked if the guardians had given any written request to take the child away, she said she would have to check the records, but confirmed that Kaushalya made verbal requests.

Meanwhile, District Education Officer (Primary) G.S. Mann was not available for comments and DEO (Secondary) Piara Singh said the school was not under his jurisdiction, so he could not do anything.

Read More..

Libya slams Bulgaria 'betrayal' over pardoned AIDS medics

Libya will seek support from the Arab League, the African Union and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in the row over Bulgaria's "betrayal" in pardoning the six medics jailed in the AIDS case. Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham on Saturday denounced as a "betrayal" and illegal the pardon issued by Bulgaria's president to the six, who were transferred to Bulgaria from Libya only last Tuesday.

"The detainees should have been detained upon their arrival (in Sofia), and not freed in this celebratory and illegal manner," Shalgham told reporters in Tripoli. Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi told the reporters that Bulgaria's actions had violated the legal procedures regarding extradition, as set out in international law and in a 1984 agreement between the two countries.

"We followed the procedure -- it is Bulgaria that betrayed us," Mahmudi said.

Shalgham meanwhile criticised European countries for "joining forces behind the criminals (...) before applauding their liberation." He denounced the "strong European pressure" exerted on Libya.

He also attacked "the humanitarian and international organisations who, instead of criticising the liberation of the criminals, welcomed and greeted this step."

Libya has sent fellow Arab League members a memorandum calling for the group to adopt a common stand on the affair at a meeting of representatives on Monday, said the prime minister.

Tripoli will also seek support from the African Union and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Mahmudi added.

Held in Libya since 1999, the five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor with Bulgarian citizenship were sentenced to death after being convicted of deliberately infecting 438 Libyan children with the AIDS-causing HIV virus.

Fifty-six of the children later died.

Libya allowed them to return on Tuesday to Bulgaria, where they had been due to serve life terms in prison, but instead the six were pardoned by Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov.

The families of the children have criticised Bulgaria's decision, and their representative Idriss Lagha again on Saturday called on Libya's government to request that Interpol rearrest the medics, and for Tripoli to cut all diplomatic ties with Sofia.

The medics were detained in 1999 and allegedly made to confess to deliberately infecting the children with the HIV virus at a hospital in Libya's second city of Benghazi where they worked.

The six were sentenced to death in 2004 on the basis of confessions by the doctor and two of the nurses who later retracted their statements, saying they had been extracted under torture.

The death sentences against the six were commuted to life in prison before the medics were extradited to Bulgaria on Tuesday following an agreement with the European Union for their release.

Under the deal, the victims' families are each to receive one million dollars and the EU normalised its relations with Libya while pledging partnerships in the fields of health, education, border control and the upkeep of the country's many archaeological sites.

Nurses Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valya Cherveniashka, Valentina Siropulo and Kristiana Valcheva and doctor Ashraf Juma Hajuj have always pleaded their innocence, while foreign medical experts blamed the AIDS outbreak on poor hygiene at the hospital predating their employment.

Since their release, the medics have spoken out about their eight-year ordeal.

"All of us were treated like animals... we were tortured for a long time, with electricity, beatings, deprivation of sleep" and drugs, Hajuj said in an interview on Thursday.

In Europe meanwhile, German politicians continued to criticise the memorandum between Paris and Tripoli to build a nuclear reactor in Libya, which was signed just a day after the release of the Bulgarian medics.

The critics objected to the deal to build a nuclear reactor for a water desalination plant on grounds of nuclear non-proliferation, for environmental reasons and because of the way it bypassed the European Union.

The deal was "a bitter pill for the EU," said Ruprecht Polenz, conservative head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag, in the newspaper Tagesspiegel am Sonntag.

It would weaken the European Union's ability to take action in foreign politics, he added.

German Eurodeputy Elmar Brok, in the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper, called on France to consult with the EU, Germany and the International Atomic Energy Agency before finalising the deal.

Read More..

African rights body slams Bulgaria for pardoning AIDS medics

A pan-African rights group Sunday denounced Bulgaria for pardoning six medics who had been on death row in Libya after being convicted of deliberately infecting 438 children with the HIV virus. "This pardon is illegal and proper procedures were not respected," Brahima Kone, head of the Pan-African Assocation for Human Rights (UIDH), was quoted as saying in local newspapers.

"Sofia has displayed great contempt for the victims and their families," he said. Libya has also trenchantly criticised Sofia and said it will seek support from the Arab League, the African Union and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in the row over Bulgaria's "betrayal".

Held in Libya since 1999, the five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor with Bulgarian citizenship were sentenced to death after their conviction, then had that sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

Libya allowed the six to return home on Tuesday to Bulgaria, where they zere immediately pardoned by Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov.

Their release, following a deal with the European Union in which French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Cecilia played a prominent public role, had ended in an ugly manner, Kone said, with "the pardon on the sly."

Read More..

China bans AIDS rights meeting, group says

China has banned AIDS activists from holding a meeting on the rights of people with the disease, one of the organisers said on Sunday, citing official fears over foreign involvement in the sensitive subject. The conference would have brought together 50 Chinese and foreign experts and activists to discuss how to press the legal rights of people with HIV/AIDS.

But government authorities told the New York-based Asia Catalyst group to cancel the meeting planned for early August in Guangzhou near Hong Kong in the south, said Sara Davis, one of the organisers. "Authorities informed us that the combination of AIDS, law and foreigners was too sensitive," Davis told Reuters. There were no plans to reschedule the meeting, she said.

Phone calls to government spokesmen in Guangzhou and Beijing were not answered on Sunday. China has become increasingly open about AIDS in recent years, facing up to an epidemic once stigmatized as a disease of the West.

The nation had 203,527 officially registered cases of HIV/AIDS by the end of April, up from 183,733 at the end of October 2006. Of the latest figure, 52,480 had progressed to full-blown AIDS.

But the United Nations estimates the true number of HIV/AIDS cases in the country to be around 650,000.

Nowadays, Beijing backs campaigns to educate citizens on avoiding infection, and victims infected through reckless commercial blood collection in rural Henan province have been given free medicines.

But officials in the one-party state remain wary of local activists and foreign groups pressing legal claims of infected citizens or raising official complicity in the spread of the disease. Henan has informally blocked patients from suing officials over tainted blood.

The meeting co-organized with China Orchid AIDS Project, a Beijing-based group, had invited several experts from South Africa, India, the United States, Canada and Thailand.

Planned topics included discrimination, blood safety and setting up a legal aid center for people with HIV/AIDS.

"Protecting legal rights is key to any successful fight against AIDS," said Davis in an emailed statement about the cancellation.

"China has passed laws protecting those rights, and people with AIDS need assistance in order to exercise them."

In May, China barred a prominent AIDS and environmental activist couple from leaving the country, accusing them of endangering national security.

Earlier in the year, Henan officials tried to stop Gao Yaojie -- a doctor who helped expose the rural AIDS epidemic there -- from going to Washington to collect a human rights award. They let her go after an international outcry.

Read More..

School strikes off HIV+ student's name from rolls

Seven-year-old Sarbjit Kaur is oblivious to the fact that she is HIV positive. The class II student is unaware what the future has in store for her, especially after the local Government high school struck off her name from the rolls. The school-leaving certificate, however, cites no reasons. Sarbjit's parents died of AIDS three years ago. She is being brought up by her aunt Kaushalya, who has three children of her own. "One day, her schoolteacher summoned me and inquired if Sarbjit was HIV positive. I said she was. The teacher then said that Sarbjit has a wound near her eye, which has shown no signs of healing. The other children in school might get infected and so Sarbjit should not be sent to school. What could I do, I stopped sending her and they sent home her school-leaving certificate," said Kaushalya. Sarbjit is a good student, said her cousin Kulwinder Kaur, also in the same school. "Everyone in the school feared her. They knew that her parents had died due to AIDS and she is carrying the virus. There was panic when she got that cut on her face," she said. She told her classmates and teachers that the virus does not spread by shaking hands with or sitting beside the infected person, but no one paid any heed.

Her aunt said that she never discriminated Sarbjit from her children. "I have two daughters and a son and they sleep together, play together and eat together. I am not worried. I do not know why the school is over anxious to throw her out," she said.

When asked if she had filed any complaint, she said she was illiterate and did not know whom to lodge a complaint with. "We are helpless," she added.

"I am studying at home now. My cousins teach me and I am learning ABC," Sarbjit said. The school-leaving certificate, dated July 3, 2007 (a copy available with The Indian Express), bears signatures of the school headmistress Sawinder Kaur.

The principal said everyone in school was aware that the girl child was infected with HIV, but it was her injury that was causing panic. She, however, added that they struck off her name following a request from her guardians. The school authorities were not happy that she was not attending classes and wanted to help her, but the child's aunt was not willing to send her to school, the principal said. When asked if Sarbjit's guardians had given any written request to strike off her name, she said she would have to check the records.

source : news.yahoo.com

Read More..

Tonsils may aid HIV transmission during oral sex

A new study has revealed that tonsils may create way for transmission of HIV during oral sex. Though researchers emphasize that chances of HIV transmission through oral sex are low to warrant preventive tonsillectomies, the findings may still be useful in preventing transmission of the virus from mothers to their children through breastfeeding.

Niki Moutsopoulos at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research in Bethesda, Maryland, US, and her colleagues studied gum tissues sample from dental patients for dental crowns, and tonsils samples from individuals as a apart of a treatment for sleep apnoea. The team tried to assess the levels of proteins in these tissues.

Twelve pct of the tonsil cells had protein CD4 that are susceptible to infection by the virus. By comparison, only 4 pct of the gum cells contained this protein.

A genetic analysis also revealed that the CXCR4 gene, which aids the virus to infect cells, was 11 times more active in the tonsils than in the gum samples.

"It's a further piece of the jigsaw puzzle," New Scientist quoted John Greenspan, director of the AIDS Research Institute at the University of California in San Francisco, US, as saying.

The researchers suggested that since evidence show that HIV can spread through oral sex in exceptional cases, people should use condoms.

"I think that would be a stretch. We can't go taking out every tissue that HIV could pass through," says Moutsopoulos.

"Though, that if future studies bear out a link between tonsils and HIV transmission, there could be implications for blocking the spread of the virus from mother to child in parts of the world where infant formula and antiretroviral drugs are in short supply. Scientists have estimated that a child has a 15 pct chance of acquiring the virus through breastfeeding within the first year of life," she added.

Read More..

New York acts to stem HIV among seniors

While volunteers passed out cups of Jell-O to the white-haired lunch crowd at a senior center, another group was distributing something that didn't quite fit amid the card games and daily gossip -- condoms. "You're giving out condoms," 82-year-old Rose Crescenzo said with a wistful smile, "but who's going to give us a guy?"

The condom giveaway is part of an effort by New York City's Department of Aging to educate older people about the risks of contracting the virus that causes AIDS. After the condom giveaway, free HIV testing was offered. AIDS education of the elderly has become an important issue as antiretroviral drugs that can keep patients living into their golden years change the face of AIDS. Experts warn that ignorance about HIV among seniors can lead to new infections.

And those infections are happening. A physician from Howard University Hospital in Washington recently diagnosed unsuspected HIV in an 82-year-old.

So HIV educators are taking their message of prevention to senior centers and other locales where older people meet. They also hope to create a welcoming environment for people who already have the virus.

New York City has the most HIV cases of any U.S. city -- nearly 100,000 -- and is considered a leader in the area of AIDS education for seniors, with the city council having budgeted $1 million toward HIV education for older people.

But smaller-scale campaigns are under way elsewhere.

Nancy Orel, a professor of gerontology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, is organizing a workshop for seniors that will include free condoms and HIV tests.

"Unfortunately, most individuals have the perception that sex ends at, what, 32?" Orel said. "And many older adults report that when they go to see their physicians, the physicians don't ask if they're sexually active."

The program at the Peter Cardella Senior Center would have been unthinkable back when AIDS was known as a disease that strikes its victims young and kills them in their prime. But the aging of America's AIDS population has changed that.

"Often older people do not concern themselves with HIV and AIDS because they assume that they are not at risk, and that can be a tragic mistake," said Edwin Mendez-Santiago, New York City's commissioner of aging.

Frank Garcia, 72, happily pocketed his supply of official New York City condoms, which are packaged with a subway logo.

"I think it's a great thing," he said. "We used to go to the drugstore and wait for an hour or two before we got up the nerve to ask for them. Your parents didn't talk about it. Everything was street-taught."

A study last year by the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America projected that within the next decade, the majority of HIV-positive New Yorkers will be over 50.

Dan Tietz, executive director of the AIDS research group, said HIV education is needed at senior centers, where the average age is more like 70, because "we know that people are still having sex well past 65."

Dorcas Baker, who directs an AIDS education center in Baltimore, said health officials there began HIV prevention programs at senior centers in 2005.

"We call it the silent epidemic because no one thinks seniors are sexual or that they're using drugs," she said.

Some seniors tell AIDS educators the disease doesn't affect them because they are not having sex.

"We challenge them by saying, 'You're a grandmother, you're a mother, you're a sister, you're a neighbor,'" Baker said. "They can also help to raise awareness even if they're not active themselves."

People aged 50 to 64 accounted for 14 percent of new HIV diagnoses in 2005, while those over 65 were only about 2 percent of HIV diagnoses, according to Dr. Bernard Branson, associate director for laboratory diagnostics in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At the Peter Cardella Center in Queens, 66-year-old AIDS educator Edward Shaw recounted his own 1988 diagnosis and warned: "If you're still having sex, you need to know about HIV/AIDS."

Many of the seniors ignored him as they chatted with friends and settled in for pork chops and green beans.

"I think it should be done in areas where it's really needed," said Julia Karcher, 82. "These ladies are all by themselves for years and years and years."

But Marie Tarantino, who gave her age as "39-plus," said lonely seniors might take unwise risks.

"They might pick somebody up on the street," she said. "They just think that at a certain age they can't get pregnant. They don't think they could get a sexually transmitted disease."

And Crescenzo, who lost her husband of 62 years last October, did take the condoms.

''If I get a date,'' she said, ''I'm going to use one of these.'' (Karen Matthews, AP)

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
If you'd like to know more, you can find stories related to New York acts to stem HIV among seniors .

Read More..

Scientists find how HIV enters immune cells with ease

Scientists have made an important discovery that aids the understanding of why HIV enters immune cells with ease. Carnegie Mellon University researchers found that after HIV docks onto a host cell, it dramatically lowers the energy required for a cell membrane to bend, making it easier for the virus to infect immune cells. The discovery will provide vital data to conduct future computer simulations of HIV dynamics to help further drug discovery and prevent deadly infections.

"We found that HIV fusion peptide dramatically decreases the amount of energy needed to bend a cell-like membrane," said Stephanie Tristram-Nagle, associate research professor of biological physics at Carnegie Mellon. "This helps membranes to curve, a necessary step for HIV to fuse with an immune cell as it infects it," she added.

The Carnegie Mellon scientists used X-rays to study how HIV fusion peptide (part of a larger protein) affected the energy of manufactured lipid bi-layers made to mimic normal cell membranes. Lipid bi-layers provide a protective barrier for the cell against intruders, yet also contain molecules to recognize and communicate with other cells or get nutrients. Cells also communicate with one another via small, membrane-bound vesicles that contain proteins or other molecular cargo. When delivering their goods, vesicles from one cell fuse with the outermost membrane of another cell to form a series of hybrid structures called fusion intermediates.

Through evolution, viruses have also become skilled at fusing with cells to unload their genetic contents, which turn host cells into virus-producing factories. In the case of HIV, a molecule called gp120 initially helps the virus lock onto its host T cell, a cell critical for maintaining immunity. Another protein - gp41 - then enables HIV to penetrate a T-cell membrane. Fusion takes place specifically through a short stretch of gp41 called fusion peptide 23, or FP-23 for short. Prior studies have shown that FP-23 fuses with, and can even break apart, blood cells and other man-made, cell-like structures called liposomes.

FP-23 likely plays several roles in viral fusion, according to the researchers. One role already suspected is that FP-23 attaches to its T cell victim to facilitate a change in the shape of gp41, which in turn drives uptake of HIV RNA and proteins by the T cell. But the Carnegie Mellon work suggests that FP-23 plays another, equally important function - reducing the free energy of curved fusion intermediates. These fleeting shapes arise and disappear as HIV enters a T cell.

Normally, a cell membrane resists bending. Scientists can quantify the energy needed to overcome this resistance. The Carnegie Mellon team found that FP-23 reduces the energy required to penetrate an artificial cell membrane by up to 13 fold, depending on the thickness of that membrane.

"Reducing this energy should help explain in part how HIV infection occurs so readily," said Tristram-Nagle.

"Our findings definitely will change how theoreticians think about virus-cell interactions. This same phenomenon could provide a general way that viruses use to infect cells, so it will be exciting to look at other viral systems with our experimental method," she said.

Many different viruses could enter cells by efficiently lowering the energy required to penetrate a cell's outer membrane, according to Tristram-Nagle and her collaborator, John Nagle, professor of physics and biological sciences at Carnegie Mellon.

The Carnegie Mellon scientists used X-rays to detect the effect of FP-23 on lipid bilayers that mimic cell membranes. Lipid bi-layers form different phases that change with temperature, but the "fluid" phase is the most biologically relevant. Using X-ray diffuse scattering, the team quantified structural properties of different lipid bi-layers seeded with FP-23 peptides. The lipid bi-layers varied in their thickness, which affects the stiffness of cell membranes.

The research was conducted at Cornell University's CHESS synchrotron, which provides a high-intensity source of X-rays for various studies. In their next trip to this facility, the team plans to study FP-23 together with cholesterol, a molecule known to modulate the stiffness of cell membranes.

Read More..

Early treatment sees more HIV babies survive

HIV-infected babies have a greater chance of survival if they receive treatment before they show signs of illness or a weakened immune system, the International AIDS Society (IAS) was told on Tuesday. A study of infants in Cape Town and Soweto in South Africa found that infants given immediate drug treatment had a 96 percent survival rate compared with 84 percent for children where treatment was deferred.

The study, sponsored by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was so successful that it was amended in 2007, ending enrolments for the deferred treatment group and evaluating those in the group for treatment. An estimated 2.3 million children are currently HIV infected, with around 600,000 new HIV infections in children each year. Without treatment half of all babies infected with HIV die before their second birthday.

"Children with HIV infection frequently show rapid disease progression within the first year of life due to their developing immune systems and susceptibility to other serious infections," said Dr Elias Zerhouni, director of the U.S. National Institute of Health, in a statement on the study at an IAS conference.

"This is the first randomized clinical trial that shows that infants treated before 3 months of age will do better than infants who have their treatment delayed," Zerhouni said.

The study of 337 babies aged 6 to 12 weeks was initially aimed at examining whether early antiretroviral drug therapy over a limited period would delay HIV progression.

Doctors had hoped that early treatment would allow a child's immune system to develop and possibly allow the child to stop treatment for a period of time and avoid continuous therapy.

A review in 2007 found such a significant difference in survival rates and the interim results forwarded to the World Health Organisation.

"The results of this trial could have significant public health implications worldwide because these findings will cause experts to consider changes in standards of care in many parts of the world," said NIAID director Dr Anthony Fauci.

IMMUNE SYSTEMS

Caring for HIV-infected children is complicated by the fact that their immune systems are not fully developed in the first year of life, which makes them especially susceptible to rapid the disease progression and death.

The current standard of HIV care in many parts of the world is to treat infants with antiretroviral therapy, but only after they show signs of illness or a weakened immune system.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said children were the "silent victims" of the global AIDS epidemic, with 9 out of 10 child sufferers infected through mother-to-child transmission during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding.

About 87 percent of children with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa, with the vast majority beyond health services. Of the 540,000 children newly infected in 2006, 470,000 live in Africa and only 700 in either Europe or North America, said MSF.

MSF said "vertical transmission" of HIV from mother to child had been almost been wiped out in wealthy countries because antiretroviral drug therapy was given to pregnant mothers and babies within a few hours of birth.

The mother-to-child transmission rate in wealthy nations was below 1 percent, compared with rates as high as 25 to 45 percent in poorer nations in Africa, said MSF.

The United Nations says close to 40 million people are infected with the AIDS virus and that treatment had dramatically expanded from 240,000 people in 2001 to 1.3 million by 2005.

In June, world powers at the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Germany set a target of providing AIDS drugs over the next few years to approximately 5 million people.

Read More..

AIDS conference calls for child-specific HIV drugs

The world's biggest AIDS conference closed on Wednesday with a call for the development of child-specific drugs to ensure millions of HIV-infected children not only survive to adulthood, but also live without damaging side effects from their treatment. "We must do more to protect our future, finding better ways to treat the youngest among us...," said International AIDS Society (IAS) President Dr Pedro Cahn.

An estimated 2.3 million children are HIV infected, with around 600,000 new infections each year. Without treatment half of all babies infected will die before their second birthday. Yet only 15 percent of children who need treatment are currently receiving antiretroviral drugs, the IAS conference in Sydney was told on Wednesday.

"The goal of treatment in children must be balanced between halting the effects of the HIV disease and the long-term effects of antiretroviral on a developing child," said Dr Annette Sohn from the Division of Paediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of California in San Francisco.

Sohn said HIV-infected children on antiretrovirals risk HIV encephalopathy, where the brain swells and damages tissues over time, reduced neurocognitive development and lower bone density.

The conference was told that early treatment of children increased survival rates, but Sohn said some children who have been on early treatment have been forced onto second and third line drugs as the virus quickly builds resistance.

"It's clear that response to treatment is better when children are started before they develop severe immune deficiency," she said. "What is the future for those children already on second line drugs at the age of 5?"

Read More..

Major HIV/AIDS conference opens in Sydney

The world's biggest scientific HIV/AIDS conference opened in Australia on Sunday with experts calling for more funding for research and new findings which suggest male circumcision can reduce infection by 60 percent. About 5,000 delegates from more than 130 countries are attending the conference in Sydney this week to hear from the world's top experts in the fight against the global pandemic.

Delegates will be shown evidence from trials in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa that circumcision can reduce the risk of HIV infection in heterosexual men by about 60 percent. The trials confirmed previous studies which have reported circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection. Muslim and Jewish men are circumcised in accordance with religious beliefs.

A briefing note said male circumcision in sub-Saharan Africa would prevent 5.7 million new cases of HIV infection and 3 million deaths over 20 years. The conference also issued a declaration urging governments to allocate 10 percent of all resources for HIV into research.

"Science has given us the tools to prevent and treat HIV effectively. The fact that we have not yet translated this science into practice is a shameful failure," Pedro Cahn. the president of the International Aids Society told reporters on Sunday. Global AIDS treatment is expected to fall far short of a universal target to have five million people being treated by 2010, due to a continued lack of access to drugs by many of the world's impoverished people.

The United Nations says close to 40 million people are infected with the AIDS virus and that treatment had dramatically expanded from 240,000 people in 2001 to 1.3 million by 2005. In June, world powers at the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Germany set a target of providing AIDS drugs over the next few years to approximately 5 million people. Anthony Facui, who advises the White House on the virus, said the message at the conference would be mixed as a lot had been accomplished but there was still a lot to do.

"We still now are only treating 28 percent of the people who actually need therapy. We cannot sustain a successful effort without prevention," Fauci, who estimated 60 million people would be infected by 2015, told reporters.

Read More..

Despite progress, world still failing HIV carriers

The global community has not done enough to prevent the spread of HIV and millions of deaths from preventable disease are a "shameful failure," said the head of the International AIDS Society Sunday. Society president Pedro Cahn was speaking ahead of the first session of the fourth International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in Sydney. Cahn said 11,000 people were still contracting HIV each day despite the huge advances in knowledge of and treatments for the virus.

He said fewer than a third of those living with HIV in low and middle income countries were treated with life-saving medication and even fewer could access proven prevention methods such as condoms and clean syringes. "Science has given us the tools to prevent and treat HIV effectively," he said. "The fact that we have not yet translated this science into practice is a shameful failure on the part of the global community."

The Sydney conference brings together more than 5,000 delegates to discuss cutting-edge treatments for HIV, including two new classes of drugs that could give hope to those who have developed a resistance to existing retroviral drugs.

It will also look at prevention strategies such as male circumcision, which has proven effective in limiting the spread of the virus.

And under its Sydney Declaration it will push for governments and donors to allocate an additional 10 percent of their HIV programme funding to research to ensure that projects are effective. "We are badly in need of research that will tell us what impact our programmes are having in the areas of the world where 90 percent of the epidemic is focused, and how to adjust our programmes to make the best use of our investment and to save as much lives as possible," Cahn said at the opening of the conference.

Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, speaking before the conference opened, said there was cause for hope in the fight against the disease because of the successes of the past two decades. In 2001, only several hundred thousand people living with HIV in the developing world had access to retroviral treatments but the current figure was now 2.2 million people, he said.

"This is far beyond what most of us thought was possible," he added.

Kazatchkine said as well as the encouragement from the development of new drugs, there was also hope because the world was coming together to fight health problems as never before. He said the scourge of AIDS had demonstrated that "we cannot have development and prosperity when AIDS is killing large parts of the population and eroding human capital."

But he said despite the Global Fund so far raising some 11 billion dollars, the main challenge to fighting the HIV epidemic was resourcing. "We need more resources, but we also need more sustainable resources," he said. Key adviser to the US government, Doctor Anthony Fauci, said there were now extraordinary treatments for those who have access to the right medicines.

But he also acknowledged the gap in access. "As great as those advancements are... we still now are treating only about 28 percent of the people who actually need therapy," he said. He said prevention strategies such as male circumcision were essential to combat the disease because of the huge gap in the provision of drugs. An estimated 40 million people are now living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, while more than 25 million people are thought to have died from the disease.

Read More..

The HIV/AIDS funding farce

Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss is quoted as having said, "We have spent so much on the programme and finally the results are there" ('India's Aids Scare Just Got Halved', IE, July 7). Results? Is the health minister kidding? India's HIV/AIDS re-estimates, conceded after getting National Aids Control Programme-III (NACP-III) approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs for a programme based on 5.2 million HIV-numbers, is a long overdue correction of inaccurate estimates, arbitrarily boosted since 1998 and long challenged by many experts. Ramadoss needs to do serious introspection on his ministry's functioning.

The large population-based blood-test sampling from the National Health Fertility Survey and the Guntur district community study, highlighting a 60 per cent difference from surveillance estimates put forward by NACO, has for the past year provided incontrovertible, large-scale evidence of inflated HIV-estimates. This was critically documented as early as 2000 by the Independent Commission on Health in India (ICHI) Experts Consultation in a report that was provided to the health ministry and NACO.

The ICHI report pointed to arbitrary hikes: NACO's end-1994 estimate of 1.75 million HIV-infected spiralled to 4 million by 1998. Challenged, NACO temporarily downplayed the figures. Then another NACO Expert Group (1999) developed a different estimation process that placed HIV-infected in the range of 2.4 to 3.7 million in 1999. Subsequently, NACO arbitrarily picked the higher end, adding a 20 per cent variable. This base figure has steadily grown. Alongside, the steady expansion of sentinel surveillance sites - 55(1994) to 703 (2005) - diminished scientific longitudinal tracking. The ICHI had noted at the start of NACP-II: "Flawed estimates at the outset could result in scams of enormous public expenditures vindicated through notional reduction of 'infections averted' from levels not scaled in the first place!"

The point bears repetition as NACP-III launches with a seeming correction of the statistical parameters. The AIDS scare has halved but the health minister's gung-ho response to the changed figures is scary. He appears to be claiming results from large sums of money spent in controlling numbers that did not exist in the first place. He also promises more "vigorous funding", despite overwhelming evidence of mismanagement during NACP-II and even while other vital areas of healthcare perceptibly lag.

Just as pertinent are the issues surrounding NACP-III's strategic thrust. Two-thirds of Rs 11,585 crore are earmarked for prevention but the bulk is for the NACP-III centrepiece: Targeted Interventions for High-Risk Persons (TIHRP) focus on three major categories: commercial sex workers (CSW); men having sex with men (MSM); and injecting drug-users (IDU). It is a minimal package but is ironically termed comprehensive. Altogether, Rs 6,000 to 7,000 crore is allocated for the narrow "non-judgmental, non-interfering" servicing of high-risk persons even as there is nothing to proactively reduce high-risk exposure or promote alternative low-risk lifestyles, despite specific directives to NACO for broadening prevention issued by the HRD parliamentary standing committee examining immoral traffic prevention act amendments.

The TIHRP operational targets are prime indicators for monitoring NACP-III achievements. But how realistic are the targets set? The NACP-III Expert Group on High Risk Persons Estimations dismisses out of hand as "crude estimates" the "mappings" of high-risk persons conducted by each state through expensive, extensive research comprising major NACP-II activities.

Other financial points require scrutiny: only Rs 8023 crore are within the national budget. Of this Rs 5162 crore is from external aid and is concentrated on TIHRP/condom-provision/STD-services, with just token attention being paid to care treatment, exposing India's sleaziest aspects to outsider involvement. India's contribution - Rs 2861 crore - absorbs Rs 2,400 crore from the National Rural Health Mission, suborning it to HIV/AIDS as primary healthcare is already to contraception/immunisation/pulse polio. The biggest outlay - Rs 2000 crore - is for condoms, with just Rs 24 crore for clean blood storage! Further, a government committed to downsizing provides Rs 418 crore to a manifold increase in NACO's strength of 800, with 1,371 new posts and 1,200 contractual appointments.

What are these figures really based on? The fiscal farce arising from showering scarce resources on inflated numbers is one part of the story. The other is the social, ethical and law and order implications of such unprecedented and large-scale collectivisation of high-risk individuals. The whole approach needs deeper consideration lest the whole strategy boomerangs.

Read More..

Early treatment sees more HIV babies survive

HIV-infected babies have a greater chance of survival if they receive treatment before they show signs of illness or a weakened immune system, the International AIDS Society (IAS) was told on Tuesday. A study of infants in Cape Town and Soweto in South Africa found that infants given immediate drug treatment had a 96 percent survival rate compared with 84 percent for children where treatment was deferred.

The study, sponsored by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was so successful that it was amended in 2007, ending enrolments for the deferred treatment group and evaluating those in the group for treatment. An estimated 2.3 million children are currently HIV infected, with around 600,000 new HIV infections in children each year. Without treatment half of all babies infected with HIV die before their second birthday.

"Children with HIV infection frequently show rapid disease progression within the first year of life due to their developing immune systems and susceptibility to other serious infections," said Dr Elias Zerhouni, director of the U.S. National Institute of Health, in a statement on the study at an IAS conference.

"This is the first randomized clinical trial that shows that infants treated before 3 months of age will do better than infants who have their treatment delayed," Zerhouni said.

The study of 337 babies aged 6 to 12 weeks was initially aimed at examining whether early antiretroviral drug therapy over a limited period would delay HIV progression.

Doctors had hoped that early treatment would allow a child's immune system to develop and possibly allow the child to stop treatment for a period of time and avoid continuous therapy.

A review in 2007 found such a significant difference in survival rates and the interim results forwarded to the World Health Organisation.

"The results of this trial could have significant public health implications worldwide because these findings will cause experts to consider changes in standards of care in many parts of the world," said NIAID director Dr Anthony Fauci.

IMMUNE SYSTEMS

Caring for HIV-infected children is complicated by the fact that their immune systems are not fully developed in the first year of life, which makes them especially susceptible to rapid the disease progression and death.

The current standard of HIV care in many parts of the world is to treat infants with antiretroviral therapy, but only after they show signs of illness or a weakened immune system.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said children were the "silent victims" of the global AIDS epidemic, with 9 out of 10 child sufferers infected through mother-to-child transmission during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding.

About 87 percent of children with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa, with the vast majority beyond health services. Of the 540,000 children newly infected in 2006, 470,000 live in Africa and only 700 in either Europe or North America, said MSF.

MSF said "vertical transmission" of HIV from mother to child had been almost been wiped out in wealthy countries because antiretroviral drug therapy was given to pregnant mothers and babies within a few hours of birth.

The mother-to-child transmission rate in wealthy nations was below 1 percent, compared with rates as high as 25 to 45 percent in poorer nations in Africa, said MSF.

The United Nations says close to 40 million people are infected with the AIDS virus and that treatment had dramatically expanded from 240,000 people in 2001 to 1.3 million by 2005.

Read More..

Circumcision could save millions from HIV infection, AIDS conference told

Male circumcision could prevent millions of HIV infections every year and play a major role in controlling the virus' spread in developing nations, a major AIDS conference was told Tuesday. US researcher Richard Bailey called on health authorities to actively promote circumcision, saying the scientific evidence left no doubt that it could reduce HIV infection rates by up to 60 percent.

Bailey, from the University of Illinois, said three studies in Africa had all confirmed a long-standing belief about the effectiveness of circumcision in reducing the risk of HIV infection. "The last two were actually stopped early because they showed such a high level of efficacy that it wouldn't be ethical to continue the trial and withhold circumcision from the control group," Bailey told reporters at the International AIDS Society conference in Sydney.

He said universal circumcision could avert two million new infections and 300,000 deaths in sub-Saharan Africa over 10 years.

Bailey said while health authorities would rush to implement a vaccine that was 60 percent effective, there was an element of squeamishness in some cultures about promoting male circumcision. "It's been a really long haul because it's the penis after all, so it's not that easy to accept that kind of intervention," he said.

"Circumcision is not just simply a medical procedure, it's tied up in a complex web of cultural and religious practices and beliefs, so it's not easy for politicians and ministries of health to very quickly come out in favour of circumcision in countries where it's not traditionally practiced."

Bailey said leaders in developing nations needed to endorse circumcision because international health authorities would not impose it because they feared being seen as culturally insensitive. "But the time to act is right now," he said. "Delaying the roll-out of circumcision could be causing more harm, not just because more people are getting infected with HIV than necessary but also people are going to unqualified practitioners."

The conference also heard that the practice, common in Africa, of women rinsing themselves with lemon juice after sex did not reduce the risk of HIV infection. Nigerian researcher Atiene Sagay said a study of more than 300 Nigerian prostitutes found that women douched to avoid infection but it was totally ineffective.

"People suggested it could be a microbicide (but) we know much better than that now," Sagay said. He said the practice was not an effective contraceptive measure either, as alkaline semen easily neutralised citric acid.

Read More..

Bulgaria eyes quick Libya deal for HIV nurses

Bulgaria said it was hopeful of an agreement with Libyan authorities on Monday that would pave the way for the release of six foreign medics convicted of infecting Libyan children with HIV.

Prospects for the release of the five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor appeared to rise after France's first lady and a top European Commission official flew to Libya seeking to end a dispute holding back Tripoli's ties with the West.

"We are at the stage now where the decision is purely political," Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin told reporters arriving for a meeting in Brussels.

"I hope there will be enough will from the Libyans' side today in order to finalize talks ... If they show this will, then the transfer can be done very quickly," he added.

The European Union's executive said in a statement late on Sunday that EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and President Nicolas Sarkozy's wife Cecilia traveled to the North African state on Sunday.

"The European Commission hopes that this situation, which is so painful and has lasted so long, can be resolved in a humane spirit," the statement said. It gave no further details.

An EU official would only say that the two women were in Tripoli talking to the Libyan authorities on Monday, and declined to comment on media reports that the nurses would be flown out to Sofia on Monday aboard a French presidential plane.

Libya's Higher Judicial Council last week commuted death sentences on the six, accused of deliberately infecting 460 children at Benghazi hospital, to life imprisonment. That opened the way for them to return to their home country under a 1984 prisoner exchange agreement. Once in Bulgaria, they could be pardoned by the Balkan state's president, Georgi Parvanov.

INNOCENT

Bulgaria and its allies in the 27-member bloc say the nurses are innocent but have provided long-term medical assistance to victims and aid for the Benghazi hospital.

The EU is also helping Libyan authorities to design a national AIDS program.

Libyan officials have signaled that they want the agreement firmed up, with specific details included as to how the EU will fulfill its commitments in practice.

Families of the HIV victims received payments of hundreds of millions of dollars last week from an international fund set up by the Gaddafi Foundation. Once they are sent to Bulgaria, the medics could be pardoned by the new EU member state's president.

In Bulgaria, where a big poster saying "We are waiting for you" was placed at the Sofia airport's arrival hall, government officials rejected French media reports that the nurses could be flown back to the Balkan country as early as Monday.

"It is not true. The rumor is wrong. It is not clear when the nurses will come back," Deputy Foreign Minister Feim Chaushev told Reuters.

Some EU officials had voiced private exasperation at what they saw as the new French leader seeking credit for the release of the medics at the last minute after Brussels has spent three years patiently negotiating with Tripoli.

Sarkozy himself is due to visit Libya on Wednesday.

Emmanuel Altit, one of three French lawyers representing the Bulgarian nurses, welcomed the visit.

"All efforts are welcome and we welcome with interest anything that contributes to a solution," he told Reuters.

Last Friday, the European Union held out the prospect of a quick boost to relations with Libya if the fate of the six jailed medics is resolved in a satisfactory way.

Read More..

HIV no longer a death sentence, conference told

HIV infection is no longer a death sentence, with patients likely to have a "fairly robust" life expectancy if given the right drugs, a major HIV/AIDS conference in Australia heard Monday.

Michael Lederman, of Case Western Reserve University, has been treating HIV patients for more than 20 years and said he has seen such improvements that he believes the world could be on the cusp of ending the pandemic.

"I have been doing HIV care since 1983," he told a press conference at the fourth International AIDS Society Conference in Sydney. "And in those days I would regularly see my patients die. Life expectancy was short.

"I wouldn't even tell my patients who enjoyed cigarettes to stop smoking because it didn't seem to make a lot of sense if we were talking about survival in terms of months and a few years.


"But now we are talking about a fairly robust life expectancy."

While the life expectancy for a person infected with HIV was not quite the same as normal, the major health risks for his patients were the same as those as those facing the general population such as heart disease, Lederman said.

"So the future is a little uncertain but it is so bright, so bright compared to what it was 10, 15, 20 years ago," he said.

Lederman's comments echoed those of other high profile speakers at the conference, who have said that powerful anti-retroviral drugs now in use can prevent people from dying from the disease for decades.

"I think we are done with the mortality of AIDS in treated people," the head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Michel Kazatchkine told the conference on Sunday.

"Only five years ago hope was an abstract notion, now hope is a reality."

The possibility of eradicating HIV emerged in the mid-1990s when powerful anti-retroviral therapies first became available but optimism faded because of the toxicity of the drugs.

Improved drugs have greatly reduced the toxic side-effects while two new classes of medications are being developed to treat patients who have developed resistance to the anti-retrovirals.

Lederman said the challenge would be seeing life-saving drugs made available in the developing world where less than 28 percent of those infected with HIV receive treatment.

"The challenge is huge. But I'm actually pretty optimistic that things are going in the right direction. I am looking at the cup as being more than half full," he told AFP.

Brian Gazzard, founder and chair of the British HIV Association, agreed that HIV patients who a decade ago would have died were now living long enough to have to manage the normal consequences of aging, such as heart disease.

But he said it would be wrong to believe the world was close to ending the devastation of the HIV/AIDS pandemic which is estimated to have claimed some 25 million lives in the past quarter century.

"I don't agree at all. I think the HIV epidemic is essentially uncontrolled. It is uncontrolled in Africa, it is uncontrolled completely in Asia really at the moment," he told the press conference.

"I think the scale of the endeavour to actually beat this epidemic, nobody has started to really conceive of yet."

Craig McClure, executive director of the International AIDS Society, said it seemed that while there were now more resources for HIV and AIDS than ever before it was no guarantee that the disease would be overcome.

"There is a possibility that we could overcome this disease," he said.

"We are at a point where we could begin to begin ending the epidemic or we could begin to go down a very negative track where people assume that there are enough resources now and the problem is over. And it certainly isn't."

Read More..

Medical "brain drain" hindering AIDS battle

The biggest challenge in the global fight against AIDS is no longer money for drug research and treatment but the lack of local health services in nations worst-hit by the disease, the World Bank said on Monday.

While some two million people were now receiving treatment for HIV-AIDS, the lack of health services in many African and Asian nations was adversely affecting treatment programs, said Debrework Zewdie, head of the bank's global HIV-AIDS program.

An absence of proper pharmaceutical storage had seen HIV-AIDS drugs expire before they could be administered and a "brain drain" of doctors and medical researchers meant there was a shortage of people capable of properly implementing treatment, Zewdie told the International Aids Society conference in Sydney.

"Our most difficult challenge is not funding, but the limited health system capacity in countries with the highest disease burden," Zewdie told reporters at the world's largest HIV-AIDS conference, attended by 5,000 delegates from 133 countries.

"There is a desperate shortage of doctors, health care workers and researchers, who would not only deliver treatment services but also coordinate local operations."

The World Bank said Ethiopia had less than 2,000 doctors or about one doctor for every 100,000 people. Papua New Guinea, which faced one of the fastest growing HIV-AIDS epidemics, had only 284 doctors -- but half worked overseas.

"We want to reverse the lack of research culture. We want to reverse the brain drain and bring our doctors home," said Zewdie.

The United Nations says close to 40 million people are infected with the AIDS virus and that treatment had dramatically expanded from 240,000 people in 2001 to 1.3 million by 2005.

In June, world powers at the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Germany set a target of providing AIDS drugs over the next few years to approximately 5 million people.

A report by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) at the conference said that while there had been dramatic price reductions in some HIV-AIDS drugs, the newer, less toxic drugs recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) had become more expensive.

"The lack of competition and dramatically higher prices for the newly-recommended WHO first line (drugs) could mean that people in developing countries may not be able to benefit from improved treatment...," said Karen Day from MSF.

The MSF report said some new drugs had risen in price by nearly 500 percent from $99 to up to $487. It said "compulsory licenses" were more effective in bringing prices down than negotiating price reductions with drug companies.

In January 2007, Thailand issued a compulsory license to overcome the patent barrier on a HIV drug, allowing the country to legally import the drug or produce it locally.

"Just one year ago, treating a patient with a second-line regimen ... in Thailand cost $2,800 per year," said Kannikar Kijtiwatchakul, a MSF campaigner.

"Treating that same patient with a second-line regimen will now cost $695, four times less. But this is still far too expensive for the majority of people in Thailand, where the average annual salary is $1,600."

Australia said on Monday it would increase funding for HIV programs by A$400 million ($350 million), bringing its total commitment to A$1 billion by 2010.

The Australian funding will focus on the Asia-Pacific region where some eight million people live with HIV-AIDS, said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

"We cannot ignore the social and economic consequences of HIV in our region. It is predicted that without increased and ongoing action, HIV will have killed 1.5 million people in Indonesia and 300,000 people in Papua New Guinea by 2025," said Downer.

Read More..

Experts call for more access to HIV care

The world will not be able to celebrate advances in HIV diagnosis and treatment until the United Nations' goal of universal access to drugs is reached, leading international AIDS researchers said at a conference Sunday.

"We are dealing with a preventable disease and 11,000 people are contracting HIV/AIDS every day. We are dealing with a treatable disease and more than 3 million people are dying every year," said Pedro Cahn, the president of the International AIDS Society.

"Science has given us the tools to prevent and treat HIV effectively. The fact that we have not yet translated this science into practice ... is a shameful failure on the part of the global community."

More than 5,000 delegates from 133 countries have converged on Sydney, Australia, for the Fourth International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis and Treatment, which runs through Wednesday.

Researchers from across the globe will present their findings on the benefits of circumcision for cutting HIV rates through to the latest developments in anti-retroviral drugs.

Lower prices for HIV drugs have significantly improved access to treatment for people in poor countries, but recent World Health Organization figures show the numbers are still far short of the U.N.'s goal of universal coverage by 2010.

Last year, some 2 million people in developing countries were receiving the anti-retroviral drugs that help treat the HIV infection, a 54 percent increase over 2005. But overall, only 28 percent of the world's HIV patients are receiving the life-prolonging drugs.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the world health community could not celebrate the great breakthroughs in the treatment HIV/AIDS since it was first diagnosed 26 years ago until greater steps are made to prevent the disease.

"Of the projected 60 million infections that will occur by 2015, fully half of them are projected to be able to be prevented with already known and proven prevention methods," Fauci told reporters in Sydney.

"Before we celebrate 26 years since the beginning of extraordinary accomplishments, we're actually going to be judged as a society in what we do in the next 20-26 years," he said. "We cannot sustain a successful effort with HIV without prevention."

Participants at the AIDS conference will be urged to sign a declaration aimed at raising more money for HIV research.

The so-called Sydney Declaration calls on national governments and bilateral, multilateral and private donors to allocate at least 10 percent of all HIV/AIDS-related funding to research.

"We believe that without such funding we will fail to maintain a sustained and effective response to the AIDS pandemic," the declaration says.

The conference organizers say this will help speed up the implementation of new drugs and technologies to prevent, diagnose and treat the infection.

Read More..

New HIV infections outpace treatment

Access to life-extending HIV/AIDS drugs in developing countries has improved during the past three years, but new infections still dramatically outpace efforts to bring treatment to patients, health officials said Monday.

Three years ago, fewer than 300,000 people in the developing world were receiving the anti-retroviral drugs that help treat the virus. Last year, 2.2 million people in developing countries received the drugs, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"However, for every one person that you put in therapy, six new people get infected. So we're losing that game, the numbers game," Fauci told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

In many parts of the developing world where the HIV/AIDS epidemic is still growing exponentially, effective prevention strategies — such as condom distribution, needle exchanges and basic education about the disease — reach less than 15 percent of the population.

"The proven prevention modalities are not accessible to any substantial proportion of the people who need them," said Fauci, one of the keynote speakers at the Fourth International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis and Treatment in Sydney, Australia, which runs through Wednesday.

"Although we are making major improvements in the access to drugs, clearly prevention must be addressed in a very forceful way," he added.

According to recent World Health Organization statistics, only 28 percent of the world's HIV/AIDS patients are receiving anti-retroviral drugs.

Dr. Brian Gazzard, chairman of the British HIV Association, said that while great advances have been made in extending access to anti-retrovirals, the disease is still running rampant in parts of Asia and Africa.

"The HIV epidemic is essentially uncontrolled, uncontrolled in Africa, uncontrolled completely in Asia right now," he told reporters at the conference, which has drawn 5,000 delegates from 133 countries. "The epidemic still is in an exponential growth phase ... and I think that is likely to continue."

Read More..

HIV no longer a death sentence, conference told

HIV infection is no longer a death sentence, with patients likely to have a "fairly robust" life expectancy if given the right drugs, a major HIV/AIDS conference in Australia heard Monday.

Michael Lederman, of Case Western Reserve University, has been treating HIV patients for more than 20 years and said he has seen such improvements that he believes the world could be on the cusp of ending the pandemic.

"I have been doing HIV care since 1983," he told a press conference at the fourth International AIDS Society Conference in Sydney. "And in those days I would regularly see my patients die. Life expectancy was short.

"I wouldn't even tell my patients who enjoyed cigarettes to stop smoking because it didn't seem to make a lot of sense if we were talking about survival in terms of months and a few years.

"But now we are talking about a fairly robust life expectancy."

While the life expectancy for a person infected with HIV was not quite the same as normal, the major health risks for his patients were the same as those as those facing the general population such as heart disease, Lederman said.

"So the future is a little uncertain but it is so bright, so bright compared to what it was 10, 15, 20 years ago," he said.

Lederman's comments echoed those of other high profile speakers at the conference, who have said that powerful anti-retroviral drugs now in use can prevent people from dying from the disease for decades.

"I think we are done with the mortality of AIDS in treated people," the head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Michel Kazatchkine told the conference on Sunday.

"Only five years ago hope was an abstract notion, now hope is a reality."

The possibility of eradicating HIV emerged in the mid-1990s when powerful anti-retroviral therapies first became available but optimism faded because of the toxicity of the drugs.

Improved drugs have greatly reduced the toxic side-effects while two new classes of medications are being developed to treat patients who have developed resistance to the anti-retrovirals.

Lederman said the challenge would be seeing life-saving drugs made available in the developing world where less than 28 percent of those infected with HIV receive treatment.

"The challenge is huge. But I'm actually pretty optimistic that things are going in the right direction. I am looking at the cup as being more than half full," he told AFP.

Brian Gazzard, founder and chair of the British HIV Association, agreed that HIV patients who a decade ago would have died were now living long enough to have to manage the normal consequences of aging, such as heart disease.

But he said it would be wrong to believe the world was close to ending the devastation of the HIV/AIDS pandemic which is estimated to have claimed some 25 million lives in the past quarter century.

"I don't agree at all. I think the HIV epidemic is essentially uncontrolled. It is uncontrolled in Africa, it is uncontrolled completely in Asia really at the moment," he told the press conference.

"I think the scale of the endeavour to actually beat this epidemic, nobody has started to really conceive of yet."

Craig McClure, executive director of the International AIDS Society, said it seemed that while there were now more resources for HIV and AIDS than ever before it was no guarantee that the disease would be overcome.

"There is a possibility that we could overcome this disease," he said.

"We are at a point where we could begin to begin ending the epidemic or we could begin to go down a very negative track where people assume that there are enough resources now and the problem is over. And it certainly isn't."

Read More..

Major HIV/AIDS conference opens in Sydney

The world's biggest scientific HIV/AIDS conference opened in Australia on Sunday with experts calling for more funding for research and new findings which suggest male circumcision can reduce infection by 60 percent.

About 5,000 delegates from more than 130 countries are attending the conference in Sydney this week to hear from the world's top experts in the fight against the global pandemic.

Delegates will be shown evidence from trials in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa that circumcision can reduce the risk of HIV infection in heterosexual men by about 60 percent.

The trials confirmed previous studies which have reported circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection. Muslim and Jewish men are circumcised in accordance with religious beliefs.

A briefing note said male circumcision in sub-Saharan Africa would prevent 5.7 million new cases of HIV infection and 3 million deaths over 20 years.

The conference also issued a declaration urging governments to allocate 10 percent of all resources for HIV into research.

"Science has given us the tools to prevent and treat HIV effectively. The fact that we have not yet translated this science into practice is a shameful failure," Pedro Cahn. the president of the International Aids Society told reporters on Sunday.

Global AIDS treatment is expected to fall far short of a universal target to have five million people being treated by 2010, due to a continued lack of access to drugs by many of the world's impoverished people.

The United Nations says close to 40 million people are infected with the AIDS virus and that treatment had dramatically expanded from 240,000 people in 2001 to 1.3 million by 2005.

In June, world powers at the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Germany set a target of providing AIDS drugs over the next few years to approximately 5 million people. Anthony Facui, who advises the White House on the virus, said the message at the conference would be mixed as a lot had been accomplished but there was still a lot to do.

"We still now are only treating 28 percent of the people who actually need therapy. We cannot sustain a successful effort without prevention," Fauci, who estimated 60 million people would be infected by 2015, told reporters.

Read More..

Despite progress, world still failing HIV carriers

The global community has not done enough to prevent the spread of HIV and millions of deaths from preventable disease are a "shameful failure," said the head of the International AIDS Society Sunday.

Society president Pedro Cahn was speaking ahead of the first session of the fourth International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in Sydney.

Cahn said 11,000 people were still contracting HIV each day despite the huge advances in knowledge of and treatments for the virus.

He said fewer than a third of those living with HIV in low and middle income countries were treated with life-saving medication and even fewer could access proven prevention methods such as condoms and clean syringes.

"Science has given us the tools to prevent and treat HIV effectively," he said.

"The fact that we have not yet translated this science into practice is a shameful failure on the part of the global community."

The Sydney conference brings together more than 5,000 delegates to discuss cutting-edge treatments for HIV, including two new classes of drugs that could give hope to those who have developed a resistance to existing retroviral drugs.

It will also look at prevention strategies such as male circumcision, which has proven effective in limiting the spread of the virus.

And under its Sydney Declaration it will push for governments and donors to allocate an additional 10 percent of their HIV programme funding to research to ensure that projects are effective.

"We are badly in need of research that will tell us what impact our programmes are having in the areas of the world where 90 percent of the epidemic is focused, and how to adjust our programmes to make the best use of our investment and to save as much lives as possible," Cahn said at the opening of the conference.

Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, speaking before the conference opened, said there was cause for hope in the fight against the disease because of the successes of the past two decades.

In 2001, only several hundred thousand people living with HIV in the developing world had access to retroviral treatments but the current figure was now 2.2 million people, he said.

"This is far beyond what most of us thought was possible," he added.

Kazatchkine said as well as the encouragement from the development of new drugs, there was also hope because the world was coming together to fight health problems as never before.

He said the scourge of AIDS had demonstrated that "we cannot have development and prosperity when AIDS is killing large parts of the population and eroding human capital."

But he said despite the Global Fund so far raising some 11 billion dollars, the main challenge to fighting the HIV epidemic was resourcing.

"We need more resources, but we also need more sustainable resources," he said.

Key adviser to the US government, Doctor Anthony Fauci, said there were now extraordinary treatments for those who have access to the right medicines.

But he also acknowledged the gap in access. "As great as those advancements are... we still now are treating only about 28 percent of the people who actually need therapy," he said.

He said prevention strategies such as male circumcision were essential to combat the disease because of the huge gap in the provision of drugs.

An estimated 40 million people are now living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, while more than 25 million people are thought to have died from the disease.

Read More..

Mobile medical unit for HIV affected

Tamil Nadu Aids Control Society would introduce a mobile medical unit for HIV positive and AIDS-affected people in the district.

District Collector N Mathivanan said the van with all necessary facilities would visit the residences of the patients and provide necessary medicines and clinical help.

He said out of the 127 ART centres in the state, 33 were in Salem district.

He said recent clinical tests conducted upon around 30,000 people in the district, had found that 232 were inflicted by AIDS.

Apart from providing a monthly assistance of Rs 400 each, loans were also sanctioned for livelihood purposes.

Read More..

Indonesia to boost HIV/AIDS spending

Indonesia will increase the amount of money it spends on fighting AIDS by 75 percent over the next three years, with the major focus on hardest-hit Papua province, the welfare minister said in Jakarta.

Indonesia has one of Asia's fastest-growing HIV rates, with up to 290,000 infections among its 235 million people, fueled mainly by injecting drug users and prostitution.

Health authorities have warned that a failure to take prompt action in areas like Papua -- where infections are 15 times the national average -- could result in 1 million people infected with HIV within a few years.

Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie said late Thursday the government would increase the amount of money budgeted for the AIDS fight from $67 million last year to $263 million in 2010.

The government also wants to reduce its dependency on international donors, which have contributed up to 70 percent to the national AIDS budget, he said.

The main focus of the new spending would be on Papua, which now receives only 4 percent of the money budgeted for AIDS even though it has the highest proportion of cases.

Read More..

Asia must overcome HIV stigma, say research chiefs

Asia has made progress in containing HIV but must remove the stigma associated with the virus to fully consolidate the gains and keep it under control, international research chiefs say.

Speaking ahead of an international conference of 5,000 HIV/AIDS researchers in Sydney next week, America's top expert Anthony Fauci and his Australian counterpart David Cooper said HIV remained a major public health risk in Asia.

Fauci said predictions HIV would devastate Asia as it had Africa had proved false after local health authorities, which were initially slow to heed warnings, adopted pro-active policies.

But he said the potential for an epidemic still existed in a region estimated to have eight million people with HIV, a figure aid agency USAID says could climb to 40 million by 2010.

"The population density in Asia is so great, with countries like India and China that have a billion people each, that infection rates just have to track up a few percentage points and you're potentially looking at a catastrophe," Fauci told AFP.

Cooper, the co-chair of the International AIDS Society (IAS) conference, said responding to HIV was complicated by the fact that many suffers existed on the fringe of Asian society and faced discrimination.

"We're not going to have the generalised epidemics in our region that we've got in sub-Saharan Africa, we're going to have explosive smaller epidemics," he said.

"They tend to occur among drug users, also among gay men, sex workers or mobile workers such as truck drivers, fishermen who are more likely to pay for sex.

"In Asia, they're stigmatised and discriminated populations. The trick is to get into these vulnerable populations and provide non-judgemental healthcare."

Cooper cited China as an example of a country that had overcome its initial denial of an HIV problem but could go further if discrimination ended.

"China is responding pretty well, their reponse has changed, they're putting treatment in place and doing research," he said.

"But people are still very much concerned about the human rights issues and how people with HIV are treated in Chinese society."

China estimated last year that it had 650,000 HIV cases, although UN officials estimate the actual number is now higher.

A recent paper in British medical journal The Lancet praised China's adoption of schemes such as needle exchanges and awareness campaigns among gay men, although the UN said there was still resistance to confronting the problem at a local level.

In India, where the estimated number of HIV cases was this month halved to 2.5 million, the government has set out to target the type of at-risk groups identified by Cooper.

"They're talking about upscaling programmes with marginalised groups," said Anjali Gopalan, head of the Naz Foundation, which works primarily with men.

"There was quite a bit of silence on them earlier."

Indians with HIV are still often treated as social outcasts, with reports of doctors shunning AIDS patients and HIV-positive children being barred from attending school with other pupils.

In Cambodia, one of the countries hit hardest by HIV/AIDS, the authorities are concerned that discrimination is helping the virus spread.

"It is difficult for us since stigma causes infected people not to speak out and this quietly spreads the infection," said Ly Peng Sun, deputy director of the National Centre for HIV/AIDS and Dermatology.

"Bias can prevent us from fighting the virus successfully."

Vietnam has introduced laws banning discrimination against people with HIV, although locals say it means some employers simply find a pretext to sack infected workers, rather than admitting it is because of their illness.

"If this new law is effectively implemented, it will serve not only as a shield for the fundamental rights of people living with HIV... but also as a positive tool for fighting stigma and discrimination," UNAIDS Vietnam director Eammon Murphy said.

Thailand has adopted a different tack to breaking down the taboos regarding HIV with innovative education campaigns such as traffic police handing out condoms, an initiative dubbed "Cops and Rubbers."

The country, which has experienced about half a million AIDS deaths and has about the same number of HIV cases, has slashed infection rates since it appointed a cabinet-level anti-AIDS coordinator to oversee prevention efforts.

It is also pushing international drugmakers over access to generic versions of newer and more expensive HIV medications that are needed to treat patients who have become resistant to the old drugs.

Read More..

Male circumcision can cut HIV infection, studies show

Scientific studies have confirmed a long-standing belief that male circumcision can reduce HIV infection rates in men by 60 percent, an international AIDS conference will be told next week.

David Cooper, the co-chairman of an International AIDS Society (IAS) conference to be held in Sydney from July 22-25, said research on male circumcision represented a major development in HIV prevention.

"We always knew that if you went into any particular African country that HIV rates among Muslim men were lots lower," Cooper told AFP.

"But we were never sure that the Muslim men had lower numbers of partners than non-Muslim men, so people always doubted it."

Cooper said the only way to ensure the link between lower HIV rates and circumcision was not due to cultural factors was to carry out random trials, the results of which will be presented at the Sydney conference.

He said three trials were conducted in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda, each involving more than 2,000 heterosexual men, half of whom were circumcised.

"The reduction in HIV infection was about 60 percent, so clearly it works," said Cooper, who is also the director of Australia's National Centre for HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research.

Cooper said the studies showed circumcision could be a powerful tool in helping curb HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa, where infection rates in some countries are up to 40 percent of the adult population.

He said, however, that any introduction of widespread male circumcision in developing countries needed to be carried out with an education campaign that reinforced a safe sex message.

"In some areas of sub-Saharan Africa men are requesting circumcision, which is a bit of a worry, as they may think they're protected and they're not," Cooper said.

"It merely reduces the risk, you still have to use condoms, men can't think 'that's all I need to do, I can now have unsafe sex'."

The clinical reason for circumcision's preventive effect is still being investigated.

One theory is that the foreskin has a very thin lining and suffers minor abrasions during intercourse, making it easier for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to enter the man's bloodstream. Another is that the foreskin is rich in Langerhans cells, whose surface is configured in such a way that the AIDS virus readily latches on to them.

Read More..

Blow to Elton John's AIDS project in Nepal

An HIV/AIDS intervention programme in Nepal's backward far west region, which started two months ago with funding from British singer Sir Elton John, has received a setback due to homophobia and ignorance among government officials and NGOs working in the area, programme officials said.

Blue Diamond Society (BDS), Nepal's only gay rights organisation in Nepal, said it had been asked to stop its support programme for gays and transgenders who are HIV positive in Dhangadi district on the ground that gays 'polluted' society.

Two months ago, BDS opened an outpost with three employees to provide support to the HIV positive in the region, especially gays and transgenders.

The programme is being sponsored by the Elton John AIDS Foundation that has announced a grant of 25,000 pounds for BDS' AIDS intervention projects.

'There is an increasing number of gays, transgenders and males with HIV in the far west,' BDS president Sunil Pant told IANS. 'Since the outpost started, we have sent more than 15 people living with HIV to Kathmandu for further support, treatment and hospice facility.'

On the second day of every Nepali month, the District Public Health Office in Dhangadi calls a meeting of NGOs to discuss their programmes.

On Tuesday, when BDS representative in Dhangadi Ram Avatar went to attend the meeting, he faced growing hostility from the public health officer as well as other NGOs, BDS says.

'The public health officer Krishna Bhatta claimed that there are no 'sex tissues' in the anus and so there's no chance of HIV/AIDS transmission through anal sex,' Pant said.

So there is no need for the BDS care and support programme in Dhangadi, Bhatta reportedly said.

Bhatta, who apparently is not aware who Elton John is, also wanted to see the donor as well as proof that there were HIV affected gays and transgenders in Dhangadi.

He also told the BDS representative that Elton John should attend the next District Aids Coordinating Committee meeting in Dhangadi to discuss whether the government should allow AIDS intervention programmes for gays in the district or not.

Bhatta was supported by at least two NGOs present at the meeting who said a support programme for gays would encourage more homosexual activities and 'pollute' society.

'We are not sure where Elton John is available to visit Dhangadi at the next meeting,' Pant said. 'When state public health officials and NGOs working in the sector of sexual health and HIV prevention display such homophobic attitude, we feel it is impossible to provide effective care and support treatment for the sexual minorities.'

Only last week, policemen assaulted five young men for carrying condoms, accusing them of being male sex workers.

Read More..

Zambia to get anti-AIDS drug boost from global fund

Former US president Bill Clinton will visit Zambia this weekend to boost an UN-backed HIV/AIDS drugs programme which is helping treat some 13,250 children, UNITAID said Thursday.

The partnership between the Bill Clinton Foundation and UNITAID, a international drugs funding initiative, has increased the number of children under life-saving treatment in Zambia by about 7,200, an agency spokeswoman said.

With current levels of the disease, youngsters in Zambia face a 50 percent life-time risk of dying of AIDS in the absence of treatment, according to United Nations.

The Zambian government is also due to sign up to a five million dollar UNITAID programme to finance costly second line antiretroviral drugs in Zambia, one of the countries worst affected by HIV/AIDS.

UNITAID was launched last year by Brazil, Britain, France, Chile, Norway as an international drug purchasing facility for poor countries, partly funded by airline ticket levies.

At least 34 countries have signed up as donors to the 300 million dollar fund, which is aiming to help treat an additional 100,000 child HIV/AIDS victims in the world this year, and provide drugs against other major diseases.

UNITAID board chief Philippe Douste-Blazy is also due to discuss the supply of new artemisin-based anti-malarial and tuberculosis drugs with Zambian officials.

Although not part of the United Nations, the organization is backed by the World Health Organization.

Read More..

Three gene variants could hold key for HIV vaccine

Three gene variants in the DNA of 486 AIDS patients appear to play a role in containing and slowing the HIV virus, according to research published Thursday.

The researchers hope their finding will lead to a vaccine that would boost the protective effects of one or more of these genes, and help the body's own immune system overcome an infection.

One gene variant looks specially promising, the scientists said in a study to appear in the Friday edition of the journal Science.

"These results not only approximately double our understanding of the factors that influence variation amongst individuals in how they control HIV-1, but also point toward new mechanisms of control," said David Goldstein, of Duke's Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy at North Carolina's Duke University and chief author of the study.

The international team of geneticists worked for 18 months in carefully selecting patients and using the latest in genome-wide screening technology to discover the three genes.

The research found that some patients with specific gene variants in key immune system cells appear to be much better controlling the proliferation of the AIDS virus after infection.

"As we expand the number of patients in future studies conducted by CHAVI (Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology) researchers, we aim to discover even more polymorphisms that could provide additional clues how some patients are better able to control the virus than others," Goldstein said.

"This should ultimately lead to novel targets for vaccines, the primary goal of CHAVI," a seven-year project launched in 2005 by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIH).

Two of the newly discovered gene variants were found in genes controlling the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system, which plays a "major role" in the immune system by identifying foreign invaders and "tagging" them for destruction.

Two of the HLA genes, known as HLA-A and B, are turned off by the HIV virus when it enters the body, which keeps the immune system from recognizing the virus as foreign.

However, the HLA-C gene is apparently not turned off by the AIDS virus, suggesting that for some individuals at least HLA-C is involved in controlling the HIV virus, the researchers said.

The HLA-C gene may represent an Achilles heel of HIV, according to Goldstein.

A vaccine could be designed to elicit an HLA-C mediated response that the HIV virus might be unable to defuse, the expert added.

Read More..

HIV patients build normal immune strength in study

AIDS drug cocktails may be able to restore the ravaged immune systems of some people infected with HIV, researchers reported on Wednesday.

Immune cells known as CD4 T-cells returned to normal levels in an ideal group of patients, picked because they responded optimally to a combination of at least three AIDS drugs, the researchers reported in the Lancet medical journal.

The human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, plunders the immune system, leaving people vulnerable to a range of infections that may prove fatal.

AIDS is incurable, but doctors try to prop up the immune system with life-extending drug therapy aimed at reducing the amount of virus in the body.

The study involved 1,835 HIV-infected people drawn from a larger study involving more than 14,000 patients from across Europe, Israel and Argentina.

"I think it's very encouraging that if people can respond to treatment well enough and can suppress the virus for long enough, we have sufficient evidence to say their CD4 counts can return to normal," Dr. Amanda Mocroft of Royal Free and University College Medical School in London, one of the researchers, said in a telephone interview.

"Our previous understanding was that there was a plateau in CD4 counts so that CD4 counts would stop increasing after a sufficiently long time taking combination therapy," she added.

Mocroft said not all HIV patients respond as well to these drugs, and many, particularly in the hardest hit regions like sub-Saharan Africa, do not have access to them.

"This is sort of the best-case scenario, if you like, that we can identify a group of patients who we would expect to have a normal CD4 count with sufficient treatment," Mocroft said.

These patients were chosen because they responded well to the treatment, with the drugs suppressing the virus to very low levels. They were tracked for about five years.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said doctors who care for HIV-infected patients have noticed this restoration of normal levels of CD4 cells in some of them. Fauci credited Mocroft's team for documenting this phenomenon in a systematic way.

CD4 cells, a type of white blood cell, help protect the body

from infection. But HIV targets CD4 cells, using them to create

more copies of the virus, thus undermining the immune system.

After initial infection, a person can produce more CD4 cells to take the place of those attacked by HIV. But in time, the body cannot make enough, increasingly weakening the immune system.

Although it is impossible to eradicate the virus with existing drugs, it is possible to keep it at extremely low levels in some people with the right combination of drugs.

The AIDS virus infects close to 40 million people globally, most of them in Africa. It has killed more than 25 million.

Read More..

Bulgaria seeks transfer of AIDS case medics from Libya

Bulgaria said Wednesday it had begun steps to secure the transfer from Libya of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor reprieved from death sentences for infecting children with HIV/AIDS.

"The procedure around the transfer ... is already underway. I will request that the medical workers be allowed to serve out their sentences at home," chief prosecutor Boris Velchev said.

"The documents with which Bulgaria will request the extradition will be sent today to Libya," Velchev said, adding that the Palestinian doctor, who was recently granted Bulgarian nationality, would be included.

Libya's highest judicial body on Tuesday commuted to life in prison the death sentences against the six medics after a multi-million dollar compensation deal was hammered out with victims' families.

The six, who have been on death row since 2004 and deny any wrongdoing, are expected to serve out their sentences in Bulgaria as the two countries have an extradition treaty.

"We see no reasons for Libya to refuse the extradition," Velchev said, while stressing that the treaty provided no mandatory time framework for concluding a prisoner transfer.

"If the Libyan side is slow to answer the request, we will keep reminding them repeatedly of the need for an answer," he said.

Possible obstacles to a speedy transfer include defamation charges brought against the medics by senior Libyan police officers over claims of torture.

The family of twin girls infected with AIDS have also brought a civil suit against the six.

"Libya decides if the civil suits can hinder the transfer but if there is indeed an obstacle, it is technical and could be overcome," Velchev said.

The five nurses and the doctor, who was granted Bulgarian citizenship earlier this year, have been in a Libyan jail since 1999.

They were twice convicted of deliberately injecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood in a hospital in Libya's second city of Benghazi on the Mediterranean coast.

The death penalty had been confirmed for a third time by Tripoli's Supreme Court last week.

But Libya's top legal body, the Supreme Judicial Council, commuted the death sentences to life in prison Tuesday after the families of the infected children received money under a compensation deal with the Kadhafi foundation charity.

Bulgarian observers were impatient for the nurses' return in the wake of the compensation payout.

"They took the money but held the nurses," left-wing daily Standard said in its front-page headline Wednesday, condemning the "vicious mockery of our nurses in Libya".

President Georgy Parvanov dismissed speculation he would pardon the medics immediately after their transfer to Bulgaria.

"Talk of pardoning is not advisable at this stage. Let us not set sails before the wind comes," Parvanov said.

Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev said: "For us the case will be over when they return at home".

"Bulgaria will press for this to happen as quickly as possible," he added, urging "calm and a bit more patience."

Nurses Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valya Cherveniashka, Valentina Siropulo and Kristiana Valcheva and doctor Ashraf Juma Hajuj have always pleaded their innocence.

They say confessions were extracted under torture while foreign experts testified that the six were used as scapegoats for poor hygiene at the hospital that sparked the AIDS outbreak.

Read More..

HIV eradication now possible, says Australian conference chief

A new generation of HIV drugs is so promising that researchers are talking about eradicating the virus, an international AIDS conference will be told in Sydney next week.

The International AIDS Society (IAS) conference from July 22-25 will bring together more than 5,000 experts from around the world to hear presentations on the cutting edge of HIV/AIDS research.

Conference co-chairman David Cooper said the research ranged from studies showing a simple measure such as male circumcision can reduce the risk of HIV infection by up to 60 percent to details of the latest hi-tech pharmaceuticals.

Cooper said some of the most exciting research developments came from a new generation of drugs called integrase inhibitors, which help block the HIV virus infecting new cells.

Cooper said while cocktails of powerful anti-retroviral drugs had been used to help contain the virus and prolong life for more than a decade, the new drugs were more potent than their predecessors and had fewer side effects.

Cooper, the director of Australia's National Centre for HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, said integrase inhibitors and other promising research avenues such as gene therapy meant eradicating HIV was a realistic possibility.

"The integrase inhibitors are particularly potent drugs and I think you will start to see that eradication will return to the agenda with these new agents and new ways of using them," Cooper told reporters.

"Eradication was talked about when anti-retroviral therapies became available in the mid-1990s but went off the agenda because of the toxicity of the drugs -- people thought it was going to take 50 years.

"Now with some of the newer drugs and newer strategies it's back on the agenda again."

Cooper said up to 30 drugs were now available to HIV patients in the developed world, meaning they live longer but present a challenge to the health systems which treat them because they are more prone to conditions such as heart disease and cancer.

He said a major topic for discussion at the conference was making the latest drugs available in impoverished developing countries.

"In the developing world, we've only got the standard older drugs, which are more toxic," he said.

"One of the tensions is how we get these really new medications into the developing world."

Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said about two million people were being treated with anti-retroviral drugs in developing nations but the aim was quadruple that number.

Fauci said US President George W. Bush committed 30 billion dollars to HIV AIDS treatment in the developing world last May, in what amounted to the largest public health campaign ever undertaken.

"The achievements in treatment have been breathtaking, there has been so much accomplished in the years up to 2007, but there is still much to do -- that will be the key message I'll be taking to the conference," he told AFP.

To help ensure that anti-retroviral medicines are properly rolled out in countries which often lack basic infrastructure, Cooper has proposed delegates at the conference sign an initiative called the "Sydney Declaration."

The declaration will earmark 10 percent of HIV/AIDS funding in the developing world for research, to ensure programmes are working efficiently.

"If donors can't see that there's good outcomes, that it's effective, then unfortunately they're going to pull the plug," Cooper said. "The only way to keep it on track is with research."

Read More..