HIV and AIDS

China cracking down on AIDS groups

2007-08-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

Chinese authorities have cracked down on groups fighting HIV and AIDS, threatening activists, closing their offices and ordering that a conference be canceled, a human rights organization and activists said Tuesday. The government's actions raise questions about whether it is really committed to fighting HIV and AIDS, New York-based Human Rights Watch said.

"These individuals and groups dedicated to addressing the enormous suffering wrought by China's HIV/AIDS epidemic should not face police threats and harassment," Joe Amon, the group's HIV/AIDS director, said in a statement. The activists, Amon said, deserve "praise and support, not intimidation tactics by state security forces." The reported crackdown comes amid a general tightening of political control in China in the run-up to a major meeting of the ruling Communist Party. The meeting, expected in October, is held once every five years and sets the political tone and direction for the country.

Officials did not immediately comment. The Guangdong Public Security Bureau said it was not authorized to discuss the matter, referring questions to the Ministry of Public Security. The public security bureau in Kaifeng said it did not know about the case.

Zhu Zhaowu, who leads a branch of activist group Dong Zhen in Henan province, said officials went to his office last Wednesday and gave him two days to clear out.

Zhu said agents with the Kaifeng city Commerce and Industry Bureau said his group "is an illegal organization conducting illegal activities."

An officer also told Zhu to "watch your back after you move out, because Kaifeng can be unsafe," he said.

One of the group's activity centers in Ruanjia village was forced to close last Thursday, Zhu added. Dong Zhen provides legal aid to HIV and AIDS patients.

The organization had planned to co-host a conference Aug. 2-3 in southern China's Guangdong province with the New York-based Asia Catalyst group, said Dong Zhen director Li Dan. But the manager of the hotel where the conference was to be held said police contacted him and requested it be called off, Li said in a telephone interview.

"The Guangdong police didn't contact us directly, however," he said. Li refused to provide specifics, saying "I'm under a lot of other pressure."

The public security bureau in Guangdong had considered the conference's topics "too sensitive," Human Rights Watch said.

There are an estimated 650,000 people living with HIV in China, according to the most recent government statistics from 2005. HIV gained a foothold in the country largely due to unsanitary blood plasma-buying schemes and tainted blood transfusions.

The U.N. has praised China's work in combating HIV and AIDS, including top-level government commitment, proper funding, availability of antiretroviral drugs and outreach programs. However, the executive director of UNAIDS said last month that Beijing still must reach out to more patients in the vast country and overcome a lack of cooperation from some government officials.
(source : news.yahoo.com)

AIDS fight in Asia hurt by instability

2007-08-22T23:58:00.000-07:00

Sri Lanka - Growing political instability, stigmatization of those infected and conservative social attitudes are hampering the fight against the spread of HIV in Asia, a top regional AIDS official said Monday. Nearly a half-million people in Asia and the Pacific are infected with HIV every year and as many as 300,000 of those infected die — more than the total killed in the 2004 tsunami, said Prasada Rao, UNAIDS regional director.

"The harsh reality is that the grim march of the epidemic in our region continues unabated," he told the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. About 2,500 government officials, AIDS activists and health professionals from around the region gathered in Colombo for the five-day conference.

An estimated 5.4 million people in the region are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. While that number is far below the infection rate in Africa, Asia's huge population has led to concerns that an AIDS pandemic could erupt here as well if strong action is not taken.

While India and Thailand have been the focus of recent international efforts, Rao expressed fears that China, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh could be the next battlegrounds.

"These are large countries and they have the potential of an epidemic to take root, so they need a strong program," he said.

There has been some success, Rao said, pointing to a major campaign in India that help either stabilize or bring down the HIV-infection rate in the worst affected regions.

But there are also disturbing trends, including continued attacks by opponents of condom use and sex education, he said.

"There is no doubt anymore that condoms continue to be the only effective prevention tool available for protection against HIV, yet opposition to its promotion continues in many countries," he said.

In India, as many as 11 state governments have banned or are banning sex education in schools, and they are facing little opposition from civic groups, he said.

"It's baffling, really. Why should this happen?" he told The Associated Press.

A new wave of conflicts in the region is also hampering prevention and treatment efforts, he said. Two years ago, at the last regional AIDS conference, only Nepal was mired in significant conflict, he said. Now, eight more countries have fallen into political instability and conflict.

The war in Afghanistan has also indirectly contributed to the spread of the disease, he said. The increase in the cultivation of poppies used to make heroin has helped fuel intravenous drug use — the second leading cause of the spread of HIV in the region, he said.

Others also warned of potential pitfalls in the fight.

Nafis Sadik, special U.N. envoy on HIV/AIDS in Asia, said many issues of fear, stigmatization and ignorance are being ignored.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

Nutrition can't replace AIDS drugs, South African study finds

2007-08-22T23:54:00.000-07:00

Good nutrition, while important for those on antiretroviral medication, does not prevent HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, a study by South African scientists said Wednesday. The Academy of Science of South Africa found "no evidence that healthier eating is any substitute for correctly-used medical drugs".

"The panel has concluded that no food, no component made from food, and no food supplement has been identified in any credible study as an effective alternative to appropriate medication," said lead researcher Barry Mendelow. South Africa's Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has often claimed that the use of garlic, lemon and other vegetables -- earning her the nickname Dr Beetroot -- could contain the epidemic.

"These delay the development of HIV to AIDS-defining conditions, and that's the truth," she told parliament last year.

Dan Ncayiyana, editor of the South African Medical Journal and one of the authors of the study, said: "One of our most important findings has been that nutrition is important for general health but is not sufficient to contain the HIV/AIDS or the turberculosis epidemic."

The report called for nutritional studies to be conducted in conditions found in most poor countries where much of the population is malnourished.

"The few randomised trials that exist have mainly been conducted in high-income countries where most patients are well nourished and have access to life-prolonging antiretroviral therapy," the report said.

The health ministry said the study "reaffirms" government's position in its effort to combat the disease.

"It reaffirms some of the policy positions (on HIV/AIDS) pushed by government and the department," health spokesman Sibani Mngadi told SABC radio.

"While we are facing challenges of two major infectious diseases, nutrition will assist you in promoting good health, (but) you need to get appropriate medication."

South Africa is one of the countries worst-hit by HIV with prevalence standing at 18.4 percent in 2006, and with 5.41 million people living with the illness.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

CRPF launches helpline for own HIV/AIDS victims

2007-08-22T23:53:00.001-07:00

Hit with a rising number of HIV/AIDS cases among its personnel, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Wednesday launched a toll free helpline to assist the victims and their relatives with timely information regarding AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. 'The helpline will make the life of the jawans and their families safer and will go a long way in reducing stress levels in the force,' said CRPF director general S.I.S. Ahmed.

'The unique combination of facilities on this helpline will make it popular and useful,' he added. According to data available with the ministry of home affairs, 200 paramilitary personnel have died of AIDS since 2004, including 27 this year.

Of the total number of victims, 75 died in 2004, 58 in 2005, 40 in 2006 and 27 in the first seven months of 2007.

While CRPF has lost 72 of its men during this period, 56 troopers from the Border Security Force (BSF) have lost their lives due to HIV/AIDS.

The helpline - jointly created by the CRPF's Wives' Welfare Association (CWWA) and Force AIDS Control Cell (FACC) - will also redress grievances of serving and retired personnel in this area.

The project has been launched with funds provided by Unaids.

'The project will have six fully trained tele-counsellors to run the helpline, besides an interactive voice response system. These counsellors will have updated information on HIV, AIDS and welfare schemes of CRPF,' said another top CRPF official.

'In the first phase the information on these issues will be available in English and Hindi,' the official added.

On Tuesday, minister of state for home affairs Sriprakash Jaiswal had informed parliament that a total of 1,363 men in the paramilitary forces are currently suffering from AIDS.

Of them, CRPF has 521, and Assam Rifles 458. BSF has reported 239 HIV/AIDS cases, CISF 105, Indo-Tibetan Border Police 25, National Security Guard six and Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) nine cases.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

Human trafficking helps spread HIV/AIDS in Asia

2007-08-22T23:46:00.000-07:00

About 300,000 women and children are trafficked across Asia each year, accelerating the spread of HIV/AIDS, the United Nations said on Wednesday. "Trafficking ... contributes to the spread of HIV by significantly increasing the vulnerability of trafficked persons to infection," said Caitlin Wiesen-Antin, HIV/AIDS regional coordinator, Asia and Pacific, for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

"Both human trafficking and HIV greatly threaten human development and security."

Major human trafficking routes run between Nepal and India and between Thailand and neighbors like Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. Many of the victims are young teenage girls who end up in prostitution. "The link between human trafficking and HIV/AIDS has only been identified fairly recently," Wiesen-Antin told the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific.

"Neither HIV/AIDS nor human trafficking have been integrated or mainstreamed adequately, either at policy or programmatic level."

UNAIDS estimates 5.4 million people were living with HIV in the Asia Pacific region in 2006, with anywhere between 140,000 and 610,000 people dying from AIDS-related illnesses.

That makes it the world's second largest number of people living with HIV after sub-Saharan Africa, where 25.8 million people are infected with the virus.

Conference host Sri Lanka has one of the lowest rates of HIV in Asia, with an estimated 5,000 infected people out of a population of around 20 million.

Neighboring India, by comparison, has the world's third highest HIV caseload after South Africa and Nigeria, with around 2.5 million people living with the virus.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

Drugs, conflict spur HIV in Asia Pacific region

2007-08-21T23:49:00.000-07:00

HIV infections are increasing at a worrying 10 percent a year in the Asia Pacific region, a top UN AIDS official said on Tuesday, putting the rise down to intravenous drug use, sex workers and conflicts. Governments need to spend more money on prevention programmes and look at bypassing patents to produce affordable generic drugs to ensure prevalence rates remain low compared to Africa, said Prasada Rao, UNAIDS regional director for Asia and the Pacific.

"In the last two years we have seen about a million infections coming in, that means half a million every year," Rao told Reuters in an interview at the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific being hosted in Colombo. "Ten percent is a worrying figure."

"If you take out Southern India and Thailand and Cambodia, where you have a declining rate, in the remaining Asia Pacific region it is still an increasing epidemic," he added. "It is still accelerating."

UNAIDS estimates 5.4 million people were living with HIV in the Asia Pacific region in 2006, with anywhere between 140,000 and 610,000 people dying from AIDS-related illnesses.

That makes it the world's second largest number of people living with HIV after sub-Saharan Africa, where 25.8 million people are infected with the virus.

Part of the challenge is changing the mindset of policy makers who, though not complacent, are not targeting enough prevention measures at high risk groups, Rao said.

"It is an epidemic which is spreading through the injecting drug users, sexworkers ... who are criminalised sections of society," he said.

"When you explain the dynamic of the epidemic to politicians, they still think it is something that is not going to happen here and is only going to happen to bad people."

Areas of most acute concern to UNAIDS include Papua New Guinea because of poor health infrastructure and a high prevalence of rape, and Indonesia, Vietnam, China and Bangladesh, where intravenous drug use is high.

"In South Asia it is Pakistan and North India -- Pakistan because still the entire dimension of the epidemic is not well understood. Northern India's response is very slow and very disjointed," Rao said, adding some Indian states had even banned sex education.

India has between 2.0 million to 3.1 million people with HIV, with 85 percent of transmission occurring through sex workers. In China, 60 percent of infections are due to injecting drug use, he said.

Human trafficking for the sex industry is also a major problem.

"A lot of Nepali girls are brought to India. Another trafficking route has been Thailand and its neighbouring countries like Laos, Cambodia and even Myanmar," Rao said. "Many young girls are coming to brothels and massage parlours ... many just 13, 14 or 15 years old."

Nepal's AIDS programmes were suffering due to political instability there, just as conflict in Afghanistan is hindering access to treatment and prevention.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

Food supplements don't fight HIV

2007-08-21T23:48:00.000-07:00

Neither food nor food supplements are alternatives to drug therapy in treating people with HIV/AIDS, South Africa's top scientific advisory panel has said, amid a controversy over the nation's AIDS policies. The report by the Academy of Science of South Africa was issued as President Thabo Mbeki faced new criticism over support for his health minister, who promotes nutritional treatment for AIDS, and the sacking of a deputy minister who backed drug treatments.

The inter-disciplinary scientific panel, which advises the government on health policies, began studying nutritional influences on the human immune system in October 2005, focusing on the virus that causes AIDS and on tuberculosis (TB).

"The panel has concluded that no food, no component made from food, and no food supplement has been identified in any credible study as an effective alternative to appropriate medication," said Prof Barry Mendelow, chairman of a 15-member panel from the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf).

Mendelow told Reuters the panel found while nutritional intervention is "a valuable supportive measure", the primary treatment is anti-retrovirals and anti-TB drug therapy.

"It's not a question of one or the other," he added.

South Africa has one of the world's highest HIV infection rate with an estimated 12 per cent of the country's 47 million population infected with the deadly virus.

Besides a struggling health-care system characterised by a lack of doctors and nurses, many of whom have left the country for better pay abroad, the fight against AIDS has been hampered by conflicting messages from senior government officials.

Mbeki sacked Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge this month for insubordination, sparking an outcry from AIDS activists who strongly backed her policies and critics who say she was fired for political reasons.

Madlala-Routledge had clashed with Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, dubbed "Dr Beetroot", who had horrified AIDS activists with her advocacy of garlic, lemon and African potatoes over conventional anti-retroviral drugs.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

Beijing accused of harassing AIDS activists

2007-08-21T23:36:00.000-07:00

Chinese authorities have cracked down on groups fighting HIV and AIDS, threatening activists, closing their offices and ordering that a conference be canceled, a human rights group and activists said Tuesday. The government's actions raise questions about whether it is really committed to fighting HIV and AIDS, New York-based Human Rights Watch said.

"These individuals and groups dedicated to addressing the enormous suffering wrought by China's HIV/AIDS epidemic should not face police threats and harassment," Joe Amon, the group's HIV/AIDS director, said in a statement. The activists deserve "praise and support, not intimidation tactics by state security forces."

The crackdown comes amid a general tightening of political control in China in the run-up to a major meeting of the ruling Communist Party. The meeting, expected in October, is held once every five years and sets the political tone and direction for the country.

Zhu Zhaowu, who heads a branch of activist group Dong Zhen in Henan province, said officials went to his office last Wednesday and gave him two days to clear out.

Zhu said agents with the Kaifeng city Commerce and Industry Bureau said his group ''is an illegal organization conducting illegal activities.''

An officer also told Zhu to ''watch your back after you move out, because Kaifeng can be unsafe,'' he said.

One of the group's activity centers in Ruanjia village was forced to close on Thursday, Zhu added. Dong Zhen provides legal aid to HIV and AIDS patients.

The organization had planned to host a conference Aug. 2-3 in southern China's Guangdong province, said Dong Zhen director Li Dan. But the manager of the hotel where it was to be held said police contacted him and requested it be called off, Li said in a telephone interview.

''The Guangdong police didn't contact us directly, however,'' he said. Li refused to provide specifics, saying ''I'm under a lot of other pressure.''

The public security bureau in Guangdong had considered the conference's topics ''too sensitive,'' Human Rights Watch said.

A similar reason was given for the cancellation of another AIDS conference of Chinese and foreign experts, scheduled for last month in Guangzhou and organized by the New York-based group Asia Catalyst. The conference topic was strengthening AIDS victims' legal rights, Human Rights Watch said.

The Guangdong Public Security Bureau said it was not authorized to comment, referring questions to the Ministry of Public Security. The public security bureau in Kaifeng said it did not know about the case.

In Beijing, husband and wife activists Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan have been placed under house arrest and blocked from leaving the country.

There are an estimated 650,000 people living with HIV in China, according to the most recent government statistics from 2005. HIV gained a foothold in the country largely due to unsanitary blood plasma-buying schemes and tainted blood transfusions.

The U.N. has praised China's work in combating HIV and AIDS, including top-level government commitment, proper funding, availability of antiretroviral drugs and outreach programs. However, the executive director of UNAIDS said last month that Beijing still must reach out to more patients in the vast country and overcome a lack of cooperation from some government officials. (Anita Chang, AP)

(source : news.yahoo.com)

China cracking down on AIDS groups

2007-08-21T23:33:00.000-07:00

Free blood for AIDS patients

2007-08-20T01:02:00.000-07:00

OVER 24,000 HIV and AIDS patients in Uttar Pradesh will no longer face humiliation in getting blood from blood banks. In a major decision to ensure emergency treatment facility to terminally ill HIV-positive patients, the State Blood Transfusion Council has decided to provide them free blood from the government blood banks.

The blood and its components will be supplied to these patients without the mandatory condition i.e. on 'exchange basis'. The notification will soon be issued to the 60 State-run blood banks at district hospitals and medical colleges in UP.
"Decision to this effect was taken at the UP State AIDS Control Society (UPSACS) and State Blood Transfusion Council's meeting at Lucknow. Members present at the meeting decided that HIV-positive patients would be provided free blood and its components, without exchange basis, at the government blood banks," said UPSACS joint director Dr RP Mathur.

Talking to HT on telephone, Dr Mathur said Principal Secretary (Health) had already told the director general (Health) to issue notification to the 60 State-run blood banks in district hospitals and medical colleges for making free supply of blood units to the terminally ill HIV-positive patients.

"According to the records, there are 21,358 HIV positive patients and 3,053 full-blown AIDS cases, in UP. Most HIV patients suffer from opportunistic infection and need proper treatment including blood transfusion," he added. Dr Mathur added that for the last some time various organisations, including UP Network of HIV-Positive People (UPNP+) were demanding to arrange free blood units for the critically ill AIDS patients.

District AIDS Control Officer Dr Shakti Basu said they welcomed the decision, as a large number of patients needed blood transfusion to save their lives. "Recently, we had to face a lot of problem arranging blood for a HIV-positive woman at the time of labour at district hospital, Pratapgarh," he informed.

Dr Basu said a large number of HIV patients were suffering from tuberculosis, leading to internal bleeding or other life-threatening conditions due to presence of double infection in the body. They also suffered from massive weight loss and anemia, he said. "In all cases, they need blood transfusion. But being ostracised from the society, no one is ready to give them blood," he said.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

Fish farms help families in Africa hit by AIDS

2007-08-20T01:01:00.000-07:00

Tiny fish farms have helped 1,200 poor families hit by AIDS in Malawi to raise their incomes and improve their diets in a scheme being expanded to other African nations, a report showed on Monday.

About $90 can enable construction of a small rain-fed pond that can be stocked with juvenile fish costing $10. Once the fish grow and reproduce, the ponds produce food with far less back-breaking work than subsistence farming.

The project, run by the Malaysia-based WorldFish Center and targeted at families where some members have died from AIDS or are suffering from the epidemic, has doubled income for 1,200 families in Malawi and improved diets, WorldFish said.

"These small fish points offer tremendous benefits to struggling farming families in rural Africa whose many challenges have been greatly compounded by AIDS," Stephen Hall, director general of WorldFish, said in a statement.

Many families in the project were headed by widows or grandparents caring for orphans.

About one in five adults in Malawi, among the world's poorest nations, are infected with HIV/AIDS and tens of thousands of the 12.1 million population die every year from the disease. A cocktail of drugs can help control infection, but there is no vaccine and no cure.

WorldFish, a non-profit research group, said it was expanding the scheme to neighboring Mozambique and Zambia with a goal of reaching 26,000 households.

"We hope to reach this goal within 2 to 3 years. We have also received requests for information from as far as Nigeria," Daniel Jamu, the regional director for WorldFish in eastern and southern Africa, told Reuters.

WorldFish is backed by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and World Vision, an aid group.

Farmers are encouraged to use farm waste and crop by-products to feed their fish. In turn, the fish farms are twinned with a drive to get farmers to grow more vegetables, using pond sediment as fertilizer.

Jamu said that a small fish farm, covering about 200 square meters (yards) and stocked with fish such as tilapia, could produce 60 to 90 kg (130 to 190 lbs) of fish a year in rural Malawi where fish can sell in markets for $2 a kg.
(source : news.yahoo.com)

Asia AIDS conference opens in Sri Lanka

2007-08-20T01:00:00.000-07:00

Officials and health care workers met in Sri Lanka on Sunday to urge a comprehensive approach to tackling AIDS in Asia, which has some 8.6 million people infected with the HIV virus.

The Asia-Pacific region has the world's second largest number of people living with HIV after sub-Saharan Africa where 25.8 million people are infected with the virus. More than 300,000 people die from AIDS in the region annually.

"We have 8.6 million HIV infected people in Asia, (this is) too many," said Professor Myung Hwan Cho, president of the AIDS society of the Asia and the Pacific in his opening remarks to the 8th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific.

Some 2,500 delegates from more than 40 countries are attending the five-day conference.

Sri Lanka has one of the lowest rates of HIV in Asia, with an estimated 5,000 infected people out of a population of around 20 million.

Neighbouring India, by comparison, has the world's third highest HIV caseload after South Africa and Nigeria, with around 2.5 million people living with the virus.

The U.N. agency UNAIDS said the region faced new challenges and threats.

"These include a wider tendency towards complacency ... and denial of AIDS being an epidemic in the region," said Deborah Landey, deputy executive director of UNAIDS.
(source : news.yahoo.com)

Global AIDS figures to come down

2007-08-20T00:58:00.000-07:00

Some 25 years after the discovery of the first case of AIDS, the global figure for people living with the virus will come down when fresh figures are released in November, a senior official of the United Nations AIDS umbrella disclosed Sunday.

The scale-down in the epidemic is being attributed to a new counting methodology pioneered jointly by the Indian government and the UN - which saw the figures for Indians living with HIV/AIDS decline from 5.7 million to around three million two months ago.

'The global numbers will come down a bit - but I can't tell you exactly how much. For that you will have to wait until November when our annual report is released,' UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director Deborah Landey said at a press conference to kick off the eighth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP).

'The prevalence rates from country to country may come down but our concern is that declining numbers could conceal the complexity of the picture and we are very worried about complacency setting in,' Landey said in response to a query by IANS.

'For instance, prevalence rates can decline simply because people are dying. We will try to capture some of the complexity of data in November,' she added.

According to figures released by UNAIDS last year, there are between 34 and 42 million people living with HIV or AIDS worldwide, and Landey thought the figures to be announced in November will stay in that broad bracket.

One of the main reasons for the decline will be the methodology of Population Household Survey - house-to-house counting that Landey said is particularly good for rural areas - which was used in India to gauge the extent of the epidemic for the first time earlier this year.

The same methodology has now been tried out in 22 countries in Africa and the Caribbean, and 20 of them have returned lower figures for HIV/AIDS - a fact that is certain to bring down the global numbers.

'Good and accurate data are evolving. What India has done very well is to tap different survey methodologies,' Landey added.

But she sounded a note of caution: while Population Household Surveys were good at capturing rural data, they can do little about people who are not at home when health workers pay a visit. And these can include high-risk groups such as truck drivers, migrant workers and sex workers.

Landey's startling disclosure about the expected decline in numbers comes at a crucial juncture in the global fight against HIV/AIDS - with more and more money being put into prevention and access to life-saving drugs that were once out of reach of poor people, the international campaign to fight the spread of the disease is seeing its first glimmer of hope.

The danger, say health experts in Colombo, is that news about declining numbers will lead to governments becoming complacent in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

'We are worried about complacency,' said Landey. 'Countries that have become complacent have seen the epidemic go up.'

Some 2,500 health experts and community workers from 70 countries across Asia-Pacific are attending the ICAAP meeting from 19 to 23 August.

They will exchange notes and share lessons in best practices so that Asia-Pacific can avoid the experience of sub-Saharan Africa - a region that has been devastated by HIV/AIDS, said Athula Kahanda Liyanage, secretary to the Sri Lankan health ministry.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

Sex now primary cause of China HIV spread

2007-08-20T00:56:00.001-07:00

Unsafe sex has overtaken intravenous drug use as the primary cause of new HIV infections in China, suggesting that AIDS is spreading from high-risk groups to the general public, state media reported on Monday. Of the 70,000 new HIV infections recorded in 2005, nearly half contracted the virus through sexual contact, the China Daily reported, citing a report released jointly by the Ministry of Health and the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

"It's the first time since 1989, when the first HIV infection was detected, for sex to top the transmission list nationwide," the newspaper quoted Gao Qi, of the China HIV/AIDS Information Network, as saying.

China has an estimated 650,000 people living with HIV or AIDS, and while the government has become increasingly open about the problem, efforts to fight the spread of the virus are still hampered by conservative attitudes about sex and suspicion of grassroots activists and non-governmental organizations.

Surveys show that one in 10 sexually active men in China have been involved with prostitution at least once, and the government was taking measures to initiate condom use programs and AIDS education among sex workers, the newspaper said.

It is also focusing prevention efforts on gay men, who made up 7.3 percent of the new infections through sex.

A separate survey conducted by China's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention found that although teenagers in China were having sex at an earlier age, 40 percent did not use protection the first time and they had little AIDS education.

"They know little about HIV/AIDS, let alone preventative measures," the China Daily quoted An Jiaao, of the centre's National Institute for Health Education, as saying.

HIV/AIDS became a major problem for China in the 1990s when hundreds of thousands of poor farmers, mostly in the central province of Henan, became infected through botched blood-selling schemes.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

Sex now primary cause of China HIV spread

2007-08-20T00:56:00.000-07:00

Sex tops drugs in China's HIV cases

2007-08-20T00:51:00.000-07:00

Unsafe sex has for the first time overtaken drug abuse as the leading cause of HIV cases in China, a trend that could make it tougher to control the spread of the virus, state media reported Monday. Of the 70,000 new infections reported in 2005, 49.8 percent were contracted through sexual contact, the Ministry of Health and China's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said in a joint report, according to the China Daily.

Th spread of the virus among drugs abusers through injections stood at 48.6 percent of the total, it said.

"It is the first time since 1989, when the first HIV infection was detected (in China), for sex to top the transmission list nationwide nationwide," Gao Qi of the China HIV/AIDS Information Network was quoted as saying.

No figures were given for previous years, or for 2006, but the report said that drug abuse had been the dominant transmission route for the 650,000 Chinese people infected by HIV.

Gao was quoted as saying that the new trend would make it harder to control the spread of the deadly virus, now that the chief transmission route had gone beyond the drug-abusing population.

Efforts to curb the new trend were targeting China's burgeoning sex industry, the China Daily said, adding that the government had initiated a campaign to make sex workers force clients to use condoms, a drive inspired by the 100-percent condom use campaign in Thailand.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

Army hospitals to handle AIDS more humanely

2007-08-16T09:11:00.001-07:00

The doctors and nursing staff of army hospitals need to handle patients suffering from Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) more sensitively and with a human face, Lt. Gen J. Jayaram, director general of the Armed Forces Medical Services (AFMS) said Thursday.

Inaugurating a 10-day workshop on management of patients with AIDS and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) at the Army Hospital (Research and Referral) here, Jayaram said: 'Though HIV prevalence among our force is much less than the civilians yet the young population needs to be careful.'

'The high risk population, migratory job, staying away from families are factors that we need to take care of. Our doctors and nursing staff are doing their job but need to do it with more sensitivity,' he said.

He said the armed forces hospitals are taking help from National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), several NGOs and the Army Wives Welfare Association (AWWA) in handling the health menace.

'We will tell commanders to play their role in this field,' he said.

Maj. Gen. Shashi Bala, additional director general of the Military Nursing Service (MNS), said that all hospitals need 'a human approach for the management of patients with HIV/AIDS'.

She also appealed to the nursing community of the armed forces 'to become fluent in the language of AIDS and handle patients with extreme sensitivity'.

'The whole aim is reduce stigma, discrimination and isolation for patients,' Bala said.

The 10-day-workshop from Thursday will equip concerned health officials of several hospitals under the Western Command about HIV/AIDS, and how to provide best possible care to people suffering from the disease.

Jayaram further advised the participants about the need to develop good communication skills to unravel the cultural, social and personal values and beliefs of each patient. He said this would help in formulating further effective prevention and control measures against HIV/AIDS.

'We should try our best so that patients will not hesitate to come forward and reveal their problem,' he said.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

AIDS virus is a "double hit" to the brain

2007-08-16T09:10:00.002-07:00

The AIDS virus damages the brain in two ways, by not only killing brain cells but by preventing the birth of new cells, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday. The study, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, helps shed light on a condition known as HIV-associated dementia, which can cause confusion, sleep disturbances and memory loss in people infected with the virus.

It is less common in people taking drug cocktails to suppress the virus, and why HIV damages brain function is not clearly understood.

The virus kills brain cells but it also appears to stop progenitor cells, known as stem cells, from dividing, the team at Burnham Institute for Medical Research and the University of California at San Diego found.

"It's a double hit to the brain," researcher Marcus Kaul said in a statement. "The HIV protein both causes brain injury and prevents its repair."

The cocktail of drugs known as highly active antiretroviral therapy or HAART that treats HIV does not infiltrate the brain well, allowing for a "secret reservoir" of virus, said Stuart Lipton, who worked on the study.

HIV-associated dementia is becoming more common, as patients survive into their older years.

Working in mice, the researchers found that the virus directly interferes with the birth of new brain cells from stem cells.

"The breakthrough here is that the AIDS virus prevents stem cells in the brain from dividing; it hangs them up," Lipton said. "It's the first time that the virus has ever been shown to affect stem cells."

The culprit is gp120 -- a protein found on the outside of the AIDS virus, the researchers found.

"Knowing the mechanism, we can start to approach this therapeutically," Lipton said.

"This indicates that we might eventually treat this form of dementia by either ramping up brain repair or protecting the repair mechanism," Kaul added.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

Sri Lanka HIV rate low, but poverty, war a threat - U..N

2007-08-16T09:10:00.001-07:00

Sri Lanka has one of the lowest prevalence rates of HIV in Asia, but poverty and displacement of civilians due to renewed civil war are making the island increasingly vulnerable, the United Nations said on Thursday.

An estimated 5,000 people had HIV in Sri Lanka by the end of 2005, out of a population of around 20 million. Neighbouring India, by comparison, has the world's third highest HIV caseload after South Africa and Nigeria, with around 2.5 million people living with the virus.

"In Sri Lanka, the prevalence rate is low, but the challenge is to keep it low," said Caitlin Wiesen-Antin, HIV/AIDs regional coordinator Asia and Pacific for the United Nations Development Programme.

Sri Lanka's military says around 35,000 people displaced since last year in the island's east amid renewed fighting between the state and Tamil Tiger rebels are still living in camps or with friends and relatives.

The military says it has resettled more than 100,000 people in the east in recent months, but there are also tens of thousands of long-term displaced elsewhere across the island forced from their homes by earlier stages of the conflict, many living in very rudimentary conditions.

"When people are displaced from their home, their usual system of justice sometimes does not exist. That becomes a heightened area of vulnerability," Caitlin said. "In other countries, what we have found is that once people have been displaced from homes, they find it difficult ... in terms of their livelihoods."

"They don't have the option to feed their families. So some people under duress resort to actions such as transactional sex for education, for housing, just to make ends meet," she added. "And that transactional sex is not protected sex."

Sri Lanka will next week host the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, with over 2,000 delegates from 40 countries due to attend.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

HIV hits brain with double blow

2007-08-16T09:09:00.001-07:00

New evidence has offered a novel perspective on how the HIV/AIDS virus leads to learning and memory deficits, a condition known as HIV-associated dementia.

A protein found on the surface of the virus not only kills some mature brain cells, as earlier studies had shown, but it also prevents the birth of new brain cells by crippling 'adult neural progenitors,' the new study finds. Those progenitor cells are the closest things to stem cells that have been found in the adult brain.

By elucidating the mechanism responsible for the neuro-degeneration and dementia seen in people infected with HIV, the findings made in mice that produce the damaging HIV protein may open the door to new therapies, according to the researchers.

"The breakthrough here is that the AIDS virus prevents stem cells in the brain from dividing; it hangs them up. It's the first time that the virus has ever been shown to affect stem cells," said Stuart Lipton of the Burnham Institute for Medical Research and the University of California at San Diego.

"It's a double hit to the brain. The HIV protein both causes brain injury and prevents its repair," added collaborator Marcus Kaul, who is also of the Burnham Institute and UCSD.

Physicians first recognized that HIV infection could lead to a profound form of dementia-most commonly in those with an advanced stage of the disease-early on. The success of antiretroviral therapies in keeping the "viral load" down has helped to reduce the severity of the dementia in recent years. Nonetheless, the prevalence is rising as HIV-infected people are living longer. The anti-HIV drugs don't infiltrate the brain well, allowing for a "secret reservoir" of virus, Lipton explained. Such persistent exposure of the central nervous system to HIV is a major risk factor for the development of HIV-associated dementia.

Lipton's team previously discovered that the brain deficits could be triggered by gp120-the viral coat protein that latches onto human cells-even in the absence of any viral infection. They also showed that the protein disrupts a key cell-cycle pathway (including p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase or MAPK), leading to the death of certain mature neurons.

The researchers now find that gp120 in mice also slows the production of new neurons in the hippocampus, a brain region central to learning and memory. Newborn neurons become integrated into existing brain circuits and are thought to contribute to certain forms of learning and memory, they said.

Moreover, they found that it is the same MAPK pathway earlier linked to the death of mature neurons that lies at the root of the progenitor cells' dysfunction. That a similar enzyme is involved in both brain-damaging effects is simply "serendipitous," according to the researchers.

"Knowing the mechanism, we can start to approach this therapeutically," Lipton said.

"This indicates that we might eventually treat this form of dementia by either ramping up brain repair or protecting the repair mechanism," Kaul added.

The study is published in the August issue of Cell Stem Cell.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

SAfrica AIDS activists to take government to court

2007-08-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

South African AIDS activists said on Wednesday they planned to take the government to court again over its HIV strategy and said the sacking of a respected deputy health minister had caused "panic and fear." The Treatment Action Campaign, South Africa's most influential AIDS lobby group, won a Constitutional Court judgment in 2002 forcing the government to provide anti-AIDS drugs in state hospitals.

The group said it now wanted the high court to force the national health department to let health facilities across South Africa introduce a dual drug therapy regimen in its programs to prevent transmission of HIV from mothers to children.

So far, only Western Cape province is authorized to provide the therapy. The government generally does not favor drug treatments for AIDS.

"We've sent a letter of demand on mother-to-child transmission," said Zackie Achmat, who founded the group. "Within two weeks we will be back in court on that."

The step signals a further souring of relations between the government and AIDS activists since President Thabo Mbeki last week fired Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, who was seen as a pivotal figure in the fight against the disease.

South Africa is battling one of the world's biggest HIV caseloads with about one in nine people infected with the virus, and Mbeki's government has come under fire from activists for failing to halt its spread.

Speaking ahead of a student rally in Cape Town calling for the reinstatement of Madlala-Routledge, Achmat criticized Mbeki for firing the deputy minister -- who was accused by the president of insubordination.

"It's a deep tragedy and it is creating a sense of panic and fear among us," said Achmat, who is HIV-positive. "The real reason behind the firing is his personal denialism and his irrational, unconstitutional support of the health minister."

Mbeki has stuck by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who has angered activists by promoting natural remedies for HIV such as lemon, beetroot and the African potato over anti-retroviral drugs, earning her the nickname "Dr. Beetroot."

(source : news.yahoo.com)

HIV Delivers 'Double Whammy' to Brain

2007-08-16T09:07:00.000-07:00

HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, often infiltrates the brains of infected patients, causing everything from cognitive decline to death. Now, new research in mice suggests the virus doesn't just kill brain cells but also prevents replacement cells from developing.

This "double whammy" explains why HIV is so devastating to the brain, but it could also point the way to new treatments, said study co-author Dr. Stuart Lipton, a neurologist and researcher with the Burnham Institute for Medical Research and the University of California at San Diego. According to Lipton, HIV infection has become the leading cause of dementia in people under the age of 40. In some cases, "you can't work, you can't concentrate or pay attention, you can't move properly," he said.

His team published its findings in the August issue of Cell Stem Cell.

Brain problems are on the rise as HIV-infected patients live long enough to develop related health problems, he said. Still, the brain illnesses that afflict these patients "may be the best-kept secret of AIDS in the world."

The challenge for doctors is figuring out how to treat brain symptoms when the most powerful antiretroviral drugs cannot pass the natural barrier that protects the brain. HIV, however, can make its way into the brain and remains there even when the level of virus in the blood approaches zero during treatment.

In the new study, researchers genetically engineered mice to have higher levels of a protein called HIV/gp120, which is thought to contribute to the deterioration of the brain in HIV-infected patients.

Lipton and his colleagues found that the protein disrupts stem cells in the brain that are supposed to turn into new brain cells when needed. As a result, it becomes difficult for HIV-infected brains to create new cells when old ones are injured or killed off by the virus.

"Most people would not think that AIDS has anything to do with stem cells," Lipton said. "But it has the ability to stop stem cells from dividing."

Paul Thompson, a professor of neurology at the University of California at Los Angeles, explained the findings this way: "As a brain cell is born, there are various checkpoints and phases of development that the cell has to go through. These researchers found the exact checkpoint where the birth of new brain cells is stopped. Now that they've identified the type of interference, it is a lot easier to focus on overcoming it."

The new research is in mice, and many medical discoveries don't translate from rodents to humans. But Lipton said he expect humans to be similar to mice when it comes to this particular kind of research.

According to Lipton, the next step is to figure out a way to develop a drug with a "double bang" that would stop HIV from attacking both existing brain cells and stem cells that could become brain cells. Scientists are already working on drugs that target an enzyme that's involved in that process, he noted.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

No funding from NACO, UP AIDS project in trouble

2007-08-14T03:03:00.000-07:00

The project was initiated to involve more and more HIV-positive people in state. But the Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GIPA) project may now face trouble. The National Aids Control Society (NACO) has not released any funds for the programme for this year, which has not only created problems for the State AIDS Control unit but also for the AIDS victims working with the project.

Senior officials of the UPSACS say that following no budget from NACO, they may find it difficult to continue with the programme. The GIPA was initiated following NACO guidelines of 2006. The idea was to rope in the positives for counselling and working as support groups. The positives had welcomed the project. A large number of positives were appointed as peer counselors.

But since April, the peer counsellors have not been paid. According to the Uttar Pradesh Network of Positive People, most of these counsellors need the salaries to survive. It pays not only for food but also their medicines and treatment.
(source : news.yahoo.com)

Pediatric AIDS pill approved

2007-08-14T02:59:00.001-07:00

A three-in-one AIDS pill for children was cleared on Monday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in a global U.S. AIDS relief program. The generic pill made by India's Cipla Ltd combines the generic HIV-fighting drugs lamivudine, stavudine and nevirapine.

This is the first pill of its kind that will be available for children under age 12 under the U.S. program. FDA officials said the combination pill was a major advance because it can be stored, distributed and administered easily to children. The pill can be swallowed or dissolved in water.

The generic pill cannot be sold in the United States because the components are still protected by patents and available from brand-name makers. But the FDA's tentative approval of the drug makes it eligible for purchase and use in other countries under President George W. Bush's AIDS relief program.

The FDA also said it gave tentative approval to generic nevirapine tablets made by Hetero Drugs Ltd of India, which will also be available for the program.

Bush launched the five-year, $15 billion program in 2003 that aims to pay for treatment for 2 million AIDS sufferers and provide care for 10 million others in 15 countries, mostly in Africa.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

Pediatric AIDS pill approved

2007-08-14T02:59:00.000-07:00

Red ribbon AIDS clubs in college

2007-08-13T02:57:00.000-07:00

Lucknow University would be setting up 70 red ribbon clubs to spread awareness on HIV/AIDS. The initiative has been taken up by the social work department of LU in association with Uttar Pradesh State AIDS Control Society (UPSACS), UNICEF, Clinton Foundation and SMEC Pvt India Limited, under the University Talk AIDS programme.

These clubs would come up on the campus and several LU-affiliated colleges. "Fifteen such clubs would be coming up on LU campus, whereas another 55 clubs will be established in different colleges," said Professor R B S Verma, Head of Social Work Department, LU.

On the services of the clubs, LU officials said that the main aim is to advance the AIDS-HIV awareness level. The department will also arrange counselling programmes for AIDS and HIV patients.

"Communication is one of the best tool to prevent stigmatisation and instilling self-respect and positive attitude among people living with HIV/AIDS. In order to generate mass awareness, we are setting up the clubs, which would be effectively communicating with AIDS and HIV patients," said LU proctor Dr A N Singh, who is also associated with the social work department.

The counselling programme will be organised in association with various NGO,w orking for AIDS and HIV-affected people.

LU Vice-Chancellor Prof Ram Prakash Singh would be inaugurating the clubs on the eve of the International Youth Day on August 11.

On the same day, the students would also take out an AIDS-HIV awareness candle march.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

On air, and talking about HIV/AIDS

2007-08-13T02:56:00.000-07:00

Talking about HIV/AIDS is not easy. Giving voice to fears and getting reassured by your favourite heroes is what radio stations in India are now doing, thanks to training given to radio jockeys and participation by stars. Chennai's popular radio channel Radio Mirchi, in association with the Heroes Project - the largest non-governmental public service campaign in India - and the Satyam Foundation has begun a month-long initiative to address AIDS-related issues directly and provide the common man answers, which everyone can listen to.

Radio City journalist Gobinath Chandran produced two radio programmes on AIDS treatment that won him the National Press Foundation fellowship to participate in the Fourth International AIDS Society conference in Sydney this July. The Internews Training and Resource Centre (ITRC) is training Gopinath and many other radio journalists in Chennai, with USAID.

The ITRC has completed training for two batches of radio journalists and 'this is the first time in India that such training is being offered', says Jaya Sridhar of Internews.

Virginia Moncrieff of the Australian Broadcasting Corp, who has been training Indian journalists for a year now, told IANS: 'Radio is a very vibrant media.'

She has also trained radio journalists in Sri Lanka, Palestine, the Maldives and Aceh after the 2004 tsunami.

Giving the example of coverage of the earthquake in Kashmir, she says: 'Community radio has taken off very well there. And this is the first time people have had a voice.'

She trained women with very low literacy rates in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province in 2005, after the quake.

'They had never seen a computer before ... we taught them how to edit voice programmes on the computer. It increased their self-esteem greatly.'

After disaster management, now it's healthcare that has emerged out of the FM radio.

'To be able to talk freely about some extremely sensitive issues, I think it is a hurdle', says Moncrieff.

'People (radio jockeys) are now willing to learn how to get over the issues.

People need information. They (the RJs) see themselves now as agents of change,' she notes.

Says Radio Mirchi station director Mahesh Shetty: 'Being one of the leading radio channels, we thought it is our responsibility to spread the message of AIDS and address issues of importance to the public.

'We are indeed happy to be partnering in the Heroes Project for this initiative.'

The Radio Mirchi campaign was conceived to dispel myths and misconceptions that prevail in the minds of people even 20 years into the epidemic.

Using the strengths of the radio as a medium, the campaign was rolled out in two main segments from Aug 6.

To enable wider connect with the listeners, Radio Mirchi style messages are disseminated throughout the day, addressing issues of care and support, stigma and discrimination.

The highlight of the campaign is the celebrity quiz. For two weeks, every day, a new question is asked by a different celebrity on HIV/AIDS, thereby addressing myths and misconceptions related to the issue.

The answers are given by members of the Tamil film industry including Kamal Haasan, Sharath Kumar, Radhika, Khushboo, Madhavan, Gouthami, Revathy and Vivek among others.

Says actress Revathy, associated with AIDS awareness campaigns for long and director of 'Phir Milenge': 'It is time now to come right out with it, up front and talk about sex and sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS.'

In addition to the messages given, a helpline number (044-2534 5555), manned by PSI Saadhan, is also provided so listeners can call for further information and referral services.

Speaking on the initiative, Vinita Sidhartha, state director of Heroes Project says: 'HIV as an issue continues to be surrounded by misconceptions.

'By mainstreaming the issue and providing an entertaining platform, together with proactive involvement from top celebrities, Radio Mirchi, Satyam Foundation and its Red Ribbon Clubs (for HIV awareness of youth) and PSI Saadhan, this programme expects to address these myths head on.'

As the campaign pans out, Radio Mirchi jockeys interact with people at Satyam Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of Satyam Computer Services Ltd, to understand their efforts on the issue.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

New program to help those with HIV/AIDS

2007-08-07T03:31:00.001-07:00

The Community Foundation for Southern Arizona is funding a new effort to help people with HIV/AIDS live longer, healthier lives.
Juanita Molina of the Tucson Interfaith HIV/AIDS Network said the foundation's grant of $10,000 for 2007-08 will fill what she called an emerging need for more social support for long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS. Molina is TIHAN's coordinator of care partner support.
The grant for the Link Specialist Program will fund the recruitment and training of volunteers who will help TIHAN clients find community resources to help them thrive, Molina said.
These volunteers will also help transients with HIV/AIDS whose care may not be supervised by local social service or health care agencies. (source : www.tucsoncitizen.com)

State official says change in HIV/AIDS registry working

2007-08-07T03:29:00.000-07:00

It's been nearly a year since state health officials, under a federal mandate, began keeping data on HIV and AIDS patients by name, rather than assigning a code number; but the privacy of patients continues to be preserved, a state official said. Montana had an elaborate system to shield the identities of the nearly 500 HIV and AIDS patients in the state, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta ordered states to begin tracking HIV and AIDS patients by name by the end of 2007, or risk losing federal funds.

Montana has always kept records of the names of HIV and AIDS patients, but prior to September 2006, it assigned everyone a code number, said Laurie Kops, section supervisor of the state's HIV prevention and surveillance division. But the code system, also used in other states, proved to be an unreliable way to track cases, and it skewed national data kept by the CDC. "There has been a lot of duplication in the numbers," Kops told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

So, the CDC last year required that states drop or modify the code system in favor of one that tracks individuals by name and other data.

Failure to comply could have meant the loss of a significant chunk of the $2.1 million in federal funds for HIV/AIDS programs in Montana.

"In trying to make sure we report the true numbers of cases, this is one of the best ways to accomplish that," Kops said.

She stressed that patients' names and personal data are never given to the CDC, only summary data on the number of cases.

"When there is a report to CDC, it's only by the numbers, and not by name," Kops said.

"That seems to be people's greatest fear, that their information will be released by name. But it's always been by the number, and always will be by the number."

While the shift to name-based tracking might have caused quite a stir 10 years ago, it seems to have caused few ripples.

"A lot of preparation work and

education was done up front," Kops said.

"We worked with a lot of groups who initially had concerns, but the bottom line was this had to be done or we would lose our funding."

(source : billingsgazette.net)

Selzentry Approved for HIV

2007-08-07T03:27:00.001-07:00

Pfizer's Selzentry (maraviroc), an oral medication to treat the virus that causes AIDS, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the company said Monday. The drug is designed to block viral entry into disease-fighting white blood cells. This reduces viral load and increases T-cell counts in people who are already being treated for certain strains of HIV, the company said in a statement.

Selzentry, Pfizer said, is the first in a new class of oral HIV medicines in more than 10 years. So-called CCR5 antagonists are designed to stop the virus outside the surface of cells before it enters, rather than fighting the virus inside as do other oral HIV medicines. The drug was granted accelerated approval, a process designed for medicines that appear to provide a significant therapeutic benefit over existing drugs for serious or life-threatening diseases.

Pfizer said it would provide longer-term data required for the FDA to consider traditional approval. The drug is expected on store shelves by mid-September, the company said.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

Act V, AIDS Ride Surpasses Fundraising Goal

2007-08-06T02:13:00.000-07:00

More than 130 cyclists pedaled toward a cure for AIDS this week. The 300-mile journey wound through south-central Wisconsin. Their grit and determination were driven by memories of loved ones lost to the disease, reported WISC-TV. "Bring on the hills, we eat hills for breakfast,? roused cyclist Fred Conley, trying to inspire cyclists on the last leg of the ride.

According to the state Department of Health and Family Services, the largest number of HIV and AIDS cases is in Milwaukee County. However, the deadly virus affects more than 1,200 people in Dane County.

"I had a cousin die of AIDS about 10 years ago, he was my first cousin and we were really close you know,? said Conley. I have a lot of friends that are positive,? said cyclist Vanessa Van Dusen.

Conley said he was proud to be a part of the Act V, AIDS Ride.

?I figured what better way to continue to ride and raise money to find a cure for this terrible disease,? said Conley.

AIDS experts said there has been an increase in HIV-positive cases in the African-American, American Indian and Latino communities, especially among women.

?Everybody here is just like saying that message that you know there are people out there, you can't give up on humanity,? said VanDusen.

This year the cyclists surpassed their goal and raised more than $280,000, of which 90 percent will go back into the community for education, hopefully educating a new generation and saving lives along the way.

?He had a big heart, he didn't meet no stranger,? said Conley. ?He loved everybody."

More Resources AIDS Network

Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services, HIV and AIDS findings.

(source : news.yahoo.com)

Quick HIV test proving popular

2007-08-06T02:12:00.000-07:00

The AIDS Foundation is being inundated with requests for its faster HIV test.

The test gives a result in just 20 minutes, compared to up to a week for earlier procedures.

The AIDS Foundation says it has noticed an increase in testing of up to 300 percent in some cities, since it was introduced late last year. It is looking at hiring more staff to deal with the demand.

A spokesman says many of those getting the faster test have not been tested for HIV before, because they did not want to wait so long for the results.(source : news.yahoo.com)

Kazakhstan appeals court upholds prison terms in AIDS case

2007-08-04T09:01:00.000-07:00

An appeals court in Kazakhstan Friday upheld prison sentences for 21 people convicted after 118 children and 14 mothers were infected with HIV in public hopsitals and nine deaths. But the court said four of the women would only begin serving their sentences once their children turned 14 years old.

Two of them would start their jail terms in 2018, another in 2014 and the last, who is currently eight months pregnant, would only start her sentence in 2021. The heaviest sentence passed by the court in Shymkent at the end of June was eight years in jail for three of the defendants.

The scandal shocked the oil-rich Central Asian country and revealed alarming corruption in hospitals, leading to the firing of the health minister. Three paediatricians at the hospitals where the infections occurred got eight-year sentences and 14 others were given jail terms ranging between nine months and seven and a half years.

Four of the accused, including the former head of the regional health ministry, Nursulu Tasmagambetova, were given suspended sentences.

Most of those infected with the virus, which can lead to AIDS, fell victim during blood transfusions, often involving unsterilised medical equipment, the prosecution said.

Hospitals were also found selling equipment meant for single-use only, including needles for syringes, obliging doctors to employ used and badly-sterilised needles.(source : news.yahoo.com)

Activists back early-treatment HIV bill

2007-08-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

Several key AIDS organizations have announced their support for the Early Treatment for HIV Act, which took the floor Thursday under the direction of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Reps. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. The bill would allow states to extend Medicare coverage to uninsured low-income patients with HIV before they progressed to AIDS.

"This law will prolong and dramatically improve the quality of people's lives by increasing access to care and treatment when it is most helpful," said Rebecca Haag, executive director of AIDS Action, in a press release from the organization. "In most states, Medicaid now only covers HIV drugs and treatment after a person receives an AIDS diagnosis, when it is much too late in their disease progression; not when treatment and drug therapy can most improve people's health outcomes."

According to the AIDS Action, a 2003 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers showed the bill would lead to overall savings in state and federal health care programs. With access to antiretroviral therapy, HIV-positive people would experience slower progression of the disease, leading to a 50 percent decrease in the number of deaths of HIV-positive Medicare users.

"It's just unimaginable today that Medicaid doesn't automatically cover poor people with HIV in our country," said Dr. Gene Copello, executive director of The AIDS Institute, in a news release from the organization.

"When current Medicaid rules were written, people with HIV quickly progressed to AIDS, but with the advent of antiretroviral drug treatment, people with HIV stories related to Activists back early-treatment HIV bill.

SUMMARY: The bipartisan House bill would allow states to extend Medicare to uninsured low-income patients with HIV before they progress to AIDS.
(source : news.yahoo.com)

When truck drivers learnt about HIV/AIDS in New Delhi

2007-08-04T08:59:00.001-07:00

Several truck drivers in Delhi's Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar area were sensitised about HIV/AIDS besides being given a medical check-up on Wednesday, during an AIDS awareness camp here. Organised by the Transport Corporation of India (TCI) Foundation here, the objective of the camp is to make illiterate or uneducated truck drivers and their helpers aware about HIV/AIDS problems.

The general awareness event was a part of "Project Kavach", a national level HIV/AIDS prevention programme, started for long distance truckers and helpers by the Transport Corporation of India (TCI) Foundation in January 2004. It has been usually noticed that the poor male-migrant workers make contacts with prostitutes during their long journeys across the country and become victims of HIV/AIDS.

Organised on quarterly basis, these camps have been named "Kushi Clinics" and is known to have seventeen centres to spread information on preventing the spread of the deadly disease.

There are fifteen non-government organisations that are promoting this programme through these clinics.

Besides educating people about HIV/AIDS, the clinics also provide condoms and medicines at 70 per cent less than their market price.

The programme has at least 27 truckers who spread awareness about AIDS. There are about 800 condom social marketing outlets.

Guddu, one of the truck drivers, said: "They tell us about the use of condoms, which checks the spread of the disease."

At the clinics, all truckers are issued a medical 'passport' which helps them to buy medicines and allow them access to treatment in other centres of the country.

Tarun Vij, the project director of Project Kavach, said: "The attempt of this programme is to promote among truckers a health conscious behaviour and use of condoms. And, thereby, arrest the incidence of fresh case of HIV."

The official website of Transport Corporation of India (TCIL) claims the company being the country's leading Multimodal Integrated Supply Chain Solutions Provider.

The company is stated to be equipped with an extensive set up of 1100 branch offices, a workforce of 5,700 people and a well-performing script in premier stock exchanges as Bomaby Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE).

According to UN-backed government estimates, the number of people living with HIV/Aids in the country stands around half of previous official estimates at between 2-3.1 million people.

Previous estimates from the National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) put the number of HIV cases at 5.2 million, while UNAids in 2006 estimated 5.7 million cases.(source : news.yahoo.com)

S.Africa HIV/AIDS rate falls on behavior change

2007-08-04T08:55:00.000-07:00

The prevalence of HIV/AIDS among pregnant women in South Africa has fallen for the first time in eight years, pointing to a possible decline across the entire population, the health minister said on Thursday. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, speaking at the release of an annual report that tracks infection among pregnant women, said its findings suggested young people were changing their behavior, increasingly adopting the principles of abstinence, faithfulness and condom use.

The report showed that 29.1 percent of the pregnant women who visited antenatal clinics last year were infected with HIV, down from 30.2 percent in 2005. The 2006 survey sampled 33,034 women, more than double the 16,510 surveyed in 2005. "There is a decrease in the prevalence of HIV among pregnant women who use public health facilities, suggesting that this may be a beginning of a decline in the HIV prevalence rates," Tshabalala-Msimang said.

Pregnant women are used internationally as a barometer for the level of infection in the overall population.

South Africa has one of the world's highest rates of HIV infection, and after being widely criticized for being too slow to stem the HIV/AIDS epidemic, it unveiled a program only a few months ago that sets targets for treatment, under the guidance of Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.

The critics' main target has been Tshabalala-Msimang, whose emphasis on traditional remedies over more widely accepted modern medication to fight HIV has drawn global outrage.

"An encouraging observation is that the HIV prevalence trends among pregnant women under the age of 20 continued to show a decline, from 16.1 percent in 2004 to 15.9 percent in 2005 and 13.7 percent in 2006," the report said.

The survey showed South Africa's overall HIV infection rate fell slightly to 11.5 from 12 percent of its 47 million people.

Researchers say that every day, an average of 1,000 people in the country die from AIDS, and 1,500 new HIV cases are reported -- the majority of the new cases women under 20.

The minister told an earlier briefing that the government's post-apartheid health strategy of providing free health care for pregnant and lactating women had begun to pay off.

She said the government hoped its national strategic plan for HIV and AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections would sustain the decline in infections across the whole population.

Dubbed "Dr. Beetroot" for her promotion of food nutrients as a treatment for HIV/AIDS, the health minister insisted that work on incorporating traditional medicines in health care would continue.

"I must emphasize here that our work on traditional medicine is much broader than the response to HIV and AIDS. We believe that traditional medicines have an important role in the health care delivery system," she said.(source : news.yahoo.com)

Scientists Probe How HIV Infection Turns Into AIDS

2007-08-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

The common scientific wisdom on how HIV infection proceeds to full-blown AIDS might be wrong, two U.S. researchers say. They hope that their new insights, if proven, will lead to exciting new treatment targets down the line. Working from a complex mathematical model of viral replication and immune cell death, the researchers now suspect that AIDS begins when one especially fast-killing strain of HIV gains the upper hand over a less-lethal, but more prolific, strain.

"This throws into question a lot of the notions that have been accepted about the evolution of the virus" within a typical infected human, explained study co-author Dominik Wodarz, associate professor of biology at the University of California, Irvine. He and another researcher, David Levy, of New York University, published their findings in the July 31 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Since its first recorded appearance nearly three decades ago, HIV infection has followed the same deadly path: a short, weeks-long period of acute flu-like symptoms followed by years of asymptomatic dormancy, and then symptoms of immune system breakdown that herald the emergence of AIDS.

But what is it that tips asymptomatic, low-level infection into AIDS?

The common dogma among scientists has long been that various strains of HIV battle a silent war within the body over time until the fittest -- defined as the strain that reproduces itself the most -- wins. That strain then goes on to overwhelm the body's immune cells and destroy the host's defenses against disease.

To test that theory, Wodarz and Levy constructed a complex mathematical model that took into account two factors about HIV: how fast the various strains replicate and how fast they kill cells (not always the same thing, the researchers noted). They also factored in human immune system responses to HIV.

What the two scientists found surprised them. According to the new model, AIDS actually begins when a less fit variety of HIV wins the day. This strain kills immune system cells extremely widely and quickly, but, in doing so, also limits the number of copies of itself it can produce. "It basically kills its own habitat, its house," Wodarz explained.

However, because this form of HIV is very good at quickly killing large numbers of immune cells, "once these less-fit strains emerge, they can plunge the patient into AIDS," Wodarz said.

In many cases, two or more strains of the virus can co-infect the same immune system cell, he added. If a fast-killing variety is one of those strains, it kills the cell before slower -- but better-replicating -- versions can go to work making millions of new viral particles.

"But without this ganging up on the same cell, the killer virus [that leads to AIDS] would go extinct, because evolution would select against it -- because it is less fit and replicates less," Wodarz explained.

That means that -- according to the model -- one way of keeping AIDS at bay might be to make sure that only one type of HIV invades a cell at any given time.

Specific cellular mechanisms do allow a second or third viral particle to enter a cell, and a medicine that thwarted these "party crashers" might keep the deadliest form of HIV from ever emerging, Wodarz speculated.

He pointed to wild monkeys that are infected throughout their lives with HIV-like simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) but never get sick.

"Some of them have a lot of the virus, and it evolves a lot, but it does not cause AIDS, ever," Wodarz said. He suspects the monkey's immune cells may have evolved to block secondary viral entry and thereby keep the most dangerous strain of SIV at bay.

Not everyone is convinced by the new model, however.

Dr. Benigno Rodriguez is assistant professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and a specialist in the evolution of HIV disease. He called Wodarz and Levy's paper "an interesting concept," but said it contained a few significant flaws.

First of all, he said, most of the available data suggests that HIV does get better at forming copies of itself as AIDS progresses. And Rodriguez believes the two scientists have left another important factor out of their model -- the fact that most AIDS patients' immune cells are not killed off by the virus directly but are destroyed by so-called "bystander" mechanisms that accompany AIDS.

"In an individual with advanced disease, if you look at the number of cells that are actually infected [with HIV], we are talking less than 1 percent," he said. "But, in reality, that individual may have lost 20, 30, 50 percent of his immune cells."

Rodriguez also questioned the importance of multiple strains of HIV infecting the same immune cell. "The data that we already have in hand shows that multiple infection is relatively infrequent," he said.

The bottom line, according to the Cleveland expert: As with any mathematical model, this one needs to be tested out in the laboratory.

Wodarz agreed that experimental verification is necessary, but he said mathematical disease models more often than not prove to be right.

In fact, he said, it was just such a model that led scientists to discover that HIV never stops evolving in the body -- even during infection's years-long asymptomatic phase.

"In HIV, mathematical models have led to great progress before," Wodarz said.(source : news.yahoo.com)

Sex trafficking spreading HIV in South Asia

2007-08-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

Trafficking of women across South Asia to work as prostitutes is likely a key factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS across the region, according to a study released Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, which looked at Nepali women who had been trafficked into the sex trade in India and later repatriated, found that nearly 40 per cent of them were HIV-positive with the figure rising beyond 60 per cent among those trafficked before age 15.

"Our study for the first time documents very high rates of HIV in girls trafficked for sexual exploitation at very young ages," said lead author Jay Silverman, an associate professor at Harvard's School of Public Health. South Asia is one of the worst affected areas with some 2.5 million people infected with HIV/AIDS in India alone. The report estimated that some 150,000 girls and women are trafficked each year across the region.

A U.S. State Department report released last month found that India has the world's largest human trafficking problem.

That report estimated that tens of millions of Indians are subjected to forced labour and said sex trafficking was common. However, it noted that the Indian government has taken steps to combat sex trafficking.

The JAMA study, funded by the U.S. State Department, examined 287 Nepalese girls and women trafficked to brothels in India and repatriated between 1997 and 2005.

"The repatriation of Nepalese survivors of sex trafficking may play a critical role in spreading HIV across South Asian borders," Silverman said via e-mail. "They are extremely vulnerable to being coerced into unsafe sexual behaviour and being re-trafficked for sexual exploitation, either within Nepal or back in India."

HIV drop indicates shift in sexual behaviour

2007-08-02T10:07:00.002-07:00

A fall in HIV infections in South Africa shows prevention programmes are working but changing people's sexual behaviour is still a major hurdle, the country's health minister said Wednesday. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang told reporters that new figures which showed that South Africa was experiencing the first ever descrease in infection levels since records began was encouraging but no reason for complacency.

However Tshabalala-Msimang said the small decrease of 15.9 percent in 2005 to 13.7 percent in 2006, among under 20s, showed the government campaigns encouraging safe sex were only succeeding up to a point. "In this country, more than 98 percent of people will tell you how it (AIDS) is transmitted. They know, but how they translate it into behaviour change is something different," the minister told journalists.

The decrease, however slight, was still significant, she added.

"We must celebrate the youth of this country who are beginning to see the messages of prevention, prevention, prevention. That for us is significant enough."

The survey, based on surveillance of pregnant women attending ante-natal clinics, showed different trends between younger and older age groups with women between 30 and 39 experiencing an increase in infections.

"There will need to be a concerted focus on older age groups where declines have not been observed ... This may be related to older women not being enabled by their circumstances to moderate factors related to acquiring infection," reads the report.

South Africa's overall HIV prevalence was 18.4 percent in 2006, with some 5.41 million people living with the disease, 257,000 of which are children under the age of 14.

The United Nations pinned South Africa's prevalence rate at 18.8 percent in 2005.

"The overall picture suggests that in South Africa HIV prevalence may be at the point of beginning a downward trend," the prevalence report read.

South Africa recently launched an AIDS plan with the aim of reducing by 50 percent the rate of new infections by 2011, focusing on the youth among whom most new infections occur.

Tshabalala-Msimang has been a major target of criticism both at home and abroad over her approach to AIDS, earning the name of Dr Beetroot for touting the use of vegetables to help combat the disease.

Sex trafficking spreading HIV

2007-08-02T10:07:00.001-07:00

The trafficking of women to work as prostitutes is likely a key factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS across South Asia, according to a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, which looked at Nepali women who had been trafficked into the sex trade in India and later repatriated, found that nearly 40 percent of them were HIV-positive. The HIV infection rates were even worse among younger girls, with the figure rising to beyond 60 percent among those trafficked before age 15.

"Our study for the first time documents very high rates of HIV in girls trafficked for sexual exploitation at very young ages," said author Jay Silverman, an associate professor at Harvard's School of Public Health. South Asia is one of the worst areas affected with AIDS, areas with some 2.5 million people infected with HIV/AIDS in India alone. The report estimated some 150,000 girls and women are trafficked each year across the region.

A U.S. State Department report released last month found that India has the world's largest human trafficking problem.

That report estimated that tens of millions of Indians are subjected to forced labor and said sex trafficking was common. However, it noted that the Indian government has taken steps to combat sex trafficking.

The JAMA study, funded by the U.S. State Department, examined 287 repatriated Nepalese girls and women trafficked to brothels in India and repatriated between 1997 and 2005.

"The repatriation of Nepalese survivors of sex trafficking may play a critical role in spreading HIV across South Asian borders," Silverman said. "They are extremely vulnerable to being coerced into unsafe sexual behavior and being re-trafficked for sexual exploitation, either within Nepal or back in India."

This is how HIV develops into AIDS

2007-08-02T10:06:00.000-07:00

A new study has analysed how HIV develops into AIDS, and has suggested a possible way to block the deadly transformation. The UC Irvine study led by biologist Dominik Wodarz has shown for the first time that the development of AIDS might require HIV to evolve within a patient into a state where it spreads less efficiently from cell to cell. This counters the current belief that AIDS develops when the virus evolves over time to spread more efficiently within a patient, ultimately leading to the collapse of the immune system.

The study also finds that multiple HIV particles must team up to infect individual cells, called co-infection, in order for deadly strains to emerge and to turn the infection into AIDS.

If just one virus particle infects a cell, the deadliest strains may not be able to evolve, stopping HIV from progressing to AIDS. By keeping more than one HIV particle from infecting a cell, scientists might be able to ward off AIDS, the study suggests.

"If this is true, a new approach to therapy could be to block the process of co-infection in cells. This would prevent deadly HIV strains from emerging and the patient would remain healthy, despite carrying the virus," said Wodarz, who used a mathematical model to draw his conclusions.

HIV develops in three stages. During the first few weeks, the virus grows to very high levels and can cause symptoms similar to a general viral infection such as the flu. The virus then drops to lower levels and the patient enters the asymptomatic phase that lasts on average 8-10 years. During the last stage, AIDS develops and the immune system collapses. Without an immune system, the patient cannot survive.

It is not well understood how the asymptomatic phase transitions into AIDS. The common notion is that HIV evolves to grow better over time following Darwin's theory of natural selection, eventually killing the patient.

But Wodarz's mathematical model, which takes into account how well the virus spreads and how quickly it kills the cells it invades, shows that the most deadly HIV strains do not spread the fastest from cell to cell. This surprised Wodarz because evolution tends to allow strong organisms to thrive, while weaker organisms become extinct.

According to him, the explanation rests with the fact that multiple HIV particles can invade a single cell. Wodarz's calculations show that, in this situation, viral evolution within a patient is fundamentally altered, allowing the deadly, slower-spreading strains to emerge over time and trigger the onset of AIDS.

These notions can be tested experimentally. If confirmed, Wodarz believes scientists could use this knowledge to develop a drug that blocks the cellular invasion of multiple HIV particles. This would create an environment in which the most deadly HIV types cannot emerge. This, he says, could keep HIV from developing into AIDS. No such drug currently exists.

This theory could explain why certain monkeys that are naturally infected with the monkey version of HIV never develop AIDS. According to Wodarz's model, multiple virus particles may infect cells at reduced levels or not at all. Wodarz says this theory also could be tested experimentally

The study appears online July 31 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Awareness about HIV/AIDS low among people in rural areas

2007-08-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

Awareness about HIV/AIDS is still low among people living in the rural areas, especially among girls, according to an official report. The Behavioural Surveillance Survey (BSS) points out that awareness level among the Injected Drug Users (IDUs) have decreased since 2001 in major metros like Delhi and Mumbai.

"The BSS 2006 shows an increase in the levels of knowledge, however, the levels are still very low in rural areas, especially amongst the girls," said the report 'Children and AIDS: Programme Update India', released yesterday after the Policy Framework for Children and AIDS India was announced. The report, which compares the data of 2001 and 2006, shows sex workers had more awareness about the disease now as compared to 2001.

"The sex workers data for 2006 shows relatively high levels of knowledge regarding HIV prevention, however, in Karnataka and Manipur the levels of knowledge are comparatively low," it said.

The BSS survey done by National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) in 2006 among 40,000 people in the age group of 15-29 shows that awareness level amongst IDUs in Delhi and Mumbai has dipped from 2001.

"The two data sets show an increase in levels of knowledge regarding prevention of HIV/AIDS across most major metros, except in case of Delhi and Mumbai where one actually sees a decrease," the report said.

Awareness levels among this segment in Chennai and Bangalore have gone up, it said.

As per the National AIDS Control Programme -3, the government has earmarked 10 per cent of the total budget of Rs 11,000 for awareness campaigns on HIV/AIDS

When truck drivers learnt about HIV/AIDS in New Delhi

2007-08-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

Several truck drivers in Delhi's Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar area were sensitised about HIV/AIDS besides being given a medical check-up on Wednesday, during an AIDS awareness camp here. Organised by the Transport Corporation of India (TCI) Foundation here, the objective of the camp is to make illiterate or uneducated truck drivers and their helpers aware about HIV/AIDS problems.

The general awareness event was a part of "Project Kavach", a national level HIV/AIDS prevention programme, started for long distance truckers and helpers by the Transport Corporation of India (TCI) Foundation in January 2004.It has been usually noticed that the poor male-migrant workers make contacts with prostitutes during their long journeys across the country and become victims of HIV/AIDS.

Organised on quarterly basis, these camps have been named "Kushi Clinics" and is known to have seventeen centres to spread information on preventing the spread of the deadly disease.

There are fifteen non-government organisations that are promoting this programme through these clinics.

Besides educating people about HIV/AIDS, the clinics also provide condoms and medicines at 70 per cent less than their market price.

The programme has at least 27 truckers who spread awareness about AIDS. There are about 800 condom social marketing outlets.

Guddu, one of the truck drivers, said: "They tell us about the use of condoms, which checks the spread of the disease."

At the clinics, all truckers are issued a medical 'passport' which helps them to buy medicines and allow them access to treatment in other centres of the country.

Tarun Vij, the project director of Project Kavach, said: "The attempt of this programme is to promote among truckers a health conscious behaviour and use of condoms. And, thereby, arrest the incidence of fresh case of HIV."

The official website of Transport Corporation of India (TCIL) claims the company being the country's leading Multimodal Integrated Supply Chain Solutions Provider.

The company is stated to be equipped with an extensive set up of 1100 branch offices, a workforce of 5,700 people and a well-performing script in premier stock exchanges as Bomaby Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE).

According to UN-backed government estimates, the number of people living with HIV/Aids in the country stands around half of previous official estimates at between 2-3.1 million people.

Previous estimates from the National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) put the number of HIV cases at 5.2 million, while UNAids in 2006 estimated 5.7 million cases.

7-yr-old HIV positive thrown out of school

2007-07-30T01:49:00.000-07:00

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.

Libya slams Bulgaria 'betrayal' over pardoned AIDS medics

2007-07-30T01:41:00.000-07:00

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.

African rights body slams Bulgaria for pardoning AIDS medics

2007-07-30T01:40:00.001-07:00

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."

China bans AIDS rights meeting, group says

2007-07-30T01:37:00.000-07:00

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.

School strikes off HIV+ student's name from rolls

2007-07-30T01:35:00.000-07:00

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

Tonsils may aid HIV transmission during oral sex

2007-07-27T04:03:00.002-07:00

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.

New York acts to stem HIV among seniors

2007-07-27T04:03:00.001-07:00

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 .

Scientists find how HIV enters immune cells with ease

2007-07-27T04:02:00.000-07:00

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.

Early treatment sees more HIV babies survive

2007-07-27T04:01:00.000-07:00

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.

AIDS conference calls for child-specific HIV drugs

2007-07-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

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?"

Major HIV/AIDS conference opens in Sydney

2007-07-25T00:56:00.000-07:00

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.

Despite progress, world still failing HIV carriers

2007-07-25T00:54:00.000-07:00

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.

The HIV/AIDS funding farce

2007-07-25T00:53:00.001-07:00

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.

Early treatment sees more HIV babies survive

2007-07-25T00:51:00.000-07:00

Circumcision could save millions from HIV infection, AIDS conference told

2007-07-25T00:48:00.000-07:00

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.

Bulgaria eyes quick Libya deal for HIV nurses

2007-07-23T09:32:00.000-07:00

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.

HIV no longer a death sentence, conference told

2007-07-23T09:31:00.000-07:00

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."

Medical "brain drain" hindering AIDS battle

2007-07-23T09:30:00.000-07:00

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.

Experts call for more access to HIV care

2007-07-23T09:29:00.001-07:00

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.

New HIV infections outpace treatment

2007-07-23T09:24:00.001-07:00

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."

HIV no longer a death sentence, conference told

2007-07-23T09:23:00.002-07:00

Major HIV/AIDS conference opens in Sydney

2007-07-23T09:23:00.001-07:00

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.

Despite progress, world still failing HIV carriers

2007-07-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

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.

Mobile medical unit for HIV affected

2007-07-21T23:08:00.000-07:00

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.

Indonesia to boost HIV/AIDS spending

2007-07-21T23:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Asia must overcome HIV stigma, say research chiefs

2007-07-20T02:31:00.000-07:00

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.

Male circumcision can cut HIV infection, studies show

2007-07-20T02:30:00.000-07:00

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.

Blow to Elton John's AIDS project in Nepal

2007-07-20T02:29:00.000-07:00

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.

Zambia to get anti-AIDS drug boost from global fund

2007-07-20T02:27:00.000-07:00

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.

Three gene variants could hold key for HIV vaccine

2007-07-20T02:26:00.000-07:00

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.

HIV patients build normal immune strength in study

2007-07-19T07:28:00.001-07:00

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.

Bulgaria seeks transfer of AIDS case medics from Libya

2007-07-19T07:27:00.001-07:00

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.

HIV eradication now possible, says Australian conference chief

2007-07-19T07:25:00.000-07:00

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."

UN praises China's progress in AIDS fight

2007-07-19T07:23:00.000-07:00

China has taken significant steps to fight HIV and AIDS, but long-term challenges include reaching out to more patients in the vast country and overcoming a lack of cooperation from some government officials, a U.N. AIDS official said Tuesday.

There are an estimated 650,000 people living with HIV in China, according to the most recent government statistics from the end of 2005. HIV gained a foothold in China largely due to unsanitary blood plasma-buying schemes and tainted transfusions in hospitals.

''I believe that over the last few years there have been serious progress and good results in the fight against AIDS in China and now the challenge is to sustain these efforts,'' said Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS.

Piot said successes in China include commitment and transparency at the top levels of government as well as proper funding, availability of antiretroviral drugs, and outreach programs. ''I've been coming to China for 14, 15 years, and I can say in the first five or six years there was basically no receptivity in terms of the issue,'' he said. ''And now, today, a lot is going on. You look at budgets, systems are being put in place, I think it's really very different.''

Piot recently returned from Shangcai County in Henan province, where unclean blood-buying businesses passed the virus to thousands of people in the 1990s. He toured a clinic and orphanage for AIDS orphans and also visited with patients.

There was a 50% reduction in the number of AIDS deaths in Henan province between 2002 and last year, said Wang Longde, China's vice minister of health, who also spoke at the U.N. news conference.

Cases of transfusions using infected blood have fallen sharply since the 1990s. The government has banned the practice of buying blood and has forbidden donations by prostitutes, intravenous drug users, and others in high HIV risk groups. (AP)
If you'd like to know more, you can find stories related to UN praises China's progress in AIDS fight.

HIV drug combo can boost immune marker in long-term patients

2007-07-19T07:19:00.000-07:00

Patients who successfully respond to drugs that combat the AIDS virus can see a key marker of immune health rebound to a level enjoyed by people without HIV, a study published online Wednesday by The Lancet says.

The paper sheds light on poorly understood conditions as to why some people on antiretroviral drugs can boost and maintain their CD4 immune cells, others see a slower increase in these key defenders while other individuals fail, sometimes tragically so.

Investigators led by Amanda Mocroft of London's Royal Free Centre for HIV Medicine looked at 1,835 people with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) before and after they were put on antiretrovirals.

On average, these individuals had a CD4 count of 204 cells per microlitre of blood at the start of the study.

In the first year of taking antiretrovirals, there was a big spurt in the CD4 count, of around 100 cells per microlitre on average.

HIV levels were also suppressed, to below 50 copies of the virus per microlitre, which is considered a key goal in antiretroviral treatment.

Over the next few years, lower -- but still significant -- improvements in the CD4 count continued.

In fact, after three years, patients who had started therapy with a CD4 count of more than 350 cells per microlitre had a CD4 count "approaching the level seen in HIV-negative individuals," Mocroft says.

On average, the boost was around 50 cells per microlitre annually, and this continued even up to the fifth year of treatment, which by the standards of HIV therapy is a long time indeed.

Most rewarding of all was that this enduring improvement was seen among patients who had had low CD4 cells (of less than 200 cells per microlitre) before they began therapy.

Those who began with more than 500 CD4 cells per microlitre saw the least relative improvement.

The upturn in CD4 cells only occurs, though, if patients continue to respond well to the drugs and can keep their HIV count to below 50 copies per microlitre, the authors warn.

CD4 cells are frontline guardians of the immune system and their levels are closely watched barometers of a patient's ability to fight off opportunistic disease and death.

Previous research in this field has been more pessimistic, suggesting that CD4 counts tend to plateau after several years of treatment.

But those studies used less strict criteria for determining whether the drugs were working.

Their benchmark was a viral load -- the number of AIDS viruses in the blood -- of 1,000 and 400 copies per microlitre, whereas the new study sets a far tougher standard of 50 copies or less.

The paper is published by The Lancet ahead of a meeting in Sydney from Sunday to July 25 of the International AIDS Society, which will focus especially on HIV treatment.

HIV patients build normal immune strength in study

2007-07-19T07:14:00.000-07:00

World struggling to treat HIV-AIDS

2007-07-19T07:12:00.000-07:00

Global AIDS treatment will 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, said a new report.

The report analyzing AIDS treatment in 17 countries and titled "Missing the Target" said free HIV treatment was actually not free in many poor countries.

"Free treatment is not truly free in most countries surveyed," said Gregg Gonsalves from the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, which released the report on Wednesday.

"Charges for diagnostic tests, medical care and other services are putting lifesaving care out of the reach of many thousands of people," Gregg said in a statement.

Although 700,000 more people with HIV received treatment in 2007, the pace needed to accelerate, said the coalition, which represents activists in more than 125 countries.

"Tripling the annual growth rate of treatment access from today's 700,000 to 2 million new people on treatment each year is both possible and necessary to meet the G8 commitment of coming close to universal access by 2010," said the coalition's report.

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.

STIGMA, MARGINALISED

While increasing numbers of people were being treated for HIV, the latest report said there remained serious challenges with marginalized people, inequitable access to care for rural populations and children, a lack of transportation, the stigma of being diagnosed and the high cost of drugs.

Cambodia, which has some 134,000 people with HIV, was a "success story" in increasing treatment, it said. AIDS drugs only became available in Cambodia in 2004 and there were now 40 centers treating some 21,900 people.

But the report said there was still a "large but silent minority" of marginalized people, such as sex workers, Vietnamese citizens living in Cambodia and people in remote areas and slums, who still did not receive treatment.

"Many of these individuals...are reluctant to seek out health services in general because of fear of stigma and discrimination, if not harassment," it said.

China's free treatment program, started four years ago, had expanded rapidly from August 2006 when 26,000 people were treated to 30,000 by June 2007, said the report. But this was a small percent of the official 650,000 people with HIV in China.

Major obstacles in China to treatment were stigma and a "prohibitively expensive" test to confirm diagnosis, along with a lack of drugs and trained medical staff, it said.

India has one of the world's largest populations living with HIV-AIDS, about 2.5 million people, but as of 2007 only 70,780 people were being treated through 107 centers, said the report.

"Clearly, therefore, only a fraction of those needing treatment are receiving it now or can hope to receive it in the next half a decade," said the report.

South Africa, the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic with 5.5 million people with HIV, was also struggling to treat people.

As of 2007 some 257,100 patients were receiving drugs at specialist centers, with 30,000 on waiting lists, and up to 110,000 people being treated privately, said the report.

The report said South Africa had a long way to go meet its goal of treating 80 percent of new AIDS cases by 2011.

"Treatment delivery is working and there can be no more excuses for losing this momentum or letting millions die of AIDS," said Zackie Achmat of South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign.

Male circumcision can cut HIV infection, studies show

2007-07-19T07:09:00.000-07:00

World struggling to treat HIV/AIDS

2007-07-19T07:02:00.000-07:00

Global AIDS treatment will 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, according to a new report.

The report, which analyzed AIDS treatment in 17 countries and titled "Missing the Target," stated that free HIV treatment was actually not free in many poor countries.

"Free treatment is not truly free in most countries surveyed," said Gregg Gonsalves from the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, which released the report on Wednesday.

"Charges for diagnostic tests, medical care and other services are putting lifesaving care out of the reach of many thousands of people," Gregg said in a statement.

Although 700,000 more people with HIV received treatment in 2007, the pace needed to accelerate, said the coalition, which represents activists in more than 125 countries.

"Tripling the annual growth rate of treatment access from today's 700,000 to 2 million new people on treatment each year is both possible and necessary to meet the G8 commitment of coming close to universal access by 2010," said the coalition's report.

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.

STIGMA, MARGINALISED

While increasing numbers of people were being treated for HIV, the latest report said there remained serious challenges with marginalized people, inequitable access to care for rural populations and children, a lack of transportation, the stigma of being diagnosed and the high cost of drugs.

Cambodia, which has some 134,000 people with HIV, was a "success story" in increasing treatment, it said. AIDS drugs only became available in Cambodia in 2004 and there were now 40 centers treating some 21,900 people.

But the report said there was still a "large but silent minority" of marginalized people, such as sex workers, Vietnamese citizens living in Cambodia and people in remote areas and slums, who still did not receive treatment.

"Many of these individuals...are reluctant to seek out health services in general because of fear of stigma and discrimination, if not harassment," it said.

China's free treatment program, started four years ago, had expanded rapidly from August 2006 when 26,000 people were treated to 30,000 by June 2007, said the report. But this was a small percent of the official 650,000 people with HIV in China.

Major obstacles in China to treatment were stigma and a "prohibitively expensive" test to confirm diagnosis, along with a lack of drugs and trained medical staff, it said.

India has one of the world's largest populations living with HIV-AIDS, about 2.5 million people, but as of 2007 only 70,780 people were being treated through 107 centers, said the report.

"Clearly, therefore, only a fraction of those needing treatment are receiving it now or can hope to receive it in the next half a decade," said the report.

South Africa, the current center of the AIDS epidemic with 5.5 million people with HIV, was also struggling to treat people.

As of 2007 some 257,100 patients were receiving drugs at specialist centers, with 30,000 on waiting lists, and up to 110,000 people being treated privately, said the report.

The report said South Africa had a long way to go meet its goal of treating 80 percent of new AIDS cases by 2011.

"Treatment delivery is working and there can be no more excuses for losing this momentum or letting millions die of AIDS," said Zackie Achmat of South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign.

AIDS case deal may forgive Libyan debt

2007-07-16T02:51:00.000-07:00

Several eastern European countries would forgive Libyan debt dating back to the Cold War under a proposal to compensate families whose children were allegedly infected with the AIDS virus by five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, a victims' advocate said Saturday.

The six foreign medics have been sentenced to death in the case, and Libyan officials have said a settlement could pave the way for their release.

Jailed since 1999, the six deny having infected more than 400 children and say their confessions were extracted under torture. Experts and outside scientific reports have said the children were contaminated as a result of unhygienic conditions at a hospital in the northeastern coastal city of Benghazi. Fifty of the infected children died.

Libya's Supreme Court upheld the death sentences for the medics in an appeal ruling on Wednesday. But that decision could still be overturned by country's highest judicial authority, the Supreme Judiciary Council, which is set to review the case on Monday. The council could approve or reject the convictions or set lighter sentences.

Idriss Lagha, head of the Association for the Families of HIV-Infected Children, told The Associated Press that a settlement was being finalized involving the transfer of money to a fund through the remission of debt to Bulgaria and several other eastern European countries.

Seif al Islam, the son of longtime Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, told a French newspaper published on Saturday that $400 million in compensation would be paid to the families.

"The indemnities are financed by international contributions in the form of debt remission," the newspaper Le Figaro quoted him as saying. "The concerned countries are Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia and the Czech Republic."

An agreement on the case has "not yet been reached" with the European Union, said Seif al Islam, who heads a powerful Libyan association that has worked to resolve the deadlock.

Government officials from Bulgaria and other nations reportedly involved in the deal have all denied they were sending cash to the families.

Le Figaro, without citing sources, reported that each family would get $1 million.

Companies in the four countries are all owed money from Libya largely dating back to the communist era. Bulgaria says Libya owes it $290 million, and the Czech news agency CTK put the Libyan debt to Prague at about $300 million in 2002.

The spokeswoman for Slovakia's ruling party said Saturday that Prime Minister Robert Fico had discussed with Libyan officials in February the possibility of using some of the country's debt to compensate the families.

Katarina Klizanova Rysova said negotiations between the two countries were still under way, but any deal would require Libya to eventually repay the debt.

"Slovakia can provide the finances for the Libyan families only on condition that the debt is paid off," she said.

Rysova said Libyan debt to her country was about $130 million, but the final sum was still being negotiated.

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin reiterated Friday that Bulgaria would not pay compensations because that would imply the medics were guilty. But he also said he was optimistic a settlement was close that could result in the medics being pardoned.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman was not immediately available for comment Saturday.

Czech Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zuzana Opletalova said the medics' case "is not over yet and it is premature to speak about any compensation."

The Czech Finance Ministry would not comment.

The Libyan government is under intense international pressure to free the medics. The case has become a sticking point in the regime's attempts to rebuild ties with the United States and European countries.

Libyan officials have said the families' acceptance of a compensation settlement is key to resolving the deadlock and would allow the death sentence to be withdrawn.

Often referred to as "blood money," compensation for death or suffering is a legal provision in the traditional Islamic code in the Middle East and North Africa.

'Sexually active' Malawians urged to take HIV tests

2007-07-16T02:49:00.000-07:00

Malawi, ravaged by the AIDS pandemic, has urged its six million "sexually active" citizens to go for voluntary HIV tests when a week-long national campaign starts Monday.

Health authorities said in a statement issued Friday that statistics had shown that out of "six million sexually active Malawians, only 15 percent have gone for HIV testing and know their status."

"This implies that the majority of Malawians do not know that they are carrying the virus because they have not gone for a test, a situation that poses a great threat to prevention efforts," the statement said.

Around 14 percent of Malawi's 12 million people are infected with HIV, according to official figures.

Mtemwa Nyangulu, HIV testing and counselling officer at the Ministry of Health headquarters in the administrative capital Lilongwe, told AFP: "We have targetted to test more people this year by going to rural areas and using mobile clinics at 350 sites."

About 97,000 people were tested in 2006, and 10.8 percent of them were HIV positive, the authorities said.

"We want to encourage Malawians to go for the tests. We also want to take advantage to reach them with correct information on HIV prevention, treatment, care and support," Nyangulu said.

She said about 650,000 Malawians go for voluntary HIV tests every year.

President Bingu wa Mutharika has said he wanted at least one million Malawians going for the tests to determine how many people should get access to free antiretroviral treatment.

"It's ambitious but achievable...we need to test at least a million people every year," Mutharika said in 2005, adding that the biggest challenge in Malawi was to "control and manage the AIDS pandemic."

Foreign medics seek pardon in Libya AIDS case

2007-07-16T02:47:00.000-07:00

Six foreign medics sentenced to death in Libya for infecting hundreds of children with AIDS have sought "pardon and mercy" from the country's top judicial body, an official said Sunday.

The request was signed on Saturday by the five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor in the presence of ambassadors of unspecified European countries, added the Libyan source who requested anonymity.

Their lawyer, Osman al-Bizanti, confirmed the signing of another document that rules out any further action against the Libyan state over the eight years that his clients have spent in prison over the case.

The two documents, plus another which contains details of a compensation deal clinched with the families of the infected children, are to be considered on Monday by the Libya's Supreme Judicial Council.

The council, which is directly answerable to the Libyan justice minister, has the power to alter, or even revoke, the Supreme Court decision last week to sentence the six medics to death.

The families of the Libyan children contaminated by the AIDS on Sunday confirmed they had accepted compensation of about one million dollars for each of the infected children.

Spokesman for the families Idriss Lagha specified however that "an agreement will not be signed until the money has been paid to the families."

The medics have been on death row since 2004 after being convicted of deliberately infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood. Fifty-six have since died.

On Thursday the International AIDS Society expressed "shock and dismay" at the confirmation of the death penalty for the six.

The Geneva-based body, which represents more than 11,000 health workers in upwards of 170 countries, said evidence suggested the children had become infected because of insanitary conditions at the hospital in Libya's second city of Benghazi before the medics arrived there.

Libya confirms compensation deal in AIDS case

2007-07-16T02:45:00.002-07:00

Families of Libyan children infected with AIDS have accepted compensation topping 460 million dollars, a Libyan foundation confirmed on Sunday, which could lead to a death sentence on six foreign medics being lifted.

Libya's top legal body is expected to examine the deal on Monday, and could rule that the five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor on death row for infecting the children may serve prison time rather than face execution.

"The families have accepted compensation in the order of a million dollars for each victim," said Salah Abdessalem, director of the charitable Kadhafi Foundation run by Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's son Seif al-Islam.

The medics have been on death row since 2004 after being convicted of deliberately infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood. Fifty-six have since died.

The death sentence was confirmed by the supreme court on Wednesday, eight years after the six were first detained.

Libya's Supreme Judicial Council, due to meet on Monday, can modify the supreme court verdict or even cancel it.

But Idriss Lagha, the spokesman for the families, insisted on Sunday: "An agreement will not be signed until the money has been paid to the families."

He said the number of victims had increased to almost 460 because a number of mothers had been infected by their children. Among them are eight Palestinians, two Egyptians, two Syrians, two Sudanese and a Moroccan, he said.

Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham said on Wednesday the compensation would come from "certain European countries and charitable organisations, and from the Libyan state."

A special fund for the AIDS victims was set up by Libya and Bulgaria in 2005 under the aegis of the EU.

Shalgham refused to reveal how much money was already in the fund, except to say it ran into "hundreds of millions of dollars."

As employer of the six medics, the government would pay between 250,000 euros (345,000 dollars) and 600,000 euros (827,000 dollars) to the family of each victim.

Nurses Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valya Cherveniashka, Valentina Siropulo and Kristiana Valcheva and Palestinian doctor Ashraf Juma Hajuj -- who now has Bulgarian nationality -- have been behind bars since February 1999 but have always protested their innocence.

On Thursday the International AIDS Society expressed "shock and dismay" at the confirmation of the death penalty for the six.

The Geneva-based body, which represents more than 11,000 health workers in upwards of 170 countries, said evidence suggested the children had become infected because of insanitary conditions at the hospital in Libya's second city of Benghazi before the medics arrived there.

The European Union said on Wednesday it was still hoping a compensation deal could be reached with Libya that would see the death sentences commuted to prison terms which could be served in Bulgaria.

Libya could overturn death verdicts on AIDS medics

2007-07-16T02:45:00.001-07:00

Libya's top legal body meets on Monday for a session that could see it commute to prison terms the death sentences on six foreign medics convicted of infecting children with the virus that causes AIDS.

The meeting of the Supreme Judicial Council comes a day after families of 438 Libyan children infected with HIV-tainted blood were confirmed to have accepted compensation totalling around 460 million dollars.

The judicial body is expected to examine the deal on Monday after the death sentences on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who now has Bulgarian citizenship were confirmed by the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

It will also consider documents in which the medics seek a pardon and agree to rule out any legal action against the state of Libya linkeed to the eight years they have spent in prison.

The Supreme Judicial Council can modify the supreme court verdict or even overturn it.

Nurses Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valya Cherveniashka, Valentina Siropulo and Kristiana Valcheva and doctor Ashraf Juma Hajuj have been behind bars since February 1999 but have always protested their innocence.

The six have been on death row since 2004 after being convicted of deliberately infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood at a hospital in the country's second city of Benghazi.

Fifty-six children have since died.

"The families have accepted compensation in the order of a million dollars for each victim," Salah Abdessalem, director of the charitable Kadhafi Foundation run by Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's son Seif al-Islam, said on Sunday.

But Idriss Lagha, the spokesman for the families, insisted that "an agreement will not be signed until the money has been paid to the families."

Lagha said the number of victims had now increased to almost 460 because a number of mothers had been infected by their children. Among them are eight Palestinians, two Egyptians, two Syrians, two Sudanese and a Moroccan, he said.

A special fund for the AIDS victims was set up by Libya and Bulgaria in 2005 under the aegis of the European Union.

On Wednesday, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham said the compensation would be paid by "certain European countries and charitable organisations, and from the Libyan state."

He refused to reveal how much money was already in the fund, except to say it ran into "hundreds of millions of dollars."

The Geneva-based International AIDS Society added its voice on Thursday to expert evidence suggesting the children were infected because of insanitary conditions at the hospital in Benghazi before the medics arrived there.

The European Union said last week it was still hoping a compensation deal could be reached with Libya that would see the death sentences commuted to prison terms which could be served in Bulgaria.

Libya could overturn death verdicts on AIDS medics

2007-07-16T02:43:00.000-07:00

Libya's top legal body meets on Monday to decide whether to confirm or annul death sentences on six foreign medics convicted of infecting children with the virus that causes AIDS.

The meeting of the Supreme Judicial Council comes a day after families of 438 Libyan children infected with HIV-tainted blood were confirmed to have accepted compensation totalling as much as 460 million dollars.

The judicial body is expected to examine the deal on Monday after the death sentences on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who now has Bulgarian citizenship were confirmed by the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

It will also consider documents in which the medics seek a pardon and agree to rule out any legal action against the state of Libya linked to the eight years they have spent in prison.

The Supreme Judicial Council, which is due to meet at 6 pm (1600 GMT), can modify the supreme court verdict or even overturn it.

Nurses Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valya Cherveniashka, Valentina Siropulo and Kristiana Valcheva and doctor Ashraf Juma Hajuj have been behind bars since February 1999 but have always protested their innocence.

The six have been on death row since 2004 after being convicted of deliberately infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood at a hospital in the country's second city of Benghazi.

Fifty-six children have since died.

"The families have accepted compensation in the order of a million dollars for each victim," Salah Abdessalem, director of the charitable Kadhafi Foundation run by Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's son Seif al-Islam, said on Sunday.

But Idriss Lagha, the spokesman for the families, insisted that "an agreement will not be signed until the money has been paid to the families."

Lagha said the number of victims had now increased to almost 460 because a number of mothers had been infected by their children. Among them are eight Palestinians, two Egyptians, two Syrians, two Sudanese and a Moroccan, he said.

A special fund for the AIDS victims was set up by Libya and Bulgaria in 2005 under the aegis of the European Union.

On Wednesday, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham said the compensation would be paid by "certain European countries and charitable organisations, and from the Libyan state."

He refused to reveal how much money was already in the fund, except to say it ran into "hundreds of millions of dollars."

The European Union said last week it was still hoping a compensation deal could be reached with Libya that would see the death sentences commuted to prison terms which could be served in Bulgaria.

The French Le Figaro daily reported on Saturday that some EU countries could "erase Libya's debt to them to show their goodwill and help advance this case."

However, Croatia for one said it had received no official demand to contribute.

Meanwhile, the Geneva-based International AIDS Society added its voice to expert evidence suggesting the children were infected because of insanitary conditions at the hospital in Benghazi before the medics arrived.

Tanzania launches nationwide blood test for HIV/AIDS

2007-07-16T02:41:00.000-07:00

Tanzania has launched a nationwide voluntary blood test for HIV/AIDS as part of a new round of campaign.

'We must win the war, and win we shall,' President Jakaya Kikwete said during the launch of the campaign Saturday televised live nationwide.

Tanzania had announced HIV/AIDS a national disaster back in 1999 and the country has been fighting the disease since 1983.

According to a 2006 report by the African Medical and Research Foundation, 450,129 people in the country have tested for HIV in Tanzania.

The most affected age group, according to the Tanzanian president, is of people aged between 15 and 49, the most able-bodied section of the population.

Adult HIV/AIDS prevalence rate now stands at 8.8 percent by current estimate, with half of the victims having been infected before 29. An estimated 1.4 million people in the country have tested HIV positive.

The survey also predicted that the HIV/AIDS would reduce the country's GDP by 15 and 25 percent by 2010 by reducing the country's labour force by 20 percent and the per capita income by 10 percent.

Now, one seat in all PU depts for HIV+ or cancer patients

2007-07-10T11:12:00.000-07:00

Panjab University has decided to reserve one seat in every department for HIV positive students or cancer patients from this session. Such students, however, have to meet the minimum eligibility criteria for admissions.

The idea of reserving seats for such students was proposed by Vice-Chancellor Prof R C Sobti recently and was unanimously approved by the Syndicate.

"I have been working in the field of cancer research for 40 years now. Those suffering from such diseases need to be rehabilitated. They do not get enough chances in life.We are one of the first universities in the country to have taken such an initiative," said Sobti.

PU Senator Dinesh Talwar, while appreciating the decision, said, "People who are suffering from such diseases tend to be disillusioned and lose hope. We have to give a chance to them," he said.

The idea has also received approval from those working in the areas of creating awareness about HIV. Dr Avnish Jolly, while welcoming the decision taken by the varsity, said, "The step would go a long way in removing the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS. The discrimination that these people face would also lessen. In fact, it would enhance self-reliance among students."

The V-C said he would also write to the Medical Council of India and Dental Council of India to push for such steps in other universities as well.

Youths most vulnerable to AIDS, sex education a must

2007-07-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

he hue and cry of teachers by no means prove that adolescence education is not something the state's youngsters do not need.

Going by the questions the young people pose on the subject, social activists and NGOs working with them are convinced that there is indeed a need to spread awareness of HIV/AIDS, although the manner should be subtle.

Here is a sample of the questions the AIDS helplines and the activists get:
Is sexual intercourse the only way to contract AIDS?
Does one die immediately after contracting AIDS?
Is HIV and AIDS different?
Can one contract AIDS by kissing?
He is very thin. Does he have AIDS?
Do people with AIDS have a mark on their bodies by which they can be identified

According to the Uttar Pradesh Network of positive people (UPNP), some 40 per cent of the positives in UP are youngsters below 25. The National AIDS Control Organisation too says that in India, the people between 15 and 29 are vulnerable to the disease. According to NACO's surveillance on AIDS cases in India, on August 31, 2006, the number of positives between 15 to 29 was 39781 out of 124995.

Activists feel that youngsters, especially adolescents, must be made aware about HIV/AIDS. "We have been interacting with school and college kids and we have found that they are very curious to know about HIV/AIDS," said Pratap Vikram of UPNP. Vikram, who interacts regularly with youngsters in rural and urban areas, said myths about the disease abound. "Their questions may sound funny, but then they do not know anything and their questions reflect that," he added.

Arif Zafar of Naz Foundation, which is also working in the field, agreed. "Adoloscents do need sex education and it needs to be very clear and defined. The number of adolescents who are HIV positive is quite alarming in UP and it is clear they are being infected. So obviously, they need to be told about it."

Activists suggest options that can benefit both teachers and students. "Instead of regular teachers, an NGO worker or a peer educator who is comfortable with the subject can do the needful and bridge the gap," said Jafar.

Olive-pomace oil compound inhibits HIV spread

2007-07-10T11:09:00.000-07:00

A new study has found that a compound from olive-pomace oil slows down the spread of HIV virus.

Researchers from the University of Granada and Hospital Carlos III in Madrid, established that maslinic acid, found in wax from olive skin, inhibits serin-protease, the enzyme used by HIV to discharge itself from the infected cell into the extra cellular environment and, subsequently, to spread the infection into the whole body.

These scientists, headed by Prof. Andres Garcia-Granados, senior lecturer in Organic Chemistry are firm that the use of olive-pomace oil can produce an 80% slowing down in AIDS spreading in the body.

Maslinic or crataegolic acid is a pentacyclic terpene with antioxidant and anticancer effects found in wax from olive skin, together with oleanolic acid. The effects of this compound in the battle against AIDS are concurrently being studied in the UGR and in Hospital Carlos III in Madrid by a team headed by Prof. Vallejo Najera.

Maslinic acid's novel properties shoot from its powerful protease-inhibition activity, allowing researchers from Granada to register two patents on behalf of the UGR to produce drugs for treatment of diseases caused by protozoa Cryptosporidium - a parasite causing small intestine infection and diarrhoea - and by HIV. The University of Granada has already registered almost ten other patents related to this compound's properties.

Maslinic acid is also a very active compound in opportunistic parasitic infections seriously affecting HIV patients.

Prof. Andres Garcia-Granados' team intends to continue working in the design and implementation of new maslinic acid by-products to fight against HIV, as well as in other innovative research projects.

Malawi targets 150,000 people with AIDS drugs

2007-07-10T11:07:00.000-07:00

Malawi has set itself a target of supplying 150,000 HIV sufferers with free anti-retroviral drugs by the end of year, the head of the national AIDS commission (NAC) said on Monday.

"We are close to 110,000 people on ARVs and we hope to hit 150,000 by the end of December when we launch a massive scale-up of the drugs" from September, NAC chief Biziwick Mwale told AFP.

The increase would be underwritten by a new batch of funding from the global fund against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Malawi first launched a free ARV programme in 2004 but only 5,000 people were initial beneficiaries.

Mwale said the massive increase in the scale of the programme meant that three-quarters of HIV patients who are need of ARVs would be receiving the drugs by the end of the year.

"It's quite tremendous and we are on course and superceeding our overall (target) rates when we consider that we had less than 5,000 people on ARVs in 2004" he said.

Mwale said the number of Malawians going for voluntary HIV tests had now risen to 500,000 every year, from less than 50,000 three years ago.

The biggest impediment to the roll-out programme was the shortage of health workers, the NAC chief added.

Malawi, with a population of 12 million, has only 150 doctors on the state payroll, according to a recent survey by the health ministry.

Still a taboo subject in the conservative landlocked country, wedged between Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia, some 930,000 Malawians are living with HIV or AIDS where the prevalence rate is 14 percent, according to UN AIDS.

There are about 78,000 AIDS-related deaths every year

Now, one seat in all PU depts for HIV+ or cancer patients

2007-07-09T06:15:00.002-07:00

Panjab University has decided to reserve one seat in every department for HIV or cancer patients from this session. Such students, however, have to meet the minimum eligibility criteria for admissions.

The idea of reserving seats for such students was proposed by Vice-Chancellor Prof R C Sobti recently and was unanimously approved by the Syndicate.

"I have been working in the field of cancer research for 40 years now. Those suffering from such diseases need to be rehabilitated. They do not get enough chances in life.We are one of the first universities in the country to have taken such an initiative," said Sobti.

PU Senator Dinesh Talwar, while appreciating the decision, said, "People who are suffering from such diseases tend to be disillusioned and lose hope. We have to give a chance to them," he said.

The idea has also received approval from those working in the areas of creating awareness about HIV. Dr Avnish Jolly, while welcoming the decision taken by the varsity, said, "The step would go a long way in removing the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS. The discrimination that these people face would also lessen. In fact, it would enhance self-reliance among students."

The V-C said he would also write to the Medical Council of India and Dental Council of India to push for such steps in other universities as well.

Experts challenge new India HIV estimate

2007-07-09T06:15:00.001-07:00

As India halves its AIDS scare by decreasing the HIV-infected population from 5.2 million to 2.5 million, non-governmental experts said that just reducing the number without proper justification is creating doubt in the civil society.

'The diarrhoea, malaria, chikungunya and dengue cases are not going down but how come the HIV/AIDS cases have gone down by over 50 percent?' asked Anandi Yuvraj, project managers AIDS, at Path, an international non-government organisation (NGO).

'They have reduced the number by almost 2.7 million but what happened to these people? How come the health minister (Anbumani Ramadoss) gave us data without proper justification? This is a little difficult to digest,' she added.

Anjali Gopalan, head of Naz Foundation in Delhi, was also uncomfortable with the data. 'We have to wait and watch the development. If the government is claiming that it has expanded the surveillance then I am sure the number will fluctuate further.

'We are going to take stock of the money spent so far on HIV eradication. There should be some accountability on the part of government authorities,' Gopalan told IANS.

According to Yuvraj, the government, on one hand, says that HIV continues to emerge in new areas like West Bengal and Bihar and on the other, reduces the national figure.

'Do we have even proper medical facilities? Even if the number has really gone down, can the government say that it has covered all with anti-retroviral drug treatment? Quantifying is one aspect but what about the quality of life?' she added.

The National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), while launching the National AIDS Control Programme-III (NACP-III) Friday, underlined that the 2006 surveillance data have identified selected pockets of high prevalence in northern states.

'There are 29 districts with high prevalence, particularly in West Bengal, Orissa, Rajasthan and Bihar,' the NACO report says.

The figures show an increase in HIV infection among people who inject drugs and homosexuals.

'The HIV positive among injecting drug users (IDUs) has been found to be significantly high in metro cities of Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, and Chandigarh. Besides, Orissa, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Kerala also show high prevalence among IDUs,' NACO director general K. Sujatha Rao said.

Pointing fingers at the findings, Anushree Mishra of the Global AIDS Programme, an international NGO, said: 'What's the basis of this report?

'I will really question the figure given by the Indian government and UNAIDS. How can the number come down from 5.2 million to 2.5 million?'

Africa's men urged to step up AIDS fight

2007-07-09T06:14:00.001-07:00

South Africa's top female politician warned Saturday that men must get fully involved in the war against HIV/AIDS if the disease is to be defeated.

"There aren't enough men who are taking enough responsibility to go for tests and live responsibly, and that kind of (behaviour) compromises the fight," Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, South Africa's Deputy President, told the closing session of the International Women's Summit on HIV/AIDS here.

She urged men to live responsibly, to go for tests and participate in projects to help end the pandemic that has infected some affects 39.5 million people worldwide, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

"The response to HIV will not be won if men do not come on board since they are equally affected or infected," she said;

South Africa had emphasised men's role in AIDS campaigns by organising men as activists," she said.

Several women living with the virus told the conference of their ordeals of physical and emotional consequences of the virus, of how their husbands infected them before abandoning them or chased them from their homes.

The conference heard that in sub-Saharan Africa, 60 percent of all adults living with the virus are female. Kenya, which hosted the summit, the ratio reaches 67 percent.

The UNAIDS and World Health Organisation, the frontline agencies coordinating the fight against the epidemic, said gender equality and the empowerment of women are key to slowing the spread of the killer virus.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said the empowerment of women was a potent weapon against the disease.

"Addressing the economic status of women" would help them to make choices so that "they can get out abusive relationships, they can acquire the support that they need.

"The most important thing is remove women from the bottom of the prymaid," she said.

As of June 2006, around one million Africans were receiving antiretroviral drugs which help roll back the AIDS virus, a tenfold increase since December 2003.

But this was still less than a quarter of the estimated 4.6 million people in need of the drugs, the conference heard.

Malawi targets 150,000 people with AIDS drugs

2007-07-09T06:13:00.000-07:00

India's HIV population down to 2.5 mn, experts sceptical

2007-07-06T22:16:00.000-07:00

The government Friday said the number of HIV/AIDS patients in India is now down to 2.5 million, less than half what was previously estimated, but non-governmental organisations expressed scepticism at the dramatic decline in the prevalence rate.

The startling figures, released Friday jointly by the UNAIDS, World Health Organization (WHO) and National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) - the dedicated wing of the Indian health ministry to fight the disease - said that the national adult HIV prevalence in India now stands between 2 million and 3.1 million.

'We have taken an average of the most accurate prevalence data and underline that India is home to 2.5 million HIV infected people,' Anbumani Ramadoss told reporters.

'Experts from India and round the world were consulted and after a lot of hard work and outstanding support from WHO, UNAIDS and other partners, we have been able to arrive at a robust figure that all our experts feel is as correct an estimate as we can get.

'The results show that there are an estimated 2 million to 3.1 million people infected with HIV/AIDS with a prevalence level of 0.36 percent,' the minister added.

S. Habayeb, WHO India representative, told IANS, 'We are happy with the outcome and hope the country will continue to fight to halt and reverse the HIV epidemic in India.'

Ramadoss said the estimates are based on mainly two important sources of data.

'First we continue to have the data from our sentinel surveillance, now expanded to 1,122 sites from the earlier 703 sites. This year, we have the additional inputs from the National Family Health Survey, which is a countrywide community based household survey,' said Ramadoss.

With this revised estimate, India goes down from its second position to the third in the HIV infected country list. While South Africa remains at the top of the list, Nigeria has taken over from India to occupy the second slot.

However, non-governmental experts said that the government data is not acceptable in its entirety.

'They have reduced the number by almost 2.7 million but what happened to these people? How come the health minister give us data without proper justification through which they have arrived at the decision?' said Anandi Yuvraj, project managers AIDS, at Path, an international NGO.

Anjali Gopalan, head of Naz Foundation in Delhi, was also uncomfortable with the data. 'We have to wait and watch the development. If the government is claiming that they have expanded their surveillance then I am sure the number will fluctuate further.'

Anushree Mishra of the Global AIDS Programme, an international NGO, said: 'I will really question the figure given by the Indian government and the UNAIDS today. How can the number come down from 5.2 million to 2.5 million?'

'On one hand they are saying that the disease is spreading to several new pockets in Bihar, Orissa and some other north Indian states and at the same time reducing the national tally. What's the basis?' Mishra questioned.

According to NACO, India earlier was estimated to have a 5.2 million HIV- infected population in a country of 1.1 billion people and the UNAIDS last year had even said that the country is home to 5.7 million people with HIV - more than that of South Africa. The Indian government, however, did not buy the UN estimate.

'We think it's a very accurate data. The expanded sentinel surveillance system and the large population based survey conducted in 2005-06 has helped experts to come to this conclusion,' said Peter D. Ghys, manager, epidemic and impact monitoring, epidemic monitoring and prevention policy of UNAIDS.

UNAIDS also said that In India, the HIV epidemic can vary according from region to region. Specifically, HIV prevalence is higher in some southern and northeastern states.

'The population based survey (NFHS) represents an entirely new source of data for India and is the first time that it has included an HIV component. The sample size for HIV was over 100,000 people. The type of survey has been conducted in many countries in Africa, where is has been the basis for improving estimates,' an UNAIDS statement said.

Ramadoss also said that India would invest Rs. 115.85 billion ($2.8bn)in the next five years to fight HIV/AIDS.

As part of the National AIDS Control Programme-III, the money would go into prevention, care, support and treatment, capacity building, and strategic information management.

India to invest Rs.115.85 bn to fight AIDS

2007-07-06T22:15:00.000-07:00

India will invest Rs.115.85 billion ($2.8bn) to fight HIV/AIDS with a special focus on target groups in the next five years, health ministry officials said Friday.

As part of the National AIDS Control Programme - III (NACP-III), the investment would be made on heads like prevention, care, support and treatment, capacity building, and strategic information management.

'The NACP-III (2007-2012) seeks to halt and reverse the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India by 2012. During this phase National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) will strengthen capacity, formulate policy and guide implementation to enable a decentralised response focussed on local needs,' NACO chief K. Sujatha Rao told reporters.

Rao said the programme would be implemented through preventing new infections in high-risk groups and among the general populace with scaled up intervention.

Of the Rs.115.85 billion, the government of India is giving Rs.80.23 billion and the rest Rs.35.62 billion will come from several donor agencies like World Bank, UNAIDS, Britain's DFID, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Of the total money, Rs.77.86 billion would be invested on prevention, Rs.19.53 billion on care, support, and treatment and Rs.9.1 billion on programme management. While Rs.3.6 billion will go for the strategic information management, another Rs.5.76 billion would be kept as contingency.

The fresh programme was announced on a day the government said the number of HIV/AIDS patients in India is now down to 2.5 million, less than half what was previously estimated.

The startling figures, released Friday jointly by the UNAIDS, World Health Organization (WHO) and National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) - the dedicated wing of the Indian health ministry to fight the disease - said that the national adult HIV prevalence in India now stands between 2 million and 3.1 million.

'We have taken an average of the most accurate prevalence data and underline that India is home to 2.5 million HIV infected people,' Anbumani Ramadoss told reporters.

The estimates said that around 104 districts in India have a HIV prevalence of over 1 percent, and 29 have more than 3 percent. The Dharwad district of Karnataka is the most infected district in the country with a prevalence rate of nearly 6 percent against the national prevalence rate of 0.36 percent.

Within the intervention period, the programme would reach out to three million truckers and 8.9 million migrants to stop the virus from infecting the general population.

Truckers in India have an estimated HIV prevalence of 11 to 16 percent. There are more than 8 million migrants amongst whom prevalence is unknown.

The NACP-III will also aim to reduce HIV infection through blood transfusion from the current two percent to 0.5 percent within next five years.

Apart from targeting women who contribute 39 percent of the HIV infected people in the country, the programme would cover 75,600 HIV positive mothers with anti-retroviral drugs prophylaxis.

New Combo Drug Therapies Prove Effective Against HIV

2007-07-06T22:11:00.000-07:00

Two antiretroviral drugs used in combination are successful in controlling drug-resistant HIV/AIDS after six months of treatment, a new phase 3 trial concludes.

The drugs, etravirine and darunavir (brand named Prezista), are both manufactured by Tibotec, a Johnson & Johnson company.

This was the first clinical trial to combine the two new investigational drugs against HIV/AIDS. By week 24 of therapy, patients receiving both drugs achieved better viral suppression than people who were only taking Prezista, according to the study, which is published in a special July 7 HIV-themed issue of The Lancet.

People from 18 nations participated in the trial, including participants enrolled at 30 U.S. sites.

"This study is one of the most significant worldwide HIV/AIDS clinical trials in recent years. It showed that when the two drugs are used in combination, there is a good chance HIV can be very effectively controlled in patients who have advanced, multi-drug resistant HIV," said study co-author Dr. William J. Towner, medical director of Kaiser Permanente Southern California's HIV/AIDS Research Trials, in a prepared statement.

Kaiser Permanente, the second largest provider of HIV care in the United States, enrolled the highest number of participants in the study.

According to Towner, the ongoing study, known as "DUET-2," is the pivotal test of effectiveness for etravirine, which is in a class of drugs called non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors.

Results from the clinical phase 3 trial will now be submitted to regulatory authorities, which must grant their approval before the new drug can be made widely available in clinics. Prezista, in another class of drugs, called protease inhibitors, was an experimental drug when the study started but is already approved for use to treat HIV/AIDS.

Italian lead investigator lead investigator Dr. Adriano Lazzarin is expected to present the findings during the July 22-25 International AIDS Society conference in Sydney, Australia.

In another phase 3 trial, also published in the July 7 issue of The Lancet, an international team led by Dr. Jose Valdez Madruga, of the Centro de Referencia e Treinamento DST/AIDS, in Sao Paolo, Brazil, compared the safety and effectiveness of darunavir against another protease inhibitor, lopinavir (Kaletra), in 595 HIV-positive patients who were also taking the protease inhibitor ritonavir (Norvir).

Forty-eight weeks into treatment, 77 percent of patients taking a darunavir-ritonavir combo had significantly lowered HIV viral load, compared to 68 percent of patients taking lopinavir-ritonavir, the study found. Taken together, darunavir-ritonavir also appeared to do a better job at keeping HIV drug resistance mutations at bay, the researchers reported. The two therapies' safety profiles were similar.

Based on the findings, the researchers called the darunavir-ritonavir combination "a treatment option for this [HIV-infected] population."

More than a million Americans are currently living with HIV. The virus has killed more than 524,000 Americans to date.