Beijing accused of harassing AIDS activists

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)

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China cracking down on AIDS groups

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.

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Free blood for AIDS patients

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.

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Fish farms help families in Africa hit by AIDS

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.
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Asia AIDS conference opens in Sri Lanka

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.
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Global AIDS figures to come down

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.

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Sex now primary cause of China HIV spread

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.

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