China lets AIDS doctor collect U.S. rights prize

Fri Feb 16, 2007 10:46 PM ET

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will allow an aged AIDS activist to travel to the United States to collect a human rights prize, relenting after her detention at home for two weeks raised an international outcry.

Gao Yaojie has been invited to receive a prize from Vital Voices, a U.S. group, that recognizes her pioneering role in exposing and fighting the spread of HIV in rural central China, where many thousands of poor farmers who sold blood in the 1990s were infected.

Gao, 80, had abandoned hope of personally collecting the prize because police in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province, had blocked her since early February from going to Beijing to obtain a visa.

On Friday night, however, a senior province official visited Gao and told her she could now go to Washington. Indeed, the government would help her get the visa.

"I told him I didn't need the help," Gao told Reuters on Saturday. "I don't think they expected such a big fuss. I'm just an ordinary person, but they underestimated things."

After the visit from Chen Quanguo, a deputy Communist Party chief of Henan, the police who had stood outside her apartment for the past two weeks disappeared, Gao said.

Melanne Verveer, chairwoman of Vital Voices, welcomed the Chinese government's apparent backdown.

"Dr Gao expressed her joy and desire to accept the award in person, and we are pleased that it now appears her wish will be realized," she said in an e-mailed statement.

Gao, who speaks Chinese with the heavy burr of Henan, her home province, is well-known in China and received warm local media coverage until her unflinching criticism of official complicity in the spread of AIDS became too much.

The local media has been silent about her recent detention.

She helped bring to light the spread of AIDS in Henan, where during the 1990s commercial blood stations often controlled by officials spread the HIV virus among farmers who sold their plasma and then -- to save payments to them -- were retransfused with mixed and infected batches of left-over corpuscles.

Gao was barred from traveling abroad to collect two other prizes, one for human rights and public health in 2001 and the other for public service in 2003.

China's treatment of Gao has drawn pressure from international rights groups and U.S. politicians, including Democratic presidential-hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton.

Hu Jia, a Beijing-based rights activist who has publicised Gao's case and is himself under long-term house arrest, said it showed the pressures AIDS activists face in China, despite increasing official attention to the disease.

"Thanks to the Henan government, thanks to the police, thanks to them we've had this drama that shows how hard it is for us to speak out about AIDS," he said by phone.

S.Africa alters AIDS plan after extreme TB threat

Thu Feb 15, 2007 9:08 AM ET

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South Africa is overhauling its AIDS strategy in a bid to counter the rise of extreme drug resistant tuberculosis which is proving a serious threat to those suffering HIV/AIDS, a senior official said on Thursday.

Extreme drug resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB, has killed at least 183 people in South Africa since September. Most of the victims were already HIV-positive and their immune systems severely weakened by the AIDS virus.

"One of the areas that we are working on is strengthening specifically that aspect that deals with HIV/TB collaboration," said Nomonde Xundu, the health department's chief director for HIV and tuberculosis (TB).

South Africa is suffering one of the world's worst HIV/AIDS crises, with over 5 million of its 45 million population infected with the virus and up to 1,000 people dying of AIDS-related illnesses each day.

XDR-TB, which is easily spread in poor areas where people live in close quarters, threatens to compound the crisis as the new strain is immune to almost all drugs now used to treat TB.

Health planners were looking at ways to deal with co-infection of TB and HIV and improve TB screening ahead of the launch of a new AIDS strategy in March, said Xundu.

Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang told a news conference that drug-resistant mutations of the virus were emerging because TB patients were failing to complete the required course of drug treatment.

"Our biggest challenge will still remain the same: to ensure that patients complete the prolonged TB treatment," she said.

"Patients understand the need for hospitalization, fortunately for all of us, and none of the XDR patients have declined treatment after appropriate counseling."

The government did not think measures such as the forcible isolation of XDR-TB patients to prevent the spread of an outbreak was currently necessary, she added.

Survey shows sexual health funds being diverted in the UK

Thu Feb 15, 2007 12:18 PM GMT

LONDON (Reuters) - Sexual health clinics are suffering because money they have been allocated is being diverted elsewhere, campaigners said on Thursday.

Two-thirds of primary care trusts had diverted money intended for sexual health care to other services or reducing debt over the last year, said a survey by HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust and other groups.

"Last year should have been the best year for a long time for sexual health services," said Terrence Higgins Head of Policy Lisa Power.

"Money should have been used to update services, modernise them, improve the way they are provided," she told BBC radio.

"But many doctors are telling us that that money never reached them -- it was turned away before it got anywhere near sexual health services.

"In the long term that is storing up much more expensive problems for the health service."

In 2004, the government allocated 300 million pounds over three years to improve sexual health services in England to combat a rise in sexually transmitted diseases.

That included 50 million pounds for sexual health campaigns for under-25s.

But only around 3 or 4 million pounds of that fund had been spent on advertising, Conservative health spokesman Tim Loughton told Sky News.

He said the government was not making public health a priority.

"This is why we have an epidemic of sexual diseases, and an epidemic of obesity, drugs and alcohol problems. It is a false economy not to be doing something about it now," Loughton said.

Health Minister Ivan Lewis said the NHS had made sexual health one of its top priorities but it was ultimately up to local health authorities to decide where to spend money.

"We make the resources available, then we put in place objectives and priorities, and we ask at a local level primary care trusts to make decisions about the need of their local populations," Lewis told Sky News.

"In doing so, they have got to make balanced judgments."

The NHS has sent "national support teams" to the 10 to 20 percent of primary care trusts it believes are struggling to meet targets on the delivery of sexual health care, a health department spokeswoman said.

Indonesia faces growing AIDS woes, Papua big worry: WHO

Sat Feb 17, 2007 8:03 AM GMT

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia faces a growing AIDS problem -- particularly among drug users and prostitutes -- while a recent survey shows two percent of the Papua population infected with HIV, the World Health Organization said on Saturday.

The sprawling, developing nation of 220 million people also faces constraints and lack of resources to cope with the problem, Bjorn Melgaard of the WHO said at the release of the report.

"Indonesia has one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics in Asia. Although the HIV prevalence among adults is still generally low, it has reached high levels among specific populations like injecting drug users and sex workers," the report said.

Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation but many of its citizens have a liberal attitude toward sex and prostitution is a thriving part of the economy in many areas.

Drug usage has also been growing, police say.

The WHO report highlighted a growing concern over HIV cases in the remote eastern area of Papua, where it said a recent survey showed that prevalence of HIV in the general population was 20 times the national average and two percent were infected with HIV.

The report said there was "recent evidence of a generalized epidemic" in Papua and cited the undeveloped health care system and a lack of resources to cope with the problem.

Papua, with a population of two million occupying a land area almost as large as Iraq, has around 300 indigenous tribes, some still living in virtually Stone Age conditions, with different sets of languages and traditions.

The Southeast Asian country overall faced constraints dealing with the problem ranging from weak preventative programs among high risk groups, blood safety issues and poor quality of clinical care, Melgaard said.

The report did not provide estimates on cases in Indonesia, but Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari warned in November that the country could see half a million HIV cases by 2010, and double that if preventive steps are not taken.

At that time, estimates put the number of cases in a range of 169,000-216,000 in Indonesia although only about 7,000 full-blown AIDS cases had been reported.

That represents an overall estimated HIV infection rate of about 0.1 percent of the population.

Thailand plans to break patents on 14 drugs: firms

Wed Feb 14, 2007 8:20 AM ET

By Nopporn Wong-Anan

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand is planning to break the foreign patents of 14 HIV/AIDS, cancer and heart drugs, a move that may prompt companies to withhold new drugs from the Thai market, pharmaceutical firms said on Wednesday.

"This action is completely unprecedented anywhere in the world," said Teera Chakajnarodom, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers' Association of Thailand, which has 43 member drug firms.

The 14 drugs targeted by the Health Ministry also included antibiotics, Teera said in a statement.

The ministry has announced compulsory licenses for three of the 14 drugs, allowing it to buy or make generic versions of the two HIV/AIDS drugs and a heart disease medicine.

Ministry officials were not immediately available to comment.

On Monday, Health Minister Mongkol na Songkhla told Reuters a ministry panel was studying drugs Thailand needed and could make or buy copies while haggling for best prices of patented versions. He did not name the drugs being studied.

Foreign drug makers say Thailand's military-appointed government gave no notice to the affected companies before issuing the compulsory licenses.

"When governments resolve to take away the property of the private sector, they need to begin with consultation and end with the consent of the property owner," Teera said.

Last month, the Health Ministry issued compulsory licenses for the heart disease drug Plavix, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis and Abbott Laboratories' Kaletra to treat HIV/AIDS, after a similar move on another AIDS drug last year.

The licenses, which Thai health officials said would save the country up to 800 million baht ($24 million) a year, drew praise from AIDS activists but flak from Washington and the drug industry, which are urging the ministry to rescind them.

Teera said the Thai government was using the licenses as a tool to negotiate cheaper prices that did not reflect the high cost of developing new medicines.

"Individual pharmaceutical companies will certainly consider the very significant risk this policy poses when deciding whether to bring their latest medicines to the Thai market," he said.

"Far from providing poor patients with the best medicines, the compulsory license policy might block access to new treatments in Thailand."

Under World Trade Organization rules, a government is allowed to declare a national emergency and license the production or sale of a patented drug without the permission of the foreign patent owner.

The World Health Organization has said developing nations should try to negotiate with drug companies before overriding patents.

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Negotiate with drug companies, WHO chief says

Tue Feb 13, 2007 7:52 AM ET

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Developing nations should try to negotiate with drug companies before overriding patents to make copycat medicines, the head of the World Health Organization said.

Margaret Chan said The Thai government was fully within its rights under world trade rules to issue compulsory licences allowing it to buy or make generic versions of two HIV/AIDS drugs and a heart disease medicine.

But in a letter to Thai Health Minister Mongkol Na Songkhla made available to Reuters on Tuesday, Chan said: "I firmly believe that the pharmaceutical industry -- generic manufacturers and R&D companies -- are part of the solution."

The Thai licences, expected to save the country up to 800 million baht ($24 million) a year, drew praise from AIDS activists, but flak from the drug industry, which received no warning from the military-appointed government.

Chan said countries were not required to negotiate with patent holders before issuing a license, but "prior negotiations with industry is a pragmatic approach that may ensure countries have access to high quality medicines and at affordable prices".

She urged the global community to find the "right balance" between the need for affordable medicines and incentives for drug companies to develop new treatments.

The letter was partly in response to AIDS activists who have rounded on Chan for not applauding Thailand's decision during her visit to the country two weeks ago.

"We expected that you would have congratulated Thailand for its efforts, completely legal under WTO rules, to increase public health and access to medicines for its people," a coalition of more than 400 AIDS activists and groups said in a letter to Chan last week.

Under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, a government is allowed to declare a "national emergency" and license the production or sale of a patented drug without the permission of the foreign patent owner. The Thai Health Ministry issued compulsory licences in late January for the heart disease drug Plavix, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis, and Abbott Laboratories' Kaletra to treat HIV/AIDS.

Last November, it imposed Thailand's first such license for Merck's Efavirenz anti-retroviral AIDS treatment.

Mongkol told Reuters on Monday the ministry would enforce the licences only if it failed to get the patented drugs from the firms at prices it was prepared to pay.

Bulgarian nurses appeal in Libya HIV case

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death for infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the virus that causes AIDS appealed on Saturday against their conviction, their lawyer said.

Othman Bizanti said he had lodged appeal papers on their behalf at the criminal court in Tripoli where they were found guilty, along with Palestinian doctor Ashraf Alhajouj, on December 19.

He said the court would send the papers on to the Supreme Court, which will rule on the appeal in two to three months.

He added that Alhajouj's lawyer Altuhami Altumi had lodged appeal papers for him on Thursday.

The Libyan prosecution blamed the nurses and Alhajouj for starting an HIV epidemic in a hospital in the eastern town of Benghazi in the late 1990s, basing its case mainly on confessions from some of the nurses, who say they are innocent and were tortured to admit guilt.

European Union newcomer Bulgaria and its allies in Brussels and Washington have called the verdicts unfair and have stepped up diplomatic pressure on Tripoli to release the six.

Even if the conviction in the HIV case is upheld, a government-led Libyan body called the high judicial council can overturn it.

But experts say that is likely to happen only if Western nations and Libya can agree on how much the West should pay towards a fund that has been set up to help the hundreds of HIV-infected Libyan children.

Prospects of such a deal -- long discussed by Libya and Western officials as a face-saving solution -- have dimmed amid a recent war of words between Libya and Bulgaria over the case.