UNICEF: 1,000 under 15 get HIV each day

Education for love

China Daily, 18 January 2007


BEIJING, Jan. 18 -- Some major changes have occurred in Chinese young people's ideas about dating and marriage over the past several years, according to a report released by the China Youth and Children Research Center.

Statistics indicate that adolescence comes earlier and so does sexual maturity, both psychologically and physiologically. As a result, today's youth experience their first love earlier.

Yet, they marry later.

The increasing extension of the time between first love and marriage is described as the major reason for premarital cohabitation and sex.

The survey of more than 400 young people in Beijing found that nearly 50 percent of them have had premarital sex, and more than half of those surveyed consider premarital sex normal and acceptable as long as the relationship is based on mutual willingness and sincere attraction.

Three decades ago, premarital sex or cohabitation was considered a decadent lifestyle or a sin with the risk of being publicly
criticized and labeled a bad element. These changes indicate that our society has become increasingly tolerant in sexual matters.

But that does not mean there is a tendency towards promiscuity among young people. Instead, they care more about true love than about the formality of marriage.

Under such circumstances, proper sex education at the proper time is important. Young people need to be well prepared so that they can embrace love in a healthy psychological way and know how to protect themselves from being harmed both physically and psychologically in failed love.

The fact that a female university student spent a year writing a sex education book that is to be published is a wake-up call that good sex education books are urgently needed to meet the needs that changes in early adolescence have brought about.

Lack of proper and adequate sex education is also to blame for premarital pregnancy and crimes resulting from failed love affairs.
Some young people indulge in pornography when their sexual curiosity cannot be satisfied through normal channels. This can result in their doing poorly in school and in developing an unhealthy attitude towards sex.

More care and attention from both schools and parents are necessary for youngsters to successfully get through puberty and develop healthy attitude towards sex and love.

China not ready for circumcision to stop AIDS

Fri Jan 19, 2007 1:37 PM ET

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is still looking at evidence that male circumcision can play an important role in fighting the spread of AIDS and is not currently considering such a campaign, a senior health official said on Friday.

Late last year, researchers in the United States and Africa said that circumcising men cut their risk of being infected with the AIDS virus in half, and could prevent hundreds of thousands or even millions of new infections globally.

Circumcising men worked so well that the researchers stopped two large clinical trials in Kenya and Uganda to announce the results, although they cautioned that the procedure does not make men immune to the virus.

"We have already noticed these reports from Africa," Ru Xiaomei, deputy director general of China's National Population and Family Planning Commission, told Reuters in an interview.

"But the AIDS situation in China has not yet reached such a large scale (as in Africa)," she said.

China's family planning authorities, with decades of experience at promoting contraception, are increasingly being drafted into the country's fight against AIDS.

In China, which has an estimated 650,000 people living with HIV, the virus is gradually spreading from high-risk groups like intravenous drug users to the general population via sex.

"I'm not yet totally certain about the evidence for circumcision," Ru said. "We should exercise caution."

Circumcision rates are low in China compared to Asian countries like South Korea or Japan, where the foreskin is often removed at birth for hygiene reasons, or Muslims in countries like Indonesia who practice it for religious reasons.

China's Muslim minority, concentrated in the far western region of Xinjiang, likewise circumcise their male children, normally as they reach puberty.

That could perhaps mean a wider campaign in China would run into cultural problems and opposition from the non-Muslim majority, said Ru, a medical doctor by training,

"There's a problem with cost too," she added, in a country with the world's largest population - 1.3 billion people. "It would be a big deal. It's much more reasonable to get people to use condoms."

A U.S. National Institutes of Health study in Kisumu, Kenya, involving 2,784 men aged 18 to 24 showed a 53 percent reduction of HIV infections in circumcised men compared to uncircumcised men. A parallel study involving 4,996 men aged 15 to 49 in Rakai, Uganda, showed circumcised men were 48 percent less likely than uncircumcised men to become infected.

Experts say the reduced HIV risk may be because cells on the inside of the foreskin, the part of the penis cut off in circumcision, are particularly susceptible to HIV infection. HIV also may survive better in a warm, wet environment like that found beneath a foreskin.

ALMATY, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Twenty-one Kazakh doctors and officials went on trial on Friday over their suspected role in the accidental infection of dozens of children with HIV in the south of the Central Asian country.

At least eight children died last year in the Kazakh region of Shymkent after receiving transfusions of blood suspected of containing the virus. More than 80 other children, including some of their mothers, were infected.

An investigation into the incident gave no clear explanation why the blood transfusions affected only children.

The 21 officials are accused of negligence, embezzlement, receiving bribes and other crimes not directly linked to the cause of children's deaths.

The trial, which is closed to the media and general public, is expected to last at least a month, a Shymkent court spokesman said.

The scandal highlighted concerns about the crumbling Soviet-era health system in Kazakhstan, a rapidly growing oil producer with a booming economy.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev fired the health minister and Shymkent's governor over the incident.

Sex, meth and Internet spark new AIDS fears

Wed Jan 17, 2007 5:02 PM ET

By Matthew Verrinder

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An hour after speaking at a Crystal Meth Anonymous meeting about the benefits of sobriety to dozens of other recovering addicts, Charlie was alone in his Chelsea apartment, logged onto the Web site Adam4Adam.com.

He cruised the site's profiles of muscular gay men who want to meet for sex while high on methamphetamine, and found his match: a 50-year-old man from Manhattan's Upper East Side who liked to "slam" the drug, or inject it directly into the bloodstream.

"I blew two-and-a-half years of sobriety in a few hours," said Charlie, who did not want to give his last name. "All I had to do was log on, and it just so happens that it was right there."

In New York, thousands of gay men use the Web sites Adam4Adam.com, Manhunt.net and Craigslist.org as an easy way to meet for sex marathons at underground orgies while high on the addictive stimulant.

Similar sites exists in other cities. The phenomenon -- while affecting only a small part of the gay community -- underscores the spread of meth from the U.S. rural areas where it gained an early foothold.

Health officials worry that the ease in using the Web to find meth -- which erases inhibitions and judgment and creates a voracious sexual appetite -- and people to do it will fuel a resurgence among gays in infections of HIV, the virus which causes AIDS.

About half of new patients diagnosed with HIV by counselors at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, New York's largest private clinic for gay men, said that meth or alcohol was a factor, said Gal Mayer, the center's medical director.

Men who are high on meth are four times more likely to have unprotected sex than those who aren't, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"These men use meth to escape and forget about their positive HIV status," said Michael Siever, director of San Francisco's Stonewall Project, a counseling program for gay and bisexual men who use crystal meth. "They assume everyone else is positive at these parties, which isn't the case, and it leads to more infections."

Also, Siever said, some long-term meth users have built up tolerance to the drug and must inject it to get high -- some using dirty needles which lead to more HIV transmission.

About 45 percent of the men who sought treatment at Stonewall in the last year admitted they had injected, Siever said.

The online code for mixing sex and meth is PNP, shorthand for "party 'n play."

The sites are free and allow members to search for partners based on proximity, HIV status, preferences in appearance and sexual practices, whether or not they use condoms and which drugs they use.

"You can literally do searches so that you're within a $5 cab ride from someone," said Bill Stackhouse, director of the Institute for Gay Men's Health at the Gay Men's Health Crisis, a group that fights AIDS in New York City.

Some men, like Charlie, use the sites because they are relapsing after a period of sobriety and don't have a dealer. Others do not want to risk buying drugs on the street or are hoping to parlay sex into free drugs.

"It's the fast-food version of sex and drugs," said Siever. "You can order in."

Also logged on to the sites, silently waiting behind a profile that includes a headless photo displaying his fit chest and abdominal muscles, was Terry Evans, an outreach worker for Positive Health Project, a nonprofit that seeks to stem the spread of HIV in New York.

Evans was trying to convince meth users to have safe sex. A message quickly popped up in his inbox from user "bkpdnyc," a 32-year-old man from Manhattan who said he likes Evans' body and soon admitted that he parties with "Tina," a nickname for meth.

Evans tried to string the man along to coax him to come in for one-on-one counseling. But before Evans could reveal his identity, the man logged off. Evans sent him a message anyway with the nonprofit's mission and phone number.

"Initially a lot of them feel it's a bait and switch and they get kind of angry, but more than half come back and ask questions, and after that a lot of them come in," said Evans, who noted about a dozen men have come in over the last year.

The parliament urged EU states on Thursday to review ties with oil-rich Libya and step up pressure to secure the early release of the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor.

"What the European Union announced recently, that it will put pressure on Libya to free the Bulgarians, will have a negative influence on the situation" of the medics, said a statement from the Gaddafi Foundation headed by Saif al-Islam, Libyan leader Gaddafi's son and his most influential envoy.

"All measures taken by the European Union against Libya will have negative consequences on the development in relations that Libya and the EU have seen recently."

Diplomats in Brussels said EU foreign ministers would tread a delicate path at a meeting in Brussels on Monday to avoid aggravating the situation.

According to a draft statement, they will express "grave concerns" about the plight of the medics and call for a "positive, fair and prompt solution" to the case.

At the same time, they are expected to hold out the prospect of benefits to Libya rather than tough steps.

"The statement is also expected to include the idea that EU-Libya relations could further develop if there is a resolution of this case," a diplomat said, adding that the limited scale of current ties meant there was little to be gained by threatening to review relations.

"It is a difficult balancing act," another EU diplomat said.

"We want to make clear to Libya that the way they have conducted the trial is just not acceptable. On the other hand, from a Libyan perspective, this is a national judicial process and they don't like being told to do it in a different way.

"If a deal is to be done with Gaddafi at some point we need to calibrate the public handling of this."

The six were found guilty of deliberately starting an HIV outbreak at a hospital in Benghazi in eastern Libya. Over 430 children were infected and at least 50 have died.

The death sentences met with swift condemnation from Western government and rights groups, with Bulgaria, which joined the EU this month, among the harshest critics.

Some Western scientists blame negligence and poor hospital hygiene for the HIV outbreak and say the medics are scapegoats.

In Libya the case has aroused popular anger and the verdict has been viewed as a welcome act of defiance of the West.

In its statement, the Gaddafi foundation said it was "surprised" that the EU, while championing the principle of an independent judiciary, was calling on Libya's government to intervene in a legal case.

The renewed EU pressure "will move the case out of its judicial aspect into a political aspect", it said.

The foundation said the sentences were not the last word in the case, with a decision by Libya's supreme court still to come, and then another by the high judicial council. (Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom and Mark John in Brussels)

STRASBOURG, France, Jan 17 (Reuters) - The European Union ramped up pressure on Libya on Wednesday to free five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death for infecting hundreds of children with HIV.

The medics were found guilty in December -- the second time in the eight-year case -- for deliberately starting an outbreak in a Benghazi paediatric hospital that has infected more than 430 children and killed at least 50.

Bulgaria, which joined the EU on Jan. 1, has been joined by the bloc and the United States in condemning the verdicts, saying they ignore evidence showing the medics are innocent.

In Strasbourg, EU lawmakers prepared a resolution due to be voted on Thursday urging the Union and its members to consider rethinking ties with the oil-rich north African country unless the nurses, now EU citizens, go free.

The draft called for member states and the EU executive to consider if the case is not resolved positively "a revision of the common policy of engagement with Libya in all relevant fields as the Union would deem appropriate".

"This sends a clear signal of intent to Libya from the EU and with the support of the member states and the European Commission, it will show the EU's solidarity on the matter," Bulgarian MEP Philip Dimitrov told Reuters ahead of the vote.

Sofia and its allies say the death sentences overlook testimony that the medics were tortured to confess and studies from international AIDS experts showing the epidemic started before they began working at the hospital in 1998.

Sofia, Washington and Brussels insist the six are being used as scapegoats to deflect blame from a more likely culprit -- Libya's medical system.

The case has hurt Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's efforts to renew ties with the West after decades of diplomatic isolation, while anger in the Mediterranean port Benghazi is high, as most extended families have been affected by the epidemic.

Analysts say despite Libya's insistence that its court is independent, the medics' fate ultimately lies in Gaddafi's hands and is subject to the wider geo-political drama of his rapprochement efforts.

NON-NEGOTIABLE

During a visit to Sofia on Wednesday, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said he will personally raise the issue with Gaddafi at a Jan. 27 meeting of the African Union.

"We will use all instruments we believe are necessary and helpful to achieve the aim of bringing the nurses back to Bulgaria. ... Bulgaria's EU entry will help," Prodi said.

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin said last week Sofia expects the medics to remain in jail for at least another year during an appeals process, and if that is not successful, Sofia will try to further increase international pressure.

But EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner, Bulgarian Meglena Kuneva, said there was only one acceptable outcome.

"The freedom of the Bulgarian nurses and the doctor is non-negotiable," she told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

Reacting to reports Libya had offered to quash the verdicts in exchange for financial compensation and the release of a Libyan jailed in Scotland for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, she said the bloc would not back down.

"This has nothing to do with the Lockerbie case. There isn't the slightest proof that these people are guilty and the EU will not allow any other case to be used as a leverage. It is intolerable," she said.

An official of the European Commission said its leverage was limited given a lack of cooperation programmes with Libya. But Graham Watson, leader the EU assembly's third-largest Liberal group, said this was not an excuse.

"We give them at least a million euros in aid every year and we do have joint projects," Watson told Reuters. "What I would also like to see is EU countries reconsidering their bilateral deals with Libya as a leverage and put pressure on Tripoli."

Libya has said the case might be resolved by an executive body -- a so-called high judicial council -- in which Gaddafi's government could overrule the court's decision.

It has also demanded 10 million euros ($12.95 million) per child in compensation which, under Islamic law, would allow the victims' families to pardon the nurses. But Bulgaria has refused, saying any payment would be a false admission of guilt.

Nigeria to enact law to back malaria, HIV drugs

Wed Jan 17, 2007 2:12 PM GMT

By Tan Ee Lyn

GUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - Nigeria is in the final stages of passing a law that will allow local drugmakers to produce more life-saving medicines for its people to fight malaria and HIV/AIDS, a top official said.

The country has 14 companies making anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) to control HIV/AIDS and eight companies producing artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) to treat malaria, but production levels are far from sufficient.

"We will try to have the legislation passed. We've done all administrative work, it's at the final stage. We will send it to the national assembly so it can be passed," Ahmed Abdulkadir, special adviser to the Nigerian president, told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of an anti-malaria conference in China's southern Guangzhou city.

"We will dismantle all those barriers so that our local industries are able to produce all of these drugs, all ACTs and all ARVs," said Abdulkadir, who heads a taskforce to produce the drugs.

Malaria and HIV/AIDS are among Nigeria's deadliest diseases but local production of drugs to combat them do not meet demand.

Between 2.5 million and 3 million people in Nigeria live with HIV/AIDS.

One of the world's oldest diseases, malaria, strikes between 300 million and 500 million people a year, and kills more than a million of them, or one person every 30 seconds, according to the World Health Organization. Ninety percent of the deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa.

"The WHO insists that countries in the third world are given access to produce (life-saving drugs) and that is what we are trying to make sure we have," Abdulkadir said.

"So that eventually anybody who talks about patency, to hell with it, the most important thing is to have the drugs produced to save lives first," he said.

DRUG INDUSTRY BOOM

Abdulkadir said Nigerian companies were braced to ramp up production once the law was passed.

Nigeria needs 109 million doses of ACTs each year to treat malaria. A dose is equivalent to a standard three-day course. But local companies are able to meet only 30 percent of that demand and the rest is met by imports from China.

"We are trying to get more machinery to produce more," he said. "We don't want to be an importing nation we want to be producing en masse and also supplying west and central Africa."

The active ingredient in ACTs is artemisinin, a compound extracted from the sweet wormwood herb Artemisia annua, that is mostly grown in China.

A program to grow the shrub in Nigeria is well underway, Abdulkadir said.

"I have got about 3,000 hectares of land in three different locations. We are doing the tissue culture for the seeds. As soon as we finish the tissue culture, hopefully in the next month or two, we'll (sow them) before the rainfall," he said.

Chinese experts are advising Nigeria on cultivating the plant, considered by doctors an effective cure for malaria.

Few pregnant African women get AIDS drugs

Tue Jan 16, 2007 5:06 PM GMT

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Despite some progress, most pregnant African women do not have access to drugs that would prevent passing on the HIV virus to their infants, UNICEF reported on Tuesday.

In a 44-page report, "Children and Aids: A Stocktaking," the U.N. children's agency said one out of 10 pregnant women living in capital cities in sub-Saharan Africa is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In Pretoria, South Africa, for example, one in four children is infected.

"Increasing numbers of children living with HIV are now receiving treatment, although the numbers are far too few," the report said. "The increases are a result of improved testing, better skills among health workers, lower drug prices and simpler formulations."

While only nine per cent of HIV-positive pregnant women in low- and middle-income countries worldwide received drugs in 2005 that could prevent passing on the disease to children, the figure represented an increase from three percent in 2003.

In Namibia, access rates to drugs for pregnant women jumped from six to 29 per cent from 2004 to 2005. In Swaziland, it rose to 34 percent from four percent and in South Africa, the increase was to 30 percent from 22 percent.

According to available data, only seven countries in 2005 provided treatment, known as antiviral prophylaxis, to more than 40 per cent of HIV-infected pregnant women: Argentina, Brazil, Botswana, Jamaica, Russia, Thailand and Ukraine.

The study found the most successful results in nations that instituted a decentralized approach to service and training, a demonstrated a political commitment and incorporated care for the entire family, from prevention to treatment.

But there are still 2.3 million children under 15 living with HIV around the world and only 10 percent in need of antroviral drugs had access to them, UNICEF said.

An estimated one-third of infected infants die in their first year, and half die by their second birthday.