News (Updated July 29, 2007)
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BEIJING (Reuters) - 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 stigmatised 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-organised 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.
BEIJING, July 27 (Reuters) - HIV tests will be compulsory for workers at "recreational venues" in Hunan Province in central China, to try and stem an increase in sexually transmitted diseases, the Xinhua news agency said on Friday.
Prostitution is rampant in China, which also has hundreds of millions of migrant workers who are nearly completely ignorant of the risks of AIDS.
That volatile mix could help AIDS spread into the general population, after so far being largely confined to drug users and clusters of villagers and workers infected through selling blood in the 1990s.
The province where Mao Zedong was born ranks eighth in China in reported HIV/AIDS cases, with a total of 4,379 cases by June 30, Xinhua said, citing Chen Xiaochun, deputy director of the provincial health department.
Sexual transmission was responsible for 38 percent of cases reported in Hunan in the first half of this year, up from 31 percent in 2006 and 10 to 15 percent in previous years, the department's data showed.
Experts estimate the actual number of the province's HIV/AIDS cases may be 20,000 to 30,000, Xinhua said.
"The main cause of the increase of sexually-transmitted HIV cases is the increase in the number of migrant workers who have contracted the disease via sex," Chen Xi of the provincial disease prevention and control centre was cited as saying.
Nearly 58 percent of the reported HIV infections in Hunan were caused by drug users sharing needles, Xinhua said.
China had 183,733 officially reported HIV/AIDS cases in 2006, but experts estimated there were more likely 650,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in China.
During the annual legislative meeting in March this year, Shanghai delegate Li Dingguo, a doctor at the prestigious Jiaotong University Hospital, proposed mandatory AIDS testing at the city's clinics and hospitals.
Widespread stigma made patients reluctant to reveal their status, increasing the risk of transmission to doctors, nurses and other patients, he said.
RUILI, China: China wants further co-operation with
countries in the Greater Mekong area to eradicate poppy cultivation in the
notorious Golden Triangle.
For the National Narcotics Control Commission, the priority of future
drug-control is zero poppy cultivation in the region.
There are more than 100 methadone clinics in China where over 15,000 drug
abusers have received treatment since 2004.
In the south-western province of Yunnan, drugs are so cheap, it is said that an
average addict can maintain his habit for just US$1 a day.
It is no wonder that the eradication of drug abuse is such an uphill task.
So health workers prefer to put drug addicts under methadone replacement
therapy.
The aim for the time being is not to have them quit the drug, but to prevent
them from contracting HIV by injection.
Having to deal with some of the worst drug abuse problems in the country also
prompted Yunnan to deploy China's first mobile methadone clinic.
Says Duan Yijuan, Deputy Director, Yunnan Ruili Communicable Disease Centre,
"Methadone is a state-controlled narcotic which has to be prescribed under
supervision. All the (methadone) clinics are situated in the city, many drug
addicts in the countryside couldn't get methadone because they stay too far from
the city.
"So we came up with the idea of a mobile clinic, so more people will get
methadone treatment. They can easily go back to doing their farm chores after
this."
About 90 per cent of the heroin brought into China comes from the "Golden
Triangle" area, which borders Thailand, Laos and Myanmar.
To nip this source in the bud, China decided to reduce poppy cultivation in this
region, by helping farmers switch to commercial crops like lemons, rice and
sugarcane.
A report by United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) shows that poppy
cultivation in the Golden Triangle fell to 24,160 hectares last year - down 85
per cent since 1998. - CNA/yy
Mon Jul 23, 2007 5:58 AM ET
By Michael Perry
SYDNEY (Reuters) - 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.
by Rong Jiaojiao
GUANGZHOU, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Three Manchester
United players met with a group of Chinese AIDS-affected children to promote
public awareness of the disease in China during a UNICEF charity event on
Thursday in Guangzhou, capital city of southern Guangdong Province.
As part of the "Unite For Children, Unite Against AIDS" campaign, Ryan Giggs, Rio Ferdinand and Chinese forward Dong Fangzhuo drew pictures and played games with 13 AIDS-affected children from Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan.
A few hours earlier, fanatical Chinese supporters had invaded a United training session forcing the players to seek temporary refuge in their dressing room.
But 15-year-old Lan Lan (a pseudonym), whose father died of AIDS and whose mother is currently suffering from the disease, was more blase.
Lan Lan admitted he had never heard of Ryan Giggs. "I don't like football, I prefer basketball - my favorite sports star is Michael Jordan," he admitted.
When the teenager guessed Giggs was in his forties because of "some grey hairs", the 33-year-old player, a UNICEF ambassador, pretended to be heartbroken, wipe away the tears and to leave the room.
"He is pretty funny - he made me laugh," Lan Lan said. "From the way he looked at me and talked to me, I felt he cared. He is not like a superstar to me, but a good friend."
Discrimination against HIV/AIDS sufferers is rife in China, particularly in rural areas, and Lan Lan's family recently moved house when the rumor mill started turning.
"When people asked whether my mother was affected by AIDS, I told them it was all gossip, my mother just caught a cold," said Lan Lan, who took a five-hour bus from his new house in Diancheng Township, in Guangdong, to attend the UNICEF activity.
"If I had told the other kids that my mum had AIDS, they would stay away from me and I would have had no friends," he said.
"If people just accept these children as who they are, they will find they are really brave, determined and strong. They have their own dreams and aspirations," Giggs said.
"After today I hope that the Chinese people can learn more about the facts of HIV and AIDS and treat these children as normal kids, the same as everyone else," he said.
"We need to get rid of the discrimination so that no one needs to lie about anything or feel embarrassed about who they are just because they are affected by HIV/AIDS," Ferdinand added.
The latest official statistics available showed that in November 2004, there were 8,644 AIDS orphans in China. Unofficial academic estimates indicate that at the end of 2005 there were about 140,000 orphans, and 370,000 to 570,000 children under 18 years old living in households affected by HIV/AIDS.
Fear of discrimination is so widespread that children often choose not to reveal that they have been affected by the disease, thus losing out on healthcare, education and, subsequently, employment benefits.
"Although the Chinese government has an anti-discrimination law in place, it is not being fully implemented. When it comes to the local level, it is variable," said Ken Legins, chief of HIV/AIDS at UNICEF China.
"Sports celebrities play huge roles in advocacy. They remind the public that it is important to speak and listen to children affected by HIV/AIDS to find out their problems and what they want," he said.
Since 1999, the "United for UNICEF" partnership between UNICEF and Manchester United has raised over two million pounds for UNICEF programs and has benefited over 15 million children worldwide.
"We plan to provide more than 300 million Chinese children, 90 percent of China's youth, with the correct information on HIV/AIDS by 2010," said Dr. Yin Yin Nwe, Representative of UNICEF China. "With the correct facts we can eliminate fear, because fear is often the cause of discrimination."
Eleven of the children will be mascots for United's
friendly game against Guangzhou Pharmaceutical on Friday, the last match of the
club's Asian tour.
By Anna Mudeva
SOFIA,
July 26 (Reuters) - Palestinian doctor Ashraf Alhajouj says he will never
forgive Libyan jailors who he says tortured him and five Bulgarian nurses to
confess they deliberately infected hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.
"We were treated like animals. We were tortured in an awful way, with electricity, we were beaten, deprived of sleep," the grey-haired 38-year-old said.
"We cannot forget. Only God can forgive, I will never forgive".
The Palestinian, who recently received Bulgarian citizenship, and the nurses were freed on Tuesday after more than eight years in detention, under a cooperation deal between Libya and the European Union.
The six, who were sentenced to death on two occasions, have always maintained their innocence and said they confessed under torture. Bulgaria and other European governments had also said the medics were innocent and pushed for their release.
"Up to the last moment in my life I will be trying to clear my name and prove that we are innocent," Alhajouj told reporters on Thursday at a government residential complex on the outskirts of Sofia.
"I grew up in Libya, I never had anything against the Libyan people. We were scapegoats, there was not a shred of evidence against us," he said, looking tired and emotional.
The North African country jailed Alhajouj, who was born in Egypt but spent most of his life in Libya, in 1999 just two months before he was due to complete his internship in a hospital in the city of Benghazi where the outbreak occurred.
He and the Bulgarian nurses were charged with intentionally infecting more than 400 children with the virus that causes AIDS.
The doctor said his jailors tortured him into putting his fingerprints on blank paper on which they later wrote that he had confessed to deliberately starting the epidemic.
BLAMES POOR HOSPITAL HYGIENE
He said he was convinced that Libya's inefficient healthcare system was to blame for the HIV epidemic.
"The hospital was like a place for livestock. It was very dirty, there was a huge shortage of medical supplies," he said.
Relatives of the sick children say the infections were part of a Western attempt to undermine Muslims and Libya. More than 50 children died.
Last week, Libya commuted the medics' death sentences to life imprisonment after the 460 HIV victims' families were paid $1 million each in a settlement financed by an international fund.
But emotions still run high in Benghazi where the families condemned Bulgaria for pardoning the six upon their transfer to Sofia on Tuesday.
Alhajouj said he was disappointed at the lack of support in the Islamic world during his ordeal.
"I had no government to protect me ... Arab media started recognising my existence only after I received Bulgarian citizenship," the doctor said.
His parents and four sisters left Libya for the Netherlands in 2005 because of growing animosity.
He has not decided yet whether he will join his family or stay in Bulgaria.
"I'm a free man at last, I have a huge choice," the doctor said. "I just want to think about good things now."
Tue Jul 24, 2007 9:36 PM BST
By Anna Mudeva
SOFIA (Reuters) - Six foreign medics convicted of
infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV were freed on Tuesday after a
partnership deal between Tripoli and the European Union ended their eight-year
ordeal.
Their return to Bulgaria ends what Libya's critics called a human rights scandal and lets the long-isolated north African state complete a process of normalising its ties with the West.
Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov pardoned the five nurses and a Palestinian doctor who recently took Bulgarian citizenship after they arrived in Sofia on a French jet. The medics have always said they were innocent and had been tortured to confess.
"I know I am free, I know I am on Bulgarian soil, but I still cannot believe it," 48-year-old nurse Christiana Valcheva said as the medics and their families wept and hugged each other at the airport.
The Bulgarian nurses were flown to Sofia after the EU, which Bulgaria joined in January, agreed a last-minute breakthrough deal with Libya on medical aid and political ties.
"We hope to go on further normalising our relations with Libya. Our relations with Libya were in a large extent blocked by the non-settlement of this medics issue," EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.
Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam said the deal had opened the way to "full cooperation and partnership between Libya and the European Union".
Bulgaria and its allies in Brussels and Washington had suggested not freeing the nurses would hurt Libya's efforts to emerge from more than three decades of diplomatic isolation imposed for what the West called its support of terrorism.
It began the process in 2003 by scrapping a banned weapons programme and returned to mainstream international politics.
COOPERATION DEAL
Shalgam said the deal involved EU support and assistance for the more than 400 infected children in European hospitals for the rest of their lives.
It also provides for the rehabilitation of two hospitals and a medical centre in Benghazi, the eastern Libyan city where the HIV outbreak occurred. The EU also offered assistance to Libya in education, archaeology and stemming illegal migration.
EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner travelled to Tripoli with Cecilia Sarkozy, the wife of the French president, to help free the medics and flew with them to Sofia. She signed the deal with Libya, a European source said.
Nineteen Bulgarian medical workers were initially detained in 1999 and six stood trial. One Bulgarian doctor was released in 2004 when the six medics were sentenced to death.
Foreign HIV experts testified the infections started before the six arrived at the hospital, and were more likely the result of poor hygiene.
The victims' families have said the nurses were part of a Western plot to undermine Muslims in Libya and the case sparked outrage in Benghazi where 56 of the children have died.
Human rights group Amnesty International welcomed the medics' release and urged Libya to proceed with much-needed justice reforms to ensure such a case never happened again.
TRIPOLI'S REINTEGRATION
French President Nicolas Sarkozy had pledged to make the medics' release a foreign policy priority and said he would visit Libya on Wednesday to help Tripoli's reintegration.
Neither France nor the EU had made any payment to Libya to ensure the nurses' release, Sarkozy said.
Last week Libya commuted the death sentences against the six to life imprisonment following the payment of a $460 million (223 million pound) financial settlement -- $1 million to each HIV victim's family.
That paved the way for the nurses to return home under a 1984 prisoner exchange agreement.
The medics, who looked in good health, and their families will stay for the next few days in the presidential residency on the outskirts of Sofia where they will undergo medical checks.
"We had very, very tough moments, we were nearly on the verge of death," 48-year-old nurse Valentina Siropoulo told Bulgarian national radio. "Gradually we will have to get back to normal life now. It will be hard".
The Palestinian doctor, Ashraf Alhajouj will likely travel to the Netherlands on Friday to visit his family, his lawyer told Dutch agency ANP. He has lived most of his life in Libya.
The Bulgarian nurses left the relatively poor Balkan country of 7.8 million people in the late 1990s to work in Libya, where health care salaries were much higher.
The country has begun opening its big energy reserves to foreign oil firms and the United States said this month it was sending its first ambassador to Tripoli in 35 years.
(Additional reporting by Kremena Miteva and Tsvetelia Ilieva in Sofia, William Maclean in Algiers, Salah Sarrar in Tripoli, Jon Boyle in Paris, Paul Taylor and Ingrid Melander in Brussels, Reed Stevenson in Amsterdam).
By Jane Lee
SYDNEY (Reuters) - When Papua New Guinea's Maura Elaripe was diagnosed with HIV she thought it was a death sentence, but 10 years later she is still fighting the disease and the fear and stigma associated with it in her homeland.
The 31-year-old former nurse said many afflicted with the disease are left untreated to die in Papua New Guinea, a developing nation where black magic still rules many people's lives.
"I saw people dying in front of me -- deaths which could have been prevented," Elaripe told Reuters at the International AIDS Society conference on Monday.
"I saw a 16-year-old die just next to my bed. They said we don't want to waste our medicine on her. Another woman with HIV died and was put in a black garbage bag and they disposed of the body...that freaked me out. I was so scared," she said.
HIV-AIDS has found fertile ground in Papua New Guinea, a jungle-clad, mountainous nation, where polygamy is common and rape and sexual violence widespread.
Officially there are only about 12,000 people infected, but AIDS workers estimate that under-reporting and reluctance to be tested mean the real number ranges from 80,000 to 120,000.
The island's 5.4 million people, most of whom live a rural subsistence life, presently face an epidemic on a par with Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand. An estimated 300,000 people are expected to die due to HIV-AIDS by 2025.
Papua New Guinea Health Minister Peter Barter told reporters at the world's largest AIDS conference that polygamy was a major obstacle in the fight against HIV-AIDS in his country.
"In many parts of Papua New Guinea a person can have up to 5 or 6 wives and 20 children. We have to change that behaviour, its a cultural matter and it will take some time to do it," he said.
WOMEN CARRY HEAVY BURDEN
The United Nations says close to 40 million people are infected with the HIV-AIDS virus -- almost half are women.
Women are eight times more likely than men to contract HIV during unprotected sex, with most learning they are infected once they are pregnant. Of more than 600,000 new infections in children each year, 90 percent are mother-to-child transmissions.
"In some developing countries, HIV has significantly increased the burden of care for many women, particularly in the developing world with far-reaching social, health and economic consequences," said Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, from France's Institut Pasteur, told the conference.
When Elaripe was diagnosed while pregnant, there was no counselling available -- she lived with HIV for three years without treatment.
"Nobody took care of my emotional needs or my psychological needs. I went home and I said I'll wait for the day I die," she said. "I was so scared to go out. I lived in fear."
Elaripe said ignorance of the disease saw her sick baby turned away from hospital because her mother had HIV.
"The next day she died without any medical attention because they said that I was HIV positive...and because I was positive the baby was also positive," she said.
Medical authorities also forced Elaripe to be sterilised after her diagnosis. "I felt that my reproductive rights were also abused," she said.
Despite some improvements in treating HIV-AIDS in Papua New Guinea in the past 10 years, Elaripe said the challenge of living with the disease in her homeland does not get easier with time.
"I'm hoping there will be a cure soon. I'm tired of having to get up every day to take pills...it gets scary," she said.
By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer
Wed Jul 25, 7:24 PM ET
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?"
But this was no joke.
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 changes 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 also 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-infected 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 comprised 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."