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By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical WriterWed May 30, 5:18 PM ET

Health professionals should routinely offer to test people for HIV instead of waiting for patients to request it, according to new advice from the United Nations Wednesday.

In making the recommendations, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS are underlining the need to identify the millions worldwide who need treatment. WHO estimates that approximately 80 percent of HIV-positive people in developing countries are currently unaware of their status.

"If we are serious about ensuring universal access to drugs, there has to be a fundamental change in the approach to HIV testing," said Dr. Kevin De Cock, director of WHO's AIDS department.

The UN now advises health workers to test patients for HIV as part of standard medical care, but only with the patient's informed consent.

Yet there are questions about how the cash-strapped countries in Africa might adopt these guidelines. Of the estimated 40 million people living worldwide with HIV/AIDS, nearly 65 percent are in Africa.

Because current estimates of the number of HIV/AIDS patients include people who don't know their status, experts do not expect the numbers to rise dramatically if more people are tested.

Though universal testing will certainly identify more HIV-positive people needing lifesaving anti-retrovirals, there is already a long waiting list: Nearly 5 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are still without treatment.

Identifying more AIDS patients whom countries cannot afford to treat threatens to create an even bigger backlog of people who know they are sick, but have no access to care.

Most AIDS experts believe that increased HIV testing will help, even if the conditions are not perfect.

"No one wants a situation where people find out they're HIV-positive and can't get anti-retroviral treatment," said Jennifer Kates, vice president and director of HIV policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation. "But if we waited until everything was perfectly aligned, we would never respond."

Another benefit of testing: Past studies also have shown that once people are aware that they are HIV-positive, they tend to practice safer sex — which could give prevention efforts a boost.

Africa's weak health infrastructure, though, is a huge stumbling block. The continent urgently needs at least another 4 million health workers to fill the gap, according to WHO. Without doctors and nurses to administer the HIV tests or to provide the necessary treatment when patients are identified, such guidance will create even more stress for Africa's already fragile health systems.

Still, the new testing procedures should mean that HIV patients are found earlier.

"The biggest problem we have now is that our health care systems are overburdened with very sick people who come in too late," said Zackie Achmat, chairman of South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign.

"These new guidelines are long overdue," said Achmat. "We cannot deal with the burden on the health care service if we don't prevent people from becoming so sick that they become a supreme burden on it," he said.

Increased HIV testing and the treatment and infrastructure it ultimately entails will require more money, yet no new funds have been announced to help countries implement these policies.

The UN estimates that the fight against AIDS in 2007-2008 requires $22 billion, and there is still a considerable shortfall. Last year, the deficit for global AIDS programs was about $6 billion.

While health authorities would like to see the new UN recommendations adopted as soon as possible, much will depend on whether countries decide to follow their advice.

"I hope that countries start implementing this immediately," said WHO's De Cock. "But we know you can't just flip the switch and change everything in one day."

'AIDS cure' in Zambia found to be pesticide

Fri Jun 1, 12:12 PM ET

The Zambian government announced Friday that a much-trumpeted AIDS cure that a local businessman claimed to have discovered has been found to be a pesticide used to clean swimming pools.

Tetrasil, a drug which is being promoted by a newspaper proprietor, is a pesticide which was used as a disinfectant, said Albert Mwango, a government specialist in AIDS drugs.

"This chemical has not been proven by any scientific means that it cures AIDS," Mwango was quoted by a state-run newspaper as having told parliament.

"But what has been proven is that it is a pesticide, which was used to disinfect swimming pools," Mwango was further quoted by the Zambia Daily Mail.

Edgar Ngoma, owner of the Weekly Angels newspaper, has been running a series of stories claiming he and his partner in the United States had found the cure for AIDS.

"We have a duty to protect lives of our citizens. For a drug to be ingested it has to be certified by the Pharmaceuticals Regulatory Authority," said Simon Miti, a ministry of health secretary.

Miti, who was also summomed to parliament to explain the proclaimed AIDS cure, said his government had written to Ngoma to follow procedures before he could start administering Tetrasil to HIV carriers.

The Treatment Advocacy Literacy Campaign (TALC), which represents HIV/AIDS patients, lodged a complaint with government asking for the ban on Tetrasil because some patients were abandoning taking antiretroviral drugs for the so-called cure.

"This researcher (Ngoma) has gone ahead to inject people with the drug before clinical trials are conducted," said Felix Mwanza, TALC programmes manager.

New HIV infections among homosexuals up sharply in HK

HONG KONG (Reuters) - New HIV infections among homosexual men are on the rise in Hong Kong and a government consultant warned on Wednesday that prevalence of the disease in this group could hit 30 percent by 2020 if nothing is done.

The government this week reported 91 new HIV infections in the first quarter of 2007, up from 89 in the same period in 2006.

Of those, 35 were in men who had had homosexual sex, said Wong Ka-hing, consultant with the Health Department. This compared with 29 new infections in the first quarter of 2006 and 19 in the same period of 2005.

"If there is no intervention, HIV-infected men who have sex with men could hit 15,000 by 2020 in Hong Kong, that would be a prevalence of 30 percent," Wong said in a telephone interview.

HIV prevalence in this group is estimated at 4 percent now. Experts would consider any high-risk group as having a "concentrated epidemic" once prevalence reaches 5 percent.

Concern groups say the spike in new HIV infections among homosexual men is not confined to Hong Kong.

High prevalence rates are observed in Thailand (28 percent), Nepal (4 percent), Taiwan (8 percent), Vietnam (8 percent) and Cambodia (14 percent), according to a report in August 2006 by the help group TREAT Asia.

Homosexual men make up a substantial portion of new HIV infections in South Korea and Singapore.

"New HIV infections are increasing among men who have sex with men everywhere. Some of that is of a cross-border nature because of gay parties," said Loretta Wong, who heads the help group, Aids Concern, in Hong Kong.

"Some are under the influence of drugs and they don't even remember if they used condoms. People tend to be less careful when they are overseas."

Of concern is one cluster of new infections in Hong Kong which ballooned from 34 men last September to 53 by March.

"Genetically, viruses isolated from them are very similar. From genetic sequencing, we determined they were all together (passed the virus to one another)," consultant Wong said.

A smaller cluster in Hong Kong grew less rapidly, from 12 men last September to 13 by March.

The government has yet to find out how the virus spread in the bigger cluster, or if there is a "super-spreader" involved.

Consultant Wong said greater numbers of homosexual men were using the Internet to hunt for sex partners.

"We did a study recently and found that people are looking for sex partners on the Internet but we do not know if this cluster was formed that way," consultant Wong said, adding that the government was trying to promote safe sex via the Internet.

But Loretta Wong cautioned against losing sight of other high-risk groups, such as heterosexual men with multiple sex partners, the commercial sex industry and intravenous drug users.

"There are many things we need to do to prevent this from escalating further," Loretta Wong said.

Duane J. Gubler, director of Asia-Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases, said Singapore's use of inspections and fines had helped reduce the incidence of dengue in the city-state and set an example for other countries.

"If every country in the region could control mosquitoes like Singapore has, I doubt you will see a problem," Gubler said in a phone interview from Hawaii, where he is based.

Fumigation of mosquito breeding grounds and public co-operation are both key to reducing dengue, he said.

Dengue is endemic in several countries in the region including Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar.

Singapore conducts spot checks of construction sites and homes, and contractors and residents can be punished if any mosquito larvae are found on the premises, with fines ranging from S$100 ($66) to S$20,000 ($13,100).

The city-state also conducts public health programmes to ensure that people do not allow water to collect in places where mosquitoes can breed.

This has cut the incidence of homes where mosquitoes were found to less than 2 percent from 60 percent in the 1960s. Gubler, 68, who has advised the World Health Organization (WHO) on dengue for about 25 years, has had dengue three times himself. On one occasion, he contracted the disease after a lab experiment in which he tried to get an infected mosquito to suck blood from a monkey, but was instead bitten himself.

Gubler said most Asian governments only set aside a "pittance" to tackle dengue, saying "these countries have not taken dengue seriously."

While Singapore has the best anti-dengue programme in the world along with Cuba, according to Gubler, the city-state has still not managed to stamp put dengue.

Gubler, who has advised Singapore's anti-dengue efforts since 2005, said that as people travel more frequently and more widely, they are more likely to spread the disease across borders.

The number of dengue cases in Singapore this month is nearly three times the number in the same period a year ago, according to the government, which says warmer weather is partly to blame.

Between May 13 and May 19, the city-state reported 210 dengue cases, the highest weekly figure this year, but below the weekly record of 714 cases which was reported in September in 2005.

Dengue occurs mainly in the tropics and is transmitted by the female Aedes aegypti mosquito. The virus spreads across borders when infected travellers are bitten by local mosquitoes that go on to bite someone else.

The disease affects about 50 million people around the world every year, according to WHO. There are no vaccines for dengue, which has flu-like symptoms such as fever and pain in the joints, and can be fatal.

Indian HIV patients unite to battle fake AIDS cures

MUMBAI (Reuters) - A network of HIV-positive people in India has launched a national campaign against thousands of illegal backstreet clinics and quacks who cheat patients with the promise of curing AIDS.

Patients often end up going to quacks and witch doctors who use fake herbal, homeopathic and drug treatments because the government health system is widely seen as offering poor treatment while private care is costly.

Health experts say discrimination against infected patients at hospitals as well as social stigmas also force HIV-infected people to turn to quacks who advertise in newspapers and through posters, fliers and graffiti.

"The quacks are not only a stumbling block in the fight against AIDS but also they cheat unsuspecting patients, often poor and uneducated," said Shabana Patel, a representative of the Indian Network of People Living With HIV and Aids in the western state of Maharashtra.

The network of people who are HIV-positive or living with AIDS has chapters in almost every Indian state and thousands of members.

India has the world's highest number of HIV-positive cases with an estimated 5.7 million people infected, according to the United Nations. But only around 100,000 people get treatment.

Estimates vary on how much a quack charges for "curing" AIDS, but anti-quackery campaigner Nayna Raut says it could be more than $3,000 a year per patient, a fortune for India's poor.

"They don't even do a blood test. Just on the basis of some fake clinical diagnosis they prescribe their miracle cure for AIDS," Raut said.

Patel's group received more than 100 complaints in April from HIV-positive patients who said they had been cheated by quacks.

India has approved a plan that envisages spending around $2.8 billion over the next five years for AIDS prevention and increasing the number of people on first-line AIDS drugs.

UN offers new HIV testing guidance

'AIDS cure' in Zambia found to be pesticide

New HIV infections among homosexuals up sharply in HK

Developing Asia needs tough stance on dengue-expert

Indian HIV patients unite to battle fake AIDS cures