June08-3

Fri, Jun 13 10:12 PM

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA (Reuters) - China has improved the safety of its blood supply by drawing in more volunteer donors, some of whom will be awarded Olympics-inspired "medals for life," the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.

Unpaid donations now make up 98.5 percent of blood stocks used in surgery and emergency treatments in China, according to the WHO. A decade ago, 80 percent of the Chinese supply came from relatives and paid donors -- who may be more inclined to hide information about their health.

The host of this year's Olympics will give gold medals to volunteers who have given blood 20 times to celebrate what the United Nations agency called "a huge shift... in the way Chinese people think about blood donation."

"That shift became even more apparent last month, when thousands of people queued up all over the country to give blood to help the Sichuan earthquake victims," the WHO said in a statement released for World Blood Donor Day, June 14.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers in the central province of Henan were infected in the 1990s through schemes in which people sold blood to unsanitary, often state-run health clinics, making the province the centre of China's AIDS epidemic.

Chinese authorities have moved to clean up the country's blood collection centres in past years, but underground blood selling is still seen as a problem.

The WHO says donations from volunteers have the lowest prevalence of HIV, hepatitis viruses and other blood-borne infections. Family members and people who are paid to give blood often donate in blood centres which may not adequately screen for infectious diseases.

"Sufficient supplies of safe blood can only be assured by regular donations from voluntary unpaid donors," the WHO said.

There are only 54 countries worldwide whose blood supplies rely entirely on volunteers. Elsewhere the donation rate is often too low, particularly in the developing world which, according to the WHO, has less than 45 percent of the world's blood supply despite having 80 percent of the global population.

Sex and the Single Chinese

In China, the first time a man and woman are likely to kiss is at age 23, according to Pan Sui-ming, director of the Institute of Sexuality and Gender at Renmin University, who says that “Chinese are still some of the most conservative people in the world.”

But don’t expect that to last much longer. Driven by China’s opening to the west and the flourishing of western ideas, as well as a flood of communication by cellphone, social websites and instant messaging, Chinese youth are finding unprecedented access to each other, with the anonymity of online conversation emboldening youngsters to be much freer than if they were interacting in person, and it’s freaking out older teachers who are supposed to teach sex education but get embarrassed by questions.

Pan says a survey completed by the university in 2007 found that roughly two-thirds of people contacted believe premarital sex is now “acceptable.” In addition, increasing wealth for the middle class has led to new attitudes, healthier diets and higher standards of living that have pushed children to earlier puberty. Chinese girls are now entering puberty at 11 years old, almost two full years earlier than in the past.

Take Jo Xue and her boyfriend, who decided to consummate their relationship. Then in their first year of college in Tianjin, just south of Beijing, the couple thought about spending the night together in their dormitory. But Chinese dormitories are separated by gender and under strict curfews. Also, given the sheer number of students at university, most dormitories have six people living in each room, which hardly allows for privacy.

“We had nowhere to be alone,” said Xue, 24. “And a hotel was too expensive.” So she decided to call the number on one of the advertisements often found hanging on walls near universities around China. It was for a one-night motel, where rooms can be rented for two hours at a time for 40 yuan or for 80 for the entire night. Extended stays are not allowed.

“I called and a man said he had a room for us,” Xue said. “But when we got there the man acted very shy to us, like he was running an illegal business. It made me feel weird. But, actually, I felt very excited because we were going to spend the entire night together.”

The popularity of these one-night rooms and the overall acceptance of their existence (a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health said they were a police issue) embodies the sexual awakening in the world’s most populous country.

“I've heard about rooms like this and I think they are kind of popular in China, especially in big cities,” said Zhenyu Liu, a 23-year-old senior at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. “Well, I don't go against it. It just fits the natural needs of young people only if it's clean enough. I think if the couple are satisfied with their relationship, nobody has the right to blame them for having a sex affair, so I accept it. However, I don't go there. I treat love seriously.”

This willingness to accept the reality of sex and discuss it is a far cry from China’s conservative history.

“When I was young there wasn’t really dating,” said Sun Zhi Lan, a 51-year-old mother of a 25-year-old girl who is dating a foreigner. “No one held hands or kissed before marriage. We could choose our own partners but most couples were introduced by their parents.”

Today, Wang Cong, 24, said young Chinese are getting married later – in their late 20s or early 30s – and it is far more likely for them to have had more than one romantic interest along the way. Wang said young people now express their love more freely by holding hands in the park or kissing on a crowded bus. He said students even dare to have one-night stands or make friends with people on the Internet.

“Sex is no longer a humiliating word,” Wang said. “Boys and girls can talk about this when they are together. The divorce rate is climbing up. However, although the youth get more open, most of them still think it over before they have sex.”

But of all the young people interviewed for this story only Xue was willing to discuss her own sexual activity. And her boyfriend is now her fiancé. So does a change in attitude necessarily mean a change in behavior?

"Those who are tolerant toward premarital sex might not actually do it themselves," Pan told local media. "They just have an open mind."

“The past 20 years have seen much more liberal sexual behavior, both heterosexual and homosexual,” wrote Robin Visser, an assistant professor in Chinese culture at the University of North Carolina, via e-mail. “Since then, especially in the 21st century, having multiple sexual partners prior to and after marriage has become far more prevalent, both in urban and rural areas.”

Nonetheless, “while physical maturity keeps advancing, girls, as a vulnerable group, are still immature psychologically,” Huang Hong from the Shanghai No. 2 Medical University was quoted as saying in Medical News Today.

Without proper education this immaturity mixed with the emerging openness toward sexual behavior can lead to disastrous results.

A hotline for pregnant teens, which was launched in 2005 in Shanghai, handled 11,000 calls its first year – 47 percent of which involved girls having their first abortion, 35 percent having their second and 18 percent having had three or more, according to research by the Washington Post.

China Daily reported that Beijing officially registered 973 new HIV/AIDS cases in the first 10 months of 2007, up 53.71 percent from the previous year. To combat this risky behavior Chinese authorities have implemented sexual education classes in the schools. The problem, however, is that teachers assigned to instruct these courses are often of the older generation and are uncomfortable publicly approaching such a subject.

“When it comes to the class for sex and puberty, the teacher always asks us to review the book without any guidance. When some classmates want to raise questions, the teacher’s face turns red,” Yao Liang, a middle school student, told China.org.

“Some schools say they have sex education classes but how many of them actually have them, I am not sure,” said a former middle school teacher who currently works at an educational newspaper for senior high school students.

In the United States, many parents believe it is not the schools’ job to teach sex education, believing the duty falls on them although between every parent and child is a generational gap. But in modern China that gap seems more like a canyon. Thirty years ago, China was a different world.

Zang Na, a 20-year-old student at MinZu University said she did not feel she was taught anything about sexual education while at school. But she said she had never even broached the subject at home.

“They [her parents] are not capable of talking about it,” Na said. “They even forbid boys to approach me.”

In the West, besides schools and families, religious organizations are a major influence on sexual attitudes. But in China, where organized religion is not frowned upon but perhaps not encouraged, support from these groups is not often sought. In most religions sex is for the purpose of procreation and not an act done casually. In China, with its One Child Policy, a government restriction limits the amount of children a couple can have.

So where should curious teens turn to for advice? In the end, the subject is best addressed within the family.

“In my family, my parents don’t talk about sex directly, but we talk about relationships, marrige and sex before marrige,” said Lucy Li, a 24-year-old student at Beijing Foreign Affairs University. “I believe that the parents and the children still have something in common to talk about. Just because people have different opinions doesn’t mean they can’t communicate.”

“I think it will cause, and already has caused, the Chinese to rethink the basis and purpose of marriage, fidelity, intimacy, family, and other traditional norms under socialism and earlier ethical systems,” Visser wrote.

Statement by Vice Minister of Health of China, at the UN General Assembly High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS

In June 2001, the United Nations held the 26th special session and adopted the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS. Since then, global fight against HIV/AIDS has undergone profound changes. In 2006, Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS was endorsed. We note with pleasure that these two declarations have played important roles in raising global awareness of HIV/AIDS, and in coordinating efforts to scale up HIV/AIDS prevention and control. Meanwhile, we highly commend the UN's unswerving efforts to promote global concerted action against HIV/AIDS.

The Chinese government attaches great importance to people's health and earnestly fulfills its commitment to the international community. The Chinese government places HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment high on its agenda, as a strategic issue vital to the survival of nation, social stability, economic growth and state security. Chinese President HU Jintao visited AIDS patients, medical workers and volunteers twice in hospitals and communities. Chinese Premier WEN Jiabao paid several visits to AIDS patients, people living with HIV, AIDS orphans and children infected with HIV in worst AIDS-hit villages. He talked with them, had lunch with them and took the lead to donate for AIDS orphans.

In recent years, the Chinese government has done tremendous work to combat HIV/AIDS. It established the State Council AIDS Working Committee Office(SCAWC), promulgated "Regulation on the Prevention and Treatment of HIV/AIDS", which it has been carrying out for years, and formulated "China's Action Plan for Reducing and Preventing the Spread of HIV/AIDS (2006-2010)", in which the policy of "Four Free and One Care" has been put forward. The policy consists of following aspects: 1) to provide AIDS patients with free antiretroviral treatment and either free or low-cost treatment against opportunistic infections; 2) to provide voluntary counseling and testing for free; 3) to provide AIDS-infected pregnant women with free treatment and counseling about prevention of mother-to-child transmission; 4) to provide AIDS orphans with free education; 5) to provide assistance to people living with HIV, AIDS patients and their families who are living in difficulties. In addition, we increased funding to HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment to about 100 million USD per year. Besides, a working mechanism on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment has taken shape featured by government's leadership, management by relevant departments and social participation. Hereby, I would like to briefly present to you China's efforts in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.

First, we have broadened coverage of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment and prevention of mother-to-child transmission. By April 2008, we had provided ARV treatment to over 45,000 adult AIDS patients and over 900 child patients nationwide, substantially reducing fatality rate and prolonging patients' lives. Thanks to scale-up of prevention of mother-to-child transmission, the infection rate through mother-to-child transmission has dropped by nearly 60%.

Second, we tap the potential of traditional Chinese medicine to treat HIV/AIDS. By March 2008, we had treated some 8,000 AIDS patients through Chinese medicine, preventing their conditions from exacerbating rapidly. As a result, more and more patients take antiretroviral therapy on a voluntary basis.

Third, we deliver sound social assistance to those affected by AIDS based on families and communities. To assist orphans, aids orphans in particular, Chinese government in 2006 formulated preferential policies covering their lives, education, medical care and other six aspects. China allocated 50 million RMB yuan in building assistance and accommodation centers for AIDS orphans, as it is searching for a mode to support AIDS orphans. All China Women's Federation and other concerned agencies have been raising fund for AIDS orphans and launching home-stay program for them to grow up healthily.

Fourth, we promote scientific studies on HIV/AIDS prevention and Treatment. The Chinese government has been earnestly supporting HIV/AIDS research. Through molecular epidemiology survey, we have grasped the epidemiological patterns of HIV infection in China. Meanwhile, we are vigorously engaged in R&D of antiretroviral drugs, research on drug-resistance, and experiments on the mode to treat and manage AIDS/TB combined infection. More and more applied research have laid theoretical basis for AIDS prevention and treatment.

Fifth, we scale up international cooperation, giving full play to the role of NGOs. The Chinese government sets store by international cooperation and exchanges against HIV/AIDS. We have launched productive bilateral cooperation with many countries, such as the UK, the US, and Australia. Besides, we have kept close partnerships with such international organizations as UNAIDS and Global Fund. In addition, numerous international NGOs, such as International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Clinton Foundation have been actively involved in China's HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. These NGOs are playing greater roles.

HIV/AIDS is the enemy of the entire human race, and to defeat it is our shared goal. In the future, China will continue with the policy of "Four Frees and One Care", and reach out to more people in publicity and educational campaign and in interventions. The hope would be: by 2010, we will reach the goal of over 85% HIV/AIDS awareness in urban areas and 75% in rural areas; the coverage of intervention into high risk group including injected drug users(IDU) will reach 90%; and 70,000 people will get antiretroviral therapy. Moreover, China will press ahead with scientific studies. In the years to come, hundreds of millions of dollars will be allocated to such key studies as R&D of vaccines and antiretroviral drugs, as well as molecular epidemiological studies. We stand ready to work with international community to search for best practices in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, fulfill the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, and to make contribution to containing HIV/AIDS epidemic worldwide.

UN calls for lifting travel restrictions on HIV carriers

Tue Jun 10, 8:10 PM ET

UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday called for an end to discrimination against people carrying the AIDS virus, including travel restrictions imposed on them by some countries.

"I call for a change in laws that uphold stigma and discrimination, including restrictions on travel for people living with HIV," he said at the opening of a two-day, high-level meeting in the General Assembly on UN targets set in 2001 to roll back the disease worldwide.

"Halting and reversing the spread of AIDS is not only a goal in itself, it is a prerequisite for reaching almost all the others (poverty-reduction Millenium Development Goals by 2015)," he added.

He said that 60 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, "it is shocking that there should still be discrimination against those at high risk, such as men who have sex with men, or stigma attached to individuals living with HIV."

"I am a person living with HIV, and by revealing my HIV status publicly, I am taking a risk of being banned from entering this country and over 70 other countries around the world," said AIDS activisit Ratri Suryadarma of Indonesia.

A letter signed by 345 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was sent to leaders and ambassadors of concerned countries to urge them to lift the restrictions.

According to UNAIDS, the global standard-bearer in the fight against HIV, 74 countries are subjecting HIV carriers to restrictive measures, including a mention of the disease on their passports.

Twelve among them -- Armenia, Colombia, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Sudan, the United States and Yemen -- barred entry to HIV carriers, often citing public health concerns and the high cost of treatment.

Innocent Laison, a member of the Senegalese NGO Africaso, denounced such restrictions, pointing that countries which impose them allow their own HIV-infected nationals to go abroad.

Salvadoran President Elias Antonio Saca, who lifted such restrictions in his country four years ago, backed the NGOs' call.

"I appeal to the international community and all governments for the scrapping of walls and barriers which restrict the free movement of people living with HIV," he said.

Meanwhile AIDS expert Anthony Fauci, the head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, stressed the importance of prevention and continuing research.

He recalled that AIDS was discovered 27 years ago and that considerable funding was still needed to combat the disease.

Better counting raises HIV rate in U.S. by 25 percent

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Researchers have been undercounting new cases of HIV infection in the United States, meaning the rate is probably 25 percent higher at 50,000 people per year, the nation's top AIDS doctor said on Tuesday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the rate of infection was not increasing but that new methods of calculating the rate showed infections were more common than previous estimates.

Fauci, attending the United Nations' 2008 High Level Meeting on AIDS, told reporters the previous methods had shown the rate of new infections in the United States had hit a plateau at around 40,000 per year for the past 14 years.

"They were counting the numbers in a way that was leaving out certain segments of the society. So that 40,000 was probably an undercounted number," he said.

Instead of using an extrapolated mathematical model to come up with the rate of new infections, he said, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was now relying on better counting of more groups, households and regions.

"The number went up to about 50,000. That doesn't mean that the actual rate of new infections increased. It means that we are now no longer missing counting the ones that we missed early," Fauci said. "It was always 50,000 a year."

The new counting methods are not changing the overall picture of AIDS in America, Fauci said.

In the United States, with a population of about 300 million, some 1.1 million people are infected with HIV, of which 25 percent do not know it. That leaves 770,000 documented cases.

"I have seen some of the data and it is clear. The confusion is that it was increasing when in fact it is better accounting," Fauci said. "They are counting more accurately."

AIDS activists have accused the CDC of holding back results from the new methods but Fauci believes the statistics will become official "reasonably soon, when the official publication comes out from the CDC."

Globally, an estimated 33.2 million people are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS and 25 million have died so far from the fatal and incurable disease.

Fauci said the search for a vaccine was complicated because unlike other viruses that the human body can ultimately defend against, such as polio, measles, mumps or smallpox, "the body does not do a good job making an immune response to HIV."

On a positive note, drug therapy for treating HIV is proving effective in slowing the disease.

"The good news is that the drugs we have now maintain people with undetectable viruses -- present but undetectable for decades now," Fauci said.

Fauci noted that the virus disproportionately affects blacks. While blacks make up 12 percent of the U.S. population, 49 percent of new HIV infections in men are among blacks and 65 percent of new infections in women are among blacks.

Head of UN's AIDS program Piot to step down

UNITED NATIONS, June 10 (Reuters) - The United Nations' top official in the global fight against AIDS, Peter Piot, is stepping down after 13 years, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday.

Ban, in a speech before the 2008 High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS, praised Piot for being a "tireless leader who has been at the vanguard of the response to AIDS since the earliest days of the epidemic."

A successor has not yet been named. Piot, a Belgian who co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976, has led the UN's response to the AIDS epidemic as executive director of the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) since its inception in 1995.

In a little noticed statement in April, Piot said he would step down when his term ended at the end of this year.

Globally, an estimated 33.2 million people are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS and 25 million have died so far from the fatal and incurable disease. (Reporting by Daniel Bases; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Funding gap for AIDS help persists: Global Fund

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria requires another $7 billion to $8 billion to reach its funding goals for 2008, the fund's executive director, Michel Kazatchkine, said on Monday.

"The estimated gap, again, this year is around $7 to $8 billion. It is going to increase to $10 to $12 billion in the next two to three years," Kazatchkine told reporters at a briefing.

The fund received pledges worth nearly $10 billion over three years in September 2007, helping it move toward a plan to disburse $6 billion to $8 billion annually for the three-year period from 2008 to 2010.

Kazatchkine said the fund was helping pay for 1.75 million people to receive HIV drugs in low- and middle-income countries.

That is nearly 60 percent of the 3 million HIV-infected people in those countries getting drug treatment, according to data released last week by the Geneva-based World Health Organization.

The number of people in low- and middle-income countries getting treatment is approximately 30 percent of those in need, according to UNAIDS.

There are an estimated 33.2 million people worldwide infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, as of December 2007.

"We are hopeful that these gaps are narrowing ... but let's be very careful, because 2008 ... is a time when some people say you are doing alright with the AIDS epidemic, now we have to focus on something else. We need a very sustained effort and we still need increased resources," Kazatchkine said.

Since 2002, the fund has received $20 billion in pledges and contributions. The United States, the largest donor, makes up roughly 30 percent, followed by France, a spokesman for the fund said.

Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS, told reporters at the same briefing: "Every day, almost 7,000 people are needlessly infected with HIV because they do not have access to proven interventions to prevent transmission."

UNAIDS believes the annual rate of new HIV infections appears to have decreased over the last decade, with an estimated 2.5 million people newly infected in 2007 -- down from 3.2 million in 1998.

The estimate of the number of people infected with HIV was reduced significantly in the latest UNAIDS report for 2007. The new estimate of 33.2 million replaces the 2006 estimate of 39.5 million, due to improved methodology.

Piot responded to criticisms that the spread of HIV among the heterosexual community was overstated in previous estimates. "The pace of the spread heterosexually is indeed slower than what we anticipated but it is not a covering up," he said.

"We see also by the way what we call a growing feminization of the epidemic in every single region ... Today half of all people living with HIV are women. In Africa it is 61 percent and it is growing in every country, every region and that is mostly because of heterosexual transmission," he said.

Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 68 percent of all adults with HIV, 90 percent of the world's HIV-infected children and 76 percent of all AIDS deaths in 2007.

Photo project lets Africa AIDS victims show their own story

By LYNN ELBER, AP Television WriterTue Jun 10, 1:16 PM ET

In one photograph, a group of boys in possession of a much-used soccer ball mug comically for the camera, arms and legs going every which way.

Another shot, another charmer, depicts a child turning an exuberant handspring for a circle of young admirers. But the picture titled "Children Raising Children" delivers a punch to the gut: It shows a boy of 7, maybe 8, with a baby in a makeshift sling tied firmly to his side.

The youngster's arm is casually and tenderly draped around the infant as he smiles for the photographer; the boy's faded, yellow T-shirt is ripped, but the baby wears a cap with a jaunty pouf of pink yarn on top.

The photo gallery, online and traveling in the United States and overseas, is unlike others about AIDS and Africa: The images are both joyous and wrenching, and they were shot by women and children who are caught in the pandemic that has killed and orphaned so many.

Photographers from the outside often capture only unrelieved tragedy; those inside can tell a fuller story, say the Los Angeles-based founders of "The House Is Small But the Welcome Is Big," created to focus attention on the AIDS crisis and promote action.

The pictures were taken by 18 AIDS-orphaned children from Maputo, Mozambique, and 15 HIV-positive women in Cape Town, South Africa. An exhibit opens this week at a Denver art gallery, Gallery M, and will be seen in New York, Los Angeles and internationally.

Photos and stories about the people behind them are online at http://www.thehouseissmall.org. The title is drawn from a needlepoint displayed in a tiny Cape Town home featured in the project.

"In the past, documentary photographers went in, photographed people and left them to tell their story," said Dr. Neal Baer, a physician, TV writer and executive producer ("Law & Order: Special Victims Unit") and co-founder of "The House Is Small."

"That can be compelling and important," Baer said. But with the advent of good, cheap cameras, "we've been able to go into these countries and give people who were traditionally disenfranchised the opportunity to tell their own stories and show their own lives."

Baer, whose credits include the TV series "ER," has long been interested in using storytelling to illuminate social and health issues. (Last weekend, he attended a United Nations meeting of entertainment leaders and U.N. officials, including Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, that coincided with the Jackson Hole film festival in Wyoming.)

It was Baer's discovery of the pioneering work of Pulitzer Prize-nominated photojournalist Jim Hubbard that eventually gave birth to "The House Is Small" project.

In the 1980s, Hubbard was a news photographer in Washington, D.C., with a passion on the side: He gave cameras to homeless kids so they could capture their world; their photos and others were collected in a book, "Shooting Back." Hubbard also formed an organization of the same name that has inspired a growing number of such projects worldwide.

A child can live in the most dire situation, Hubbard said, lacking running water or shelter or enough food, and "yet, you come along with a camera and they almost unanimously fall in love with it."

Last year, Hubbard's quest to give children in hardship "a voice for their despair" was recognized by the National Child Labor Committee, which bestowed its Distinguished Service Award for his "lifelong pursuit of the truth with his camera."

Hubbard, now a director of Los Angeles-based Venice Arts, a nonprofit arts organization that teaches photography and moviemaking to low-income children, was contacted by Baer about bringing his approach to AIDS-stricken Africa. Baer drew on his entertainment industry contacts to help with funding, including some close to home: "Special Victims Unit" stars Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni and series creator Dick Wolf were among the contributors.

"Every nonprofit in the United States wants an angel to appear," Hubbard said. That's the role Baer is playing, he said, turning worthy ideas into reality with his dedication and Hollywood connections.

The first trip, to Cape Town in 2006, was in collaboration with the HIV-AIDS education and support group Mothers2Mothers. Participants included new moms, some of whom were fighting the stigma of HIV by acknowledging their infection and counseling expectant women on how to prevent transmission to their baby.

The next year was to Mozambique, home to an estimated 500,000 AIDS orphans. By 2010, the number of children orphaned by AIDS will almost double worldwide to 25 million, if trends continue, according to a 2002 report from agencies including UNICEF. An estimated 20 million of them will be in hardest-hit Africa.

The children of Maputo were eager to make sure their story was told right.

Lynn Warshafsky, co-founder of Venice Arts and founder with Baer and Hubbard of "The House Is Small," recalls editing photos on her laptop midway through the visit. Assisting her was 16-year-old Innocencia, who had lost her parents to AIDS. She and her older brother were struggling together after relatives abandoned them.

Warshafsky recalls the teenager's critique of the photos: "We're 70 percent there, but I don't see enough joy."

"She had this extraordinary spirit," Warshafsky said of the teenager.

One photo shows two boys gleefully displaying a toy mobile phone they recovered from the trash dump that looms behind them. Behind the camera was Jeremias, 12, who was taken in by a family after losing both parents to AIDS and who dreams of becoming a pilot.

"This photo shows children who are friends," Jeremias says in a quote posted next to the photo on the project's Web site. "It's what we should all be."

"The House is Small" is aiming for results on an individual and global basis.

For the children involved, the instruction they get in photography may open the door to unimagined job possibilities, Hubbard said.

A Mozambique group, Reencontro, is working to build on what "The House is Small" started by pairing youngsters with local photographers to improve their skills and perhaps ready them for work in the field or a related one, he said.

(One American youngster drew inspiration from the project: Baer's 17-year-old son, Caleb, accompanied him to Africa with camera in hand, and his work has been shown in Los Angeles-area museums and galleries.)

The more ambitious goal is to put the photos of "The House is Small" participants in front of those who can implement change. Photo exhibits have been held at universities, including Harvard, and at the International AIDS Conference.

"We're taking pictures to the United Nations, to policy makers, to let the people speak and be heard in a way that maybe they hadn't been before," Baer said.

"The House Is Small" has become part of a larger community of such projects, linked by the Institute for Photographic Empowerment, founded by Baer, Venice Arts and the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and its former dean, Geoff Cowan, a USC professor.

The institute fosters and serves as a conduit for photo and video projects such as "The House is Small," Baer said.

Will the hoped-for social change follow?

"The pictures have the power to bring acute awareness," Hubbard said. "What humans do with that, who knows."

UN: New HIV infections outpaces drug treatment

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Despite a stepped up global battle against AIDS, the numbers of people newly infected with HIV are far and away outpacing the numbers beginning antiretroviral drug treatments, U.N. officials said Monday.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, opening several days of U.N. debate on AIDS prevention, told world leaders that 2.5 million people became infected with HIV last year compared with 1 million who started using important antiretroviral drugs.

"Unless greater and swifter advances are made in reaching those who need essential services, the epidemic's burden on households, communities and societies will continue to mount," Ban said.

Some 2.1 million people died of AIDS last year and at least 33 million people world wide have the HIV infection, according to U.N. figures.

In addition, people with weakened immune systems from HIV are up to 50 times more likely to develop tuberculosis, U.N. officials say.

"We cannot separate the fight against HIV/AIDS from the fight against TB," said General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim, who will preside over a two-day meeting on AIDS starting Tuesday.

Former President Bill Clinton pointed out ramifications that rising oil prices have on battling the disease.

"This oil price spike has taken away 100 percent of the value of foreign aid and debt relief to very many countries," he told the U.N. "It has dramatically increased the cost of producing food, and it has increased therefore the number of people who are at risk of these diseases."

Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, said 2 million people were getting antiretroviral drugs in Africa.

Antiretroviral drugs have made HIV a manageable illness for many patients and prolonged their lives beyond what once seemed possible.

The U.N.-backed Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria announced Monday it helped 1.75 million get antiretroviral treatment -- a 59 percent increase over last year.

But slightly more than two-thirds of people with HIV globally are not getting any such treatment, according to U.N. figures.

SAfrican minister under fire after ruling on HIV treatment

Fri Jun 13, 1:48 PM ET

South Africa's leading anti-AIDS lobby called on Friday for the health minister to be sacked after a court ordered a private clinic to stop touting its multi-vitamin pills as a treatment for HIV.

The Treatment Action Campaign said Manto Tshabalala-Msimang should be axed for failing to stop self-proclaimed German nutrition guru Matthias Rath from promoting a multi-vitamin treatment over government-sponsored anti-retrovirals.

The call came after the high court in Cape Town said that Rath and his foundation must stop advertising his VitaCell multi-vitamins until they are approved by the Medicine Control Council of South Africa.

Rath, 53, who studied medicine in Germany, has allegedly been peddling his vitamin pills mainly in the poor black township of Khayelitsha, outside Cape Town, one of the many areas hardest hit by the AIDS pandemic in the country.

In a press conference after the ruling, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said Tshabalala-Msimang -- dubbed Dr Beetroot for her own advocacy of vegetables in the fight against AIDS -- had failed in her public duty.

"We have a Medicines Act to prevent people from being exploited by charlatans, and it is the duty of the minister of health to ensure that that act is implemented," TAC spokesman Nathan Geffen told reporters.

"She's wilfully flouted that law and she's promoted quack remedies.

"We believe that the ANC (governing party) and the president (Thabo Mbeki) have to demonstrate their commitment to the rule of law and immediately relieve the minister of her duties."

The TAC has long been at loggerheads with Tshabalala-Msimang, who attracted international ridicule when she displayed beetroot, garlic and lemons at a South African stand at the 2006 world AIDS conference in Toronto, Canada.

South Africa has the world's highest rate of HIV with some 5.5 million of the 47 million population affected by the virus.

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HIV/AIDS cases 'soar in Indonesian province'

JAKARTA (AFP) - The number of HIV/AIDS cases in Indonesia's South Sulawesi province has more than doubled since 2006 due to an increase in intravenous drug use, a health ministry official said Thursday.

The provincial health office recorded 1,260 HIV/AIDS cases in 2006-2007 compared to 583 from 1996-2005, local official Raden Muliati told AFP.

"The increase during the last few years is due to the rising level of drug use in the province," she said, adding that some 70 percent of cases were contracted through the use of dirty needles.

Indonesia has the fastest-growing HIV/AIDS infection rate in Southeast Asia, according to the United Nations.

Indonesia had recorded a total of 11,868 cases of AIDS as of March this year, compared to 6,987 in 2006 or an increase of 69.8 percent in just two years, health ministry figures show.

One of the worst-hit regions of the country is the eastern province of Papua, where 1,553 cases of AIDS had been recorded by the end of 2007.

Wed Jun 11, 7:25 PM

GEORGETOWN (AFP) - Conjugal visits and condoms could help reduce homosexual sex and slow the spread of HIV in Caribbean jails, where three percent of male prisoners are infected, a regional corrections official said.

In an interview with AFP, Marcus Day, adviser to the Association of Caribbean Heads of Corrections and Prison Services which is meeting here, called for the prisons to allow the use of condoms to slow the transmission of the virus via sex between male inmates.

He also recommended that the prisons allow male prisoners to have sex with their spouses as a means of stemming transmission of HIV within the jails.

"Given our buggery (sodomy) laws, our high levels of homophobia, we have kind of not looked at the scientific evidence about these kind of transmissions and we just ignored it," Day told AFP.

Day attributed the spread of HIV/AIDS infections in prisons to homosexual relationships among otherwise heterosexual men and homosexual rape, situations he said were rife in Caribbean prisons.

The three percent prevalence rate was extrapolated from studies and tests conducted in Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname, he said.

There were about 102,000 people in prison across the Caribbean in 2006, according to the World Prison Population List compiled by the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College London.

But the absence of infectious-disease monitoring protocols in most prisons across the region, and refusal by some prisoners to be tested for the virus that causes AIDS, makes a full accounting of the problem difficult.

The St. Lucia-based adviser to the 15-nation Caribbean Community's (Caricom) on Drugs and HIV strongly recommended that condoms be used in the prisons, despite concerns by the religious community that the availability of condoms promotes homosexuality.

"Better than the allowing of condoms in the prison are the allowing of conjugal visits," said Day.

"Allow men to have the women come and visit them in prison and have a private room where they can make love to each other and the desire to have same-sex relationships will be greatly reduced."

He noted that Iran's prisons allow women to visit their husbands in prison.

UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, estimates that the Caribbean has an estimated 500,000 people living with HIV and AIDS.

Experts fear the phenomenon could take a heavy toll on the economies in the region due to loss of human resources and high expenditures on treatment and care.

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