News (Updated June 22, 2008)

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UN organs train Beijing Olympic volunteers in AIDS awareness

June 16, 2008

Around 5,500 volunteers for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games have received training on HIV/AIDS to help raise awareness of its prevention and how to avoid discrimination, according to the UN Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

About 100,000 volunteers received a basic awareness package on AIDS to provide them with important knowledge and skills on HIV prevention and avoiding discrimination, said a statement from the UNAIDS.

The training is also part of the volunteers' preparations during the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Games.

"Many young people do not have the right information on AIDS fuelling false fears, stigma and discrimination. This is bad in itself, and also hampers HIV prevention work," said Bernhard Schwartlander, UNAIDS country coordinator in China.

"Engaging some of China's most capable young people and making them the messengers of positive and correct knowledge on HIV can help dispel inaccurate myths and break down the stigma and discrimination against people affected by HIV," he said.

Country director of the UN Development Program (UNDP) Subinay Nandy said the Olympics volunteers would be better prepared to inclusively welcome everyone to Beijing during the Games, especially those living with HIV/AIDS.

He hoped they would share the knowledge and look for opportunities to continue volunteering for important development issues such as raising awareness of HIV and AIDS.

The training session on June 14 and 15 was jointly convened by the UNAIDS and UN Volunteers (UNV) and conducted in collaboration with the Beijing Communist Youth League, Marie Stopes International (MSI) China and the Red Cross Society of China. Somepeople living with HIV/AIDS also joined the program as trainers.

The training, co-funded by UNAIDS, UNDP and UNV, is aimed at strengthening volunteer work in China through the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Source: Xinhua

 

China approves implementation plans of two major technology projects

BEIJING, June 11, 2008 (Xinhua) -- China approved in principle the implementation plans of two major technology projects for large oil and gas fields and coal-bed gas development and prevention and treatment of major infectious diseases Wednesday.

    The two implementation plans were approved at an executive meeting of the State Council, presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao.

    According to the meeting, implementation of the large oil and gas field and coal-bed gas development technology project aims to enhance the country's technology in these fields to ensure reliable oil and gas supply.

    In implementing the project on the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis and other major infectious diseases, efforts shall be made to devise clinical treatment schemes that suit conditions in China and comprehensively strengthen infectious disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and control capabilities, according to the meeting.

 

 

Men with HIV 'having unsafe sex'
Two gay men
Some gay men who are HIV positive still have unprotected sex

BBC Friday, 20 June 2008

A third of gay men who know they are HIV positive are still having unprotected sex, a study suggests.

The Medical Research Council, which questioned 3,500 gay men, also found 40% of the 300 who tested positive for HIV did not know they were infected.

Dr Lisa Williamson said more sexual risks were taken by men who had been infected with HIV for a long time.

About 2,700 gay men in the UK were diagnosed with HIV in 2006 - double the number a decade earlier.

According to the survey, those who knew they were HIV positive were statistically more likely to have unprotected sex than those who did not.

The researchers are calling for a more targeted approach to prevention - promoting condom use even among men who are regularly tested, and urging those who report high risk behaviour to be tested more than once a year.

Inadequate education

Will Nutland from Terrence Higgins Trust on the 'difficulties' gay men face

Will Nutland, from the HIV charity the Terence Higgins Trust, said a recent survey showed a third of gay men had been tested for HIV last year.

He said: "What we don't necessarily want to see is an across the board increase in testing. We want to see gay men who are taking the greatest number of risks testing more often.

"Of course, on the face of it, it seems perfectly simple, but what we do know is that one-third of young gay men leave school without adequate safe sex information.

"We're not equipping those people for their future sex lives and we're not investing the way we that should be in HIV prevention campaigns across the whole of the UK in the communities who are most at risk."

New HIV diagnoses among gay men in the UK are higher than they have ever been.

The 2,700 gay men were diagnosed in the UK in 2006 represent about a third of all new cases that year.

The Terence Higgins Trust says funding for prevention work among gay men is under threat and that there is not enough discussion of the issue within the gay community.
 

Syringe toddler tested for HIV
Mia Henderson and mother Joanne
The youngster has a six to eight week wait for the test results

BBC Friday, 20 June 2008

A three-year-old girl has been tested for HIV and hepatitis after standing on a discarded needle.

Mia Henderson was playing outside her Hartlepool home during a family barbecue when she was heard screaming.

The toddler was taken to the town's University Hospital where she underwent the tests, though the results will not be known for six to eight weeks.

Her mother Joanne, 24, says residents of Kimberley Street have complained about heroin users in the area.

Now she is calling on Cleveland Police and Hartlepool Council to take action.

She said: "Everybody complains but nothing seems to be getting done about it. There are heroin users in and out of the street all day and all night.

"It's horrific what you have to see each day and no-one seems to listen to us. But when something like this happens, something has to be done."

A spokesman for Hartlepool Borough Council said the authority was proactive in collecting discarded syringes.

He added: "Since 2004, a dedicated hotline has received 1,827 calls, and since January last year 3,252 needles had been removed from the streets."

Cleveland Police said the 14 June incident was the only recorded report of a syringe being found in Kimberley Street.

 

 New AIDS threat emerging in India among 'call center Romeos'

By VIJAY JOSHI,Associated Press Writer AP - Sunday, June 22

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - A new AIDS threat is rising in India's numerous call centers, where young staff are increasingly having unprotected sex with multiple partners in affairs developed during night shifts, a top AIDS expert has warned.

While India has made great strides in bringing down its HIV infection rate, the promiscuity among "call center Romeos" is a great concern, Dr. Suniti Solomon, who detected the first HIV case in India in 1986, told an international medical conference Saturday.

According to the United Nations, about 2.5 million Indians are living with HIV and AIDS now, down from 5.2 million in 2006.

"India has reached a plateau of the infections," Solomon told the International Congress on Infectious Diseases, which ends Sunday.

Her concern now is the call centers, where many of the young staff work at night to correspond with the daytime working hours of their American and European clients.

"They have all the money. They huddle together in the night. They are young, they are sexually active, so naturally they start," Solomon, who runs an AIDS center in the southern city of Chennai, told The Associated Press in a separate interview.

She said at least three or four call center workers visit her clinic every week to get tested for HIV because they are worried after having unprotected sex.

It is estimated that India's call centers employ some 1.3 million people, mostly youths fresh out of school and colleges, earning a starting salary of 25,000 rupees (US$600) a month, more than a government doctor's paycheck.

"You will see call center Romeos are a major high risk for HIV," Solomon said.

There are no figures for how many call center workers are infected with HIV.

Citing confessions by the visitors to her center, Solomon said groups of young men and women rent apartments along the beach during the weekends and end up having multiple-partner sex.

"If they are having sex just among themselves, and all are non-infected it is fine. But if there is one person who has gone out of this group and brought in the virus, it will spread to everyone," she said.

While the "call center Romeo" situation is a reflection of recent liberal values, India's anti-AIDS fight is also hampered by society's coexisting conservatism, Solomon told the conference.

She said this is evident in Hindu activists' opposition to circumcision _ which is proven to help inhibit HIV transmission _ on the grounds that it is against tradition and religion of Hindu-majority India.

Solomon said she does not expect India to accept circumcision for preventing HIV infections. A recent government study to gauge the acceptance for circumcision triggered a massive backlash by Hindu fundamentalists, who called it "obnoxious" and "a conspiracy."

"If you go out into the streets and say I will do this (circumcision) to reduce HIV, there will be a chaos," she said. "Vaccines have failed. Microbicides have failed. This is one tool we have in hand but we can't use it."

 

Senate still deadlocked over $50B global AIDS bill

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press WriterThu Jun 19, 6:15 PM ET

At the White House on Thursday, President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two people behind a triumph of his administration, a program to fight the global AIDS pandemic. Down the street on Capitol Hill, a few Republican senators continued to block what would be a major expansion of that program.

Five years ago, at the urging of Bush, Congress approved $15 billion to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa and other afflicted parts of the world.

The acclaimed program now supports anti-retroviral treatment for about 1.5 million and is on target to prevent 7 million new infections and provide care for 10 million, including orphans and vulnerable children.

The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief "has reached millions of people, preventing HIV infections in infants and easing suffering and bringing dying communities back to life," Bush said in presenting the Medal of Freedom to Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading AIDS physician, and the late Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., a chief sponsor of both the 2003 AIDS legislation and the bill now before Congress.

Another big supporter of the AIDS act, which is known as PEPFAR, is Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a medical doctor who speaks of his own experiences in treating AIDS patients.

"There is no question that PEPFAR has been the most successful foreign aid program since the Marshall Plan," Coburn said in a recent speech, referring to the U.S.' post-World War II program to rebuild Europe.

But Coburn is also the leader of a group of seven conservative Republicans who have blocked Senate action on a bill, supported by the White House, that would more than triple funding for the program to $50 billion over the next five years.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the bill in March, and the House overwhelmingly passed a similar bill in early April, but resistance from the seven senators has effectively kept it off the Senate floor. The current act expires at the end of September.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in a statement Thursday, said it was "confounding and indefensible" that a small number of senators were blocking the bill, and he set a Tuesday deadline for negotiators to come up with an agreement. He said Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, D-Del., and the ranking Republican, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, chief proponents of the bill, were working on a compromise.

Opponents have questioned the big increase in spending, but they also have policy differences. The current act requires that 55 percent of the money go to treatment programs, but writers of the new bill, arguing that people on the ground can better determine what programs are most effective, removed that obligation.

Coburn wants it restored. He says that without it there is danger of money getting diverted into unrelated development and poverty programs. "Will we turn PEPFAR into just another bloated, unmeasured and unmeasurable foreign aid program with no accountability and no real impact?" he said.

Some conservatives are also leery of more money going into politically sensitive prevention programs involving the distribution of condoms, male circumcision or family planning. Conservatives already have had to give up a provision in the 2003 act that required that one-third of all HIV prevention funds be spent on abstinence programs. In turn, liberals accepted some restrictions on family planning groups participating in AIDS programs.

Coburn, a budgetary hawk known for using parliamentary tactics to hold up bills, faces some heavyweight opponents in this battle. Presumed presidential nominees Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama are both co-sponsors of the Senate bill.

"Today an estimated 40 million people around the world are living with HIV/AIDS, with over 4 million new infections in 2006 alone, Obama said this week. "I urge my colleagues to bring this important bill to the Senate floor for a vote as soon as possible."

Fourteen Republican senators, led by Lugar, last month wrote Senate leaders urging quick consideration of the bill. PEPFAR, they wrote, "has served as a powerful demonstration of U.S. leadership and compassion throughout the world."

Lugar and others stressed the need to act before Bush heads for the G-8 summit of industrialized nations in Japan on July 7-9.

"When the United States takes action of this kind, it has an important impact on other nations," South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu said Wednesday during a teleconference sponsored by the Global Aids Alliance. "The G-8 have promised $60 billion for universal access to people who are living with AIDS. When the United States takes the action that is being suggested in the legislation, that will generate more specific country commitments."

 

THAILAND : Condom use not catching on among youth

19 Jun 2008 16:18:16 GMT

Source: IRIN

BANGKOK , 19 June 2008 - In spite of massive spending on efforts to counter HIV/AIDS, experts warn that many young Thais are still having unsafe sex.

The problem, according to Sittichok Chaisupasin, a 16-year-old peer educator, is not a lack of knowledge about HIV, but a lack of interest among young people in acting on what they know.

"Many people know HIV is transmitted by having sex," he said. "We also know we should stand up and give our seat to old people on the bus, but we don't do it," he said.

Survey findings confirm Chaisupasin's observation. While young people consistently demonstrate extremely high levels of knowledge about HIV in surveys, only about 25 percent of young men report using condoms when engaging in casual or risky sex, often because they do not view sex with other young people as risky.

"The real challenge is one of pushing Thai youth (and their elders as well) into converting their 'knowledge' or 'awareness' of HIV risk into changes in their own individual behaviour," said Patrick Brenny, UNAIDS Thailand country director.

Scott Bamber, head of HIV/AIDS for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Thailand , agreed and noted that while young people were aware of the risks of HIV, they often lacked access to life-skills training and services that would help them translate knowledge into behavioural change. They didn't know, for instance, how to negotiate condom use with a reluctant partner.

Since Thailand reported its first HIV case in 1984, the country has succeeded in reducing the number of new infections from 140,000 a year a decade ago to about 14,000 in 2007. Thailand's goal is to cut new HIV infections by a further 50 percent by 2010, but there has been an increase in incidence among commercial sex workers, men who have sex with men, and young people, according to UNAIDS. Unprotected sex accounts for an estimated 90 percent of all new infections.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria recently gave almost $100 million to support Thailand 's prevention and treatment strategy over the next six years and some inroads are being made. Through it's Teenpath project, PATH, a nonprofit global health organisation, is training young people to work as informal sex educators at schools.

"Many young people don't prepare themselves when they're in a relationship, because sex education focuses more on anatomy and not on real-life situations. That's why we support teachers to develop a sex education curriculum," explained Arisa Sumamal, a Teenpath project assistant in Bangkok .

Teenpath sex educator, Saranya Thinvilai, 16, said some of her peers were having sex with as many as four different partners a week, with condom usage infrequent at best.

"Young people think other people will get [HIV] not them," Thinvilai told IRIN/PlusNews. "For first love relationships, many people don't use condoms because they trust their partners. It's not good, because you don't know how many partners they've had before."

 

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