Mr HIV
News (Updated
February 7, 2010)
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Kate Kelland, Health and
Science Correspondent
Feb 5, 2010
Health
Alan Whiteside, director
of the health economics & HIV/AIDS research division (HEARD) at
The AIDS threat is still
very real in places like Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia
and Malawi and South Africa, he said, and a sense that the international
community is ticking it off as "dealt with" is highly risky.
"(Fighting) the AIDS
epidemic had a huge amount of support for many years, but there seems to be a
perception now that it has been dealt with and we can turn our attention to
other issues.
"This is most
emphatically not the case in a number of parts of the world. It is not
appropriate to turn our backs on it," Whiteside told Reuters in a telephone
interview from
Some 33.4 million people
in the world have HIV, the sexually transmitted human immunodeficiency virus
that causes AIDS. Since AIDS emerged in the early 1980s, almost 60 million
people have been infected and 25 million have died of HIV-related causes.
Sub-Saharan
HEALTH WORKERS, EDUCATION
PROGRAMMES
Whiteside said health
ministries needed to use aid funds now to equip and train health workers and
produce safe-sex education programs to combine the importance of AIDS with a
better grasp of the long-term impact of the disease on their countries.
The
But Whiteside said a
growing sense that AIDS is no longer an emergency was bound to feed politicians'
desire to be seen to be taking on new threats.
Climate change and the
environment are the big issues now, and politicians may abandon the battle
against AIDS, he said.
"At the moment,
millions of Africans ore on HIV/AIDS treatment courtesy of the Americans, the
Global Fund and other donors. Those treatments have to be for life, so if we see
a redeployment of funding, people are simply going to die."
Whiteside pointed to
"hyper-endemic" African countries like
Prevention programs are
crucial in such countries, he said, but are often patchy and suffer from
governments' lack of leadership and cross-department, long-term vision.
Though clearly a personal
and community disease, AIDS also threatens civil institutions like the health,
agriculture and education sectors, which are needed to cut poverty, spur
economic growth and raise living standards.
"We don't seem to
have got our head around prevention in the hyper-endemic countries," he
said. "We've still got new cases occurring -- and that's ridiculous, it's
stupid, especially when you look ahead and see what that means in terms of the
numbers of people that will need treatment. If we don't put our effort into
prevention, we're likely to see more waves."
(Editing by Tim Pearce)
Source: Global Times
February 05 2010
By Chris Hawke
The United Nations
Development Program says it is very concerned with the last-minute cancellation
of a groundbreaking show aimed at reducing the stigma surrounding HIV carriers
and the widespread ignorance surrounding AIDS.
"Our understanding is
the radio program will not be aired at this point," Zhang Wei, a UNDP
spokeswoman said Thursday. "We're very concerned."
The cancellation of the
show, Positive Talks, hours before it was supposed to air on January 17, is the
latest indication officials are reluctant to address matters of sexuality in the
media. The show had earlier been reported as "postponed."
Other recent signs include
police from the cancelling Mr Gay China hours before it was set to take place.
In December, ISPs around
In the week before
Positive Talks was canceled, state media including Xinhua published articles
describing how the first-of-its-kind show would feature a host with HIV and a
professional anchor and encourage those with HIV to live an active life as well
as try to prevent the spread of the virus.
The UNDP considers the
show important because it estimates at the end of 2009, 740,000 people were
living with HIV in
A third of people in
Last February, a report by
the Chinese Ministry of Health stated that AIDS was the leading cause of death
in 2008 among infectious diseases.
"We are still hopeful
the show will air at some point," said Zhang. "We are not sure why it
is not being aired."
After the high profile
build-up to the show, including a press conference with
Thursday, attempts to
reach the CNR official who spoke at the press conference, identified in reports
as Yang Wenyan, failed when the man who answered the number given by the
switchboard said he worked for the logistics department, had heard of Yang, but
had no idea how to reach him.
Someone who worked for 20
years in the Financial Channel of CNR, where the show was supposed to air, told
the Global Times that she knew all of the health program producers but had never
heard of the program or of Yang Wenyan. Further calls to the switchboard went
unanswered.
"AIDS
Ambassador" Pu Cunxin's agent told the Global Times that she does not deal
with media requests. Repeated calls and a text message to Pu's mobile phone were
not returned.
Li Jing, an official at
Marie Stopes International China, a non-profit family planning and sexual
health-care organization that had developed Positive Talks for two years along
with the UNDP, said the show was cancelled because of "some problems in the
process of handling the documents" but that her organization has not yet
received any documents stating the program is canceled.
"We have no more
details. We also want to know more about it," she said, adding all the
parties involved in the show are still pushing for the ground-breaking program
to air.
THE British government
will give £40m (sh125b) to a research project at the Uganda Virus Research
Institute (UVRI) over the next 10 years.
The British High Commissioner to
“We’re proud to play a role in the enormous contribution that the unit has
made towards saving lives as well as informing health policy and practice in
Source: Global Times
[00:03 February 04 2010]
Mr HIV
By Yin Yeping
Taking on a responsibility seemingly cold-shouldered by those officials who
cancelled, without explanation, the national AIDS awareness radio show Positive
Talks last week, steps forward the most unlikely of modern rescuers: a bank.
Standard Chartered Bank (SCB)
have launched a website, complete with AIDS-related games and
"edutainment" videos, using the Internet to try to stimulate interest
and plug the dangerous gap of knowledge among many young Chinese.
A cast of crazy characters
Visitors are presented with two main options, both devised with
"youth" firmly in mind. The videos sections, bearing the menacing tag,
"Get smart or get HIV," contain six short, impressively produced CGI
films, each depicting a variety of vaguely amusing scenarios the makers hope
will stimulate the truncated attention span of webheads. These include "Mr
HIV" being interviewed for an unspecified job position which entails
killing humans, a pep talk for a Kill Bill-style hit squad of sexually
transmitted diseases (STDs) and a taxi ride taken by Mr HIV through the human
body, looking for vulnerable points.
The shorts are peopled by a variety of suitably zany figures; apart from the
ubiquitous Mr HIV, you'll meet Cockney wideboy taxi driver Bob, Lou Lou, a
jive-talking bacterium who appears to have wandered o. a 70s blaxploitation film
set and an unnamed doctor with the thickest Pakistani accent you've heard this
side of Lahore.
Whether you warm to these characters, or regard them as an excruciating attempt
to be hip, the videos pack in as much information into as short a time as
possible in the hope that viewers will take in at least something before their
attention flags.
But if you think you already know all this, proceed immediately to "Stop Mr
HIV! Think you know enough to stop me?" which directs users to a basic
quiz, with questions such as "Which human fluids can the virus be
transmitted through?" or "What is the license plate on Bob's
cab?" If you are able to answer 80 percent right (and Lifestyle got a 100
percent score within about 20 seconds), you qualify for some downloadable Mr HIV
and Co wallpaper and a chance to put your name on the "AIDS Protect
Map."
Worrying figures
AIDS has already claimed 30 million lives and it's estimated another 33 million
people are currently infected with the virus, at a rate of 6,800 new cases a
day. Of these, a survey by SLG found that 15-to-24-year-olds account for 45
percent of new HIV infections; that's a lot of people who may not end up being
life-long bank account holders.
Lyn Kok, Managing Director and Country Head of the Beijing branch of Standard
Chartered Bank (China) Limited, told Lifestyle that people within this age group
are generally more interested in pictures than words. "Online learning is a
combination of powerful tools," she said. "The whole learning
experience can be more interesting with pictures than reading pages of
words."
Kok, who is one of 18 "Living with HIV" Ambassadors for SLG worldwide,
described to Lifestyle how "when I was in Thailand, the government took a
lot of steps to make people know what AIDS is about, which is why the country
has relatively lower numbers of people with the virus, compared to Africa."
Although
Knowledge = tolerance
SLG's first involvement in AIDS prevention came in badly-hit
"I don't know if banking knowledge gives us an advantage because HIV and
banks don't really connect," Kok admitted. "However, we are an
international bank with a specialty in organizational structures, teamwork,
innovation and product design, which is effective in the world in terms of
training and educating people." She then went on to add: "When you
meet HIV positive people, they are normal and all they want is just to be
normal.
"The challenge for everybody in
From its launch, the website has enjoyed up to 140,000 users and the site is
available in a number of languages, from French and Korean to Chinese and
English. Their target is 1 million globally (as pledged to the Clinton Global
Initiative). "The problem is we cannot do it alone, so help from our
customers, sta. and community are also needed," Kok said. And also, let us
not forget, the Chinese government.
Source: Global Times
February 03 2010
By Li Xiaoshu
Zhang Detian can never
forget the summer night in 2008 when three luxury cars screeched to a halt in
front of his brick cottage and more than 10 officials, all formally dressed in
dark suits, confronted him at his doorstep.
"You know what, you
got AIDS!" an unnamed official yelled at the 29-year-old farmer.
A cluster of whispering
villagers bunched together in front of Zhang's creaking door were suddenly
shocked into silence.
"There were crowds of
people. I was the last one to learn the fact," Zhang told the Global Times.
"I felt as if I were a criminal."
Zhang said he was so
angered by this public humiliation that he briefly had thoughts of revenge,
"spreading the virus to every person around me."
One week earlier, Zhang
had accompanied his wife, who was seven months pregnant, for a routine medical
test. The lab results would eventually show that both Zheng and his wife were
infected with the AIDS virus. The farmer refuses to discuss how they might have
contracted the deadly disease, spread through sex, blood, needles or birth. But
the delight of soon becoming a father was ruined by the stigma of becoming an
AIDS patient.
The news travelled to
every corner of the county.
Villagers dared not buy
the fish Zhang and his wife sold.
Local authorities forced
his wife to abort the baby boy in her uterus.
Like so many other AIDS
patients in
The number of people
infected with the virus reached 319,877 by October 31, 2009, according to
China's Health Minister Chen Zhu who announced the statistic at a press
conference in November last year.
Emotional damage
Zhang was among 73 people
who tested HIV positive last year in the Chongyang
One of those who tested
positive was 32-year-old Wang Lujin, a sex worker for nearly 10 years. Despite
being a prostitute, Wang was able to live with her shame and carry on an
otherwise normal family life. But things changed after an acquaintance revealed
her secret life as an AIDS patient. At her cousin's wedding ceremony, the
acquaintance asked Wang to sit farther away at the banquet table.
In 2008, Wang was
diagnosed as an HIV sufferer by the
Wang was furious to learn
that eight medical workers from the CDC in
"I don't mind dying,
but I'm still alive," she told the Global Times. "Now, no one plays
mah-jong with me, not even my relatives."
Local medical personnel
and residents seem unaware of the emotional damage inflicted on AIDS patients
when their confidential medical information leaks out and people begin to
gossip.
Jian Jian, 41, a Chongyang
AIDS patient seeking treatment in
He said at least eight
people knew of his medical condition within one week, and each of them spread
the word to others.
"I want those who
ruined my name to pay a price in blood," Jian told the Global Times.
The man and his family
prefer to live in a squalid, 13- square- meter bungalow, with only four plastic
stools, a wooden table and a makeshift bed as furniture, rather than return to
Chongyang, where people would be frightened and embarrassed by their presence.
" I don't want my
children to live with this shadow over their heads, " he said.
Though Jian reported the
invasion of privacy to the Xianning CDC, which oversees the work of the center
in Chongyang, the official with a big mouth neither apologized to him nor
offered to compensate him for his emotional pain and suffering.
"Many AIDS control
officials do not follow their professional code of ethics because they don't
truly understand our problem and emotional pain," Chen said. "They
just treat our privacy as a joke, or a tiny matter that nobody cares about. But
are we doomed to be hurt?"
"They only worry
about how to publicize disease prevention achievements and how to squander
government funds."
The two officials from the
two centers both declined to comment when a Global Times' reporter asked why no
one was reprimanded for the release of confidential medical information.
Chen Depu, a retired
official of the Chongyang CDC and founder of Tonggubo'ai Group, a local NGO
dedicated to AIDS prevention, said the problem in Chongyang was "totally
accidental" and the people responsible should have been warned.
"Health authorities
have stressed the protection of privacy during the AIDS control process, but
some government employees still ignore the outcome subconsciously," said
Chen. "Volunteers and employees in non-governmental organizations are
better-behaved."
However, most local AIDS
patients said they feel helpless to fight back against the "label"
that brands them as disease-ridden pariahs.
Laws ignored
In
As early as 1988,
Though more than 20 years
have passed, violations of the law are commonplace.
At Beijing Ditan Hospital,
a city resident surnamed Peng found that a blood test result for a female AIDS
patient was printed on the reverse side of her own lab report.
The name and age of the
AIDS patient could be easily identified even though the information was crossed
out with a pen, according to a March 2009 report in the Beijing Times.
The hospital claimed that
medical technicians reused the lab sheets to save paper and did not violate the
patient's privacy because no address or phone number was shown, according to the
report.
"Many patients use
false names to protect themselves. That's why almost no real information is
released by medical institutions," a director at the hospital told the
Global Times, requesting anonymity.
AIDS experts and activists
actually encourage patients to play the fake identity trick.
Meng Lin, coordinator of
the secretariat of the China Alliance of People Living with HIV/AIDS and an AIDS
patient himself, recommends that people should use fake ID cards when picking up
prescriptions and undergoing medical tests.
"Keeping your mouth
shut is a way to prevent personal information from being compromised. Otherwise,
the patients may have to sacrifice their privacy to satisfy public curiosity or
people's right to know under the pretext of disease prevention," he told
the Global Times.
"The negative side is
that the patients feel less sympathy when they become increasingly invisible to
others. Some will suffer depression and even commit suicide."
"The Chinese,
especially the rural population, neglect privacy protection because the Chinese
culture always weighs the collective interest higher than individual
rights," said Zhang Yiwu, a professor at
"It is rather ironic
that people in this country are cautious about protecting their own names but
thoughtless about protecting the names of others. They prefer the role of
onlookers rather than protagonists."
"Each person has both
rights and obligations. On one hand, it's important to underline the
profes-sional ethics for social institutions involved in AIDS prevention; on the
other hand, the infected have to inform their sex partners, doctors, and those
who might be harmed, " LÜ told the Global Times.
He admitted that it's
"sometimes difficult to balance the social interest with patients'
individual rights."
Media at fault
During the summer of 2006,
Jin Wei, a professor at the
She sued China Times for
publishing the name and photograph of an HIV-infected girl in
It was
The four-month trial at
the Chaoyang District People's Court ended on July 17, 2006, with a ruling that
China Times should be fined 20,000 yuan ($2,900) in compensation to the child,
and offer an apology for its wrongdoing.
The girl Jin adopted in
December, 2004, was so emotionally upset after reading the online report that
she couldn't sleep and couldn't stop crying.
"I hate courts but I
had to go there. It's disappointing that the media people did not truly feel
sorry after they broke the law and harmed a young girl," Jin told the
Global Times.
Jin said the reporter
repeatedly tried to justify his news report, "using strong words to explain
his choice instead of a sincere apology".
"Many news
organizations assume that AIDS patients will receive better care if their real
identities are revealed, but in reality it's the other way around. These people
are extremely fragile and sensitive to potential discrimination," she said.
She said it was difficult
to bring charges against the powerful media group. She invited some
"It was 'we' versus
'them'."
Liu Wei, a legal counselor
of the Beijing Aizhixing Institute, the largest HIV/ AIDS NGO in China, told the
Global Times that most patients are reluctant to take legal actions for fear
that their personal information will leak out. They must also consider the high
cost of civil appeals.
"The compensation is
usually low compared with the cost of bringing a case to conclusion. Most
patients settle out of court without much indemnity," said Liu.
"HIV/AIDS privacy
invasion is getting pervasive. It's urgent for the government to improve
people's awareness of their wrongdoing."
Li Jianping, 44, a farmer
in the village of Wazhai, Jinji county in Tianshui, the second largest city in
Gansu Province, Northwest China, faced the same dilemma.
He has lived with
"AIDS" attached to his name for the past four years.
In 2007, it was announced
that he had been "cured" of AIDS. The story described the
"cure" of an incurable disease as a "miracle in human
history." Only later did the local center for disease control acknowledge
that Li had been misdiagnosed and did not have AIDS.
By that time, the damage
to his reputation had been done.
Li, a former vendor and
now a porter with a meager monthly income of 1,200 yuan ($175) for a family of
five, was too poor to sue all those who made his name synonymous with a deadly
disease.
Laughing out loud, he
recalled for a Global Times reporter the way he was informed of his blood test.
In a solemn voice, the village head cried out the news over a loud speaker, so
loud that his mother-in-law could hear the voice five kilometers away.