|
|
| A class on gay and lesbian studies at Fudan University in Shanghai has attracted an overflow crowd. The class is the first ever of its kind in China. [The New York Times] |
News (Updated April 9, 2006)
[Home]
[Previous
news]
Gays cooperate with govt to combat HIV/AIDS in China |
| www.chinaview.cn 2006-04-08 13:08:07 |
|
|
| A class on gay and lesbian studies at Fudan University in Shanghai has attracted an overflow crowd. The class is the first ever of its kind in China. [The New York Times] |
|
CHENGDU, April 8 (Xinhua) -- Wang Xiaodong, a 35-year-old gay man in southwest China's Sichuan Province, has spent 6,000 hours over the past three years on volunteer work to help in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Wang, director of a 100-member health group in the provincial capital Chengdu, said many gay Chinese men had to hide their sexual orientation from their families and would despair if they caught HIV. "It is difficult to make those men come out of the closet and there is still a long way to go in ensuring HIV/AIDS safety for them," he said. In December 2004, the Ministry of Health published for the first time the number of Chinese homosexuals as five to ten million. The government has since clearly stated its stance on homosexuality. At the end of last year, the ministry and the World Health Organization released a joint report which said the HIV infection rate among general population was 0.05 percent and the rate among gay men was as high as two percent, second only to drug users. Facing this threat, homosexuals have begun to go public and actively cooperate with government efforts to combat the disease. Striving to prevent HIV/AIDS, Wang Xiaodong and experts with the China Disease Prevention and Control Center jointly compiled and published the "AIDS Prevention" book for at-risk individuals. "The government now deals with the issue of homosexuality compassionately. With over 100 websites on homosexuality, along with other channels, homosexuals in China have safer ways of meeting," Wang said. But he was concerned that some gay men lack awareness of self-protection. "Still many homosexuals do not use condoms, resulting in HIV infection and spread." The China-Britain project on AIDS prevention and treatment conducted a survey last year on 927 homosexuals in Hangzhou, capital of China's eastern Zhejiang Province. The survey result showed 67 percent of the interviewees had at least five sexual partners. Zhang Jianxin, professor of Sichuan West China University of Medical Science, called for further efforts to target information at homosexuals. Homosexuality, once considered a "mental illness", is still a taboo in China. Gays and lesbians rarely make their orientation known. "The HIV infection may spread if their sexual activities are not controlled," Zhang said. Zhang Beichuan, an expert on AIDS prevention with the Ministry of Science and Technology, said China has progressed in education on HIV/AIDS for at-risk groups. He said more than 20 provinces have set up HIV/AIDS prevention organizations in their capital cities, involving nearly 1,000 volunteers who are gays or lesbians. Their education efforts have been recognized by governments as well as international experts. The team in Chengdu, established in 2003, is one of the leading organizations in China. "All volunteers are working hard to push prevention education, provide medical help for the infected, and conduct surveys and reports for local health authorities," said Wang Xiaodong. The number of homosexuals in Chengdu receiving education increased from the 3,000 in 2003 to 11,100 at the end of last year, Wang said. According to a poll by the volunteer team, only 44 percent of gay men used condoms at the end of 2005 and now the figure is 72 percent. With support from government departments, the volunteers have attended domestic and international conferences and seminars on HIV/AIDS prevention. Their experience has been shared around the world. Enditem |
HIV Boy in NE China Lives Lonely Life2006-04-08 07:17:48 Xinhua |
|
|
Wed Apr 5, 2006 08:57 AM ET
 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government's emphasis on abstinence in a program to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean is hampering prevention efforts in the countries it aims to help, congressional investigators said on Tuesday.
President George W. Bush's $15 billion AIDS relief plan requires that two-thirds of funds for preventing sexual HIV transmission be used to promote "ABC" programs -- abstain, be faithful or use a condom.
An audit by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, Congress's audit and investigative arm, found the spending requirement limited the ability of U.S. workers to address prevention priorities of the countries they serve.
"Seventeen of 20 country teams reported that fulfilling that spending requirement ... presents challenges to their ability to respond to local prevention needs," the GAO audit said.
Three countries interviewed by GAO investigators reported that they had to cut back programs to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission. One country reported it had to cut investment in medical and blood safety activities. Another said the ABC spending requirement had complicated efforts to address a condom shortage.
"To reserve funding to procure condoms, the team was required to cut funding for other programs in the 'other prevention' program area and to shift funds from the care category," the report said.
Two-thirds of the teams also reported that ambiguous and confusing guidance made it difficult to interpret and implement the ABC program, the GAO said.
A spokesman for the State Department's Global Aids Coordinator, which administers the program, was not immediately available for comment.
In its report to Congress, the GAO said OGAC officials acknowledged that certain components of the guidance can be confusing and said they were working to clarify them.
Critics have complained that the U.S. program leans too heavily on the promotion of abstinence and fails to place enough emphasis on condoms.
Dr. Paul Zeitz, director of the Washington-based Global AIDS Alliance said the large earmark requirement for abstinence-only forces people on the ground to underfund critical programs.
"The Bush policy on AIDS prevention is unworkable the way it's currently being implemented. The policy is essentially doing more harm than good," Zeitz said in a telephone interview.
The United Nations estimates the global HIV/AIDS pandemic infects more than 30 million people in Africa. The disease has killed at least 20 million worldwide.
Tue Apr 04, 08:10 AM EST
By Verna Gates and Mickey Goodman
ATLANTA
(Reuters) - In a sleazy hotel room, "Brittany," then aged 16 and
drugged into oblivion, waited for the men to arrive. Her pimps sent as many
as 17 clients an evening through the door.
A "john" could even pre-book the pretty young blonde for $1,000 a night, sometimes flying in and then flying out from a nearby airport.
None of this happened in Bangkok or Costa Rica, places that have become synonymous with sex tourism and underage sex.
It took place in Atlanta, the buckle of the U.S. Bible Belt, where the world's busiest passenger airport provides a cheaper, more convenient and safer underage sex destination for men seeking girls as young as 10.
"Men fly in, are met by pimps, have sex with a 14-year-old for lunch, and get home in time for dinner with the family," said Sanford Jones, the chief juvenile judge of Fulton County, Georgia.
A new federal law passed in 2003 ensures that American sex tourists landing on foreign soil and hiring prostitutes under the age of 18 can get 30 years in prison.
But in Georgia, punishment for pimping or soliciting sex with a girl under 18 is only five to 20 years, according to Deborah Espy, the Deputy District Attorney of Fulton County.
"Men are coming to Atlanta to have sex with a child," said LaKendra Baker, project manager for the Center to End Adolescent Sexual Exploitation (CEASE).
Half of the street-level prostitutes in Atlanta are believed to be under 18, according to experts.
Others are booked through Internet sex sites and from social sites like Black Planet, where girls innocently post profiles, said Baker.
Just in March, police arrested a Canadian man meeting a 14-year-old girl he found through the Internet, said Cathey Steinberg, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Fund, which funds treatment for abused girls and prevention.
Another man drove from North Georgia, with a bag containing a teddy bear, a love note and condoms, snorting methamphetamine on the way.
He expected a 13-year-old girl, but instead found Heather Lackey, a corporal with the Peachtree City Police Department.
"People are stunned that Atlanta's the No. 1 sex center in the country," said Steinberg.
The FBI has identified 14 U.S. cities as centers for the sexual exploitation of children. In addition to Atlanta, they are Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, St. Louis, Tampa, and Washington, D.C.
RUNAWAYS AT MOST RISK
In all, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 underage girls are prostituted in the United States, according to a University of Pennsylvania study.
Most youths caught up in the sex trade are runaways, like Brittany, whose 19-year-old "rescuers" soon demanded a return on their investment.
"I didn't have any place to go. My mom hated me for what I was doing to the family," said Brittany, who did not want to be identified by her real name.
Up to 90 percent of runaways are believed to end up as prostitutes, with a third lured into prostitution within 48 hours. Some are sold into sexual slavery by their parents, according to a 2005 study by the Atlanta Women's Agenda.
Some get seduced by recruiters. Pimps use handsome young men and sometimes girls as fronts.
"A 16-year-old controlling a group of girls will not face the same penalties an adult would receive," said Patricia Crone, director of the Office of Juvenile Justice Demonstration Project.
Once snagged, the grooming process begins. Typically, the pimp's friends sleep with her, then come threats, beatings and gang rapes. Caresses and gifts, including drugs and alcohol, follow abuse, the Atlanta Women's Agenda study found.
Brittany said she was showered with fancy dinners, clothes and methamphetamine. But she also describes horror. "It made me feel dirty. It was demeaning," said Brittany.
The sex slaves are trafficked in and out of cities to supply sporting events, conventions or rap concerts.
During the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, one man kept boys and hosted sex parties nightly, said Baker of the group CEASE.
The pimps even held an annual "Player's Ball" in Atlanta in 2003, openly buying and selling women and naming a "Player of the Year," according to the Atlanta Women's Agenda study.
The risks are worth it. While there are few reliable statistics, child sexual exploitation is believed to be the world's third-biggest money maker for organized crime, said Stephanie Davis, policy adviser to Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin.
One reason for the demand is the false assumption that youths are disease-free.
On the contrary, with tissues not fully developed, they are more prone to lacerations. HIV infections among females aged 16 to 21 are 50 percent higher than for men, a 1998 study in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes reported.
Atlanta has won two new federal grants to establish units to fight the trafficking of underage sex slaves and to hire more undercover detectives, said Carole Morgan, director of the North Central Georgia Law Enforcement Academy.
But the experts fear that may not be enough.
"It won't stop until people say, 'My city isn't safe for kids anymore,"' said Crone.
"This is a place where you can buy, sell or rent kids. It must be stopped."
|
07 Apr 2006 15:06:59 GMT
Source: Reuters |
That was an increase of 72,000 from 2004, with high risk groups like prostitutes and homosexuals the biggest cause for concern, officials said.
Federal health secretary P.K. Hota said that with the increase, especially among high-risk groups, the government should push for legalising homosexuality and liberalising laws dealing with prostitution.
"We'll pursue those provisions of law that criminalise this behaviour, push people underground and dehumanise them further. We have to give them a voice and stop the dehumanisation," Hota told Reuters after an AIDS seminar.
But UNAIDS, the United Nations anti-AIDS agency, said pushing for changes in homosexuality and anti-prostitution laws could be difficult in conservative India where sex is not discussed openly by most people.
"The big problem is that politicians don't think there is much to gain by embracing the homosexual vote," Denis Broun, India's coordinator for UNAIDS, said.
The continued rise in infections overshadowed a rare glint of good news last month in an Indo-Canadian study published in the medical journal Lancet.
It reported a drop of more than a third in the prevalance of the HIV virus among 15 to 24-year-olds in the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
These states, which are home to 75 percent of people living with HIV in India, have been the focus of the country's anti-AIDS efforts -- apparently with some success.
But northern states like Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Punjab, as well as eastern Orissa, are in danger of being lulled into complacency by their comparatively lower rates of infection, Broun said.
"A very low prevalance which is not tackled early can become a higher
prevalance," he said. "At some point you wake up and say 'Oh dear I've
got a problem on my hands which I should have tackled some years ago.'"
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - New statistics suggest San Francisco has the highest percentage of gay men among major cities in the world, with a quarter of them HIV-positive, a top city health official said on Friday.
"Despite an overall loss in the population in San Francisco in the last five years, we think there has been an absolute gain in gay men," William McFarland, head of HIV/AIDS statistics at San Francisco's Department of Public Health, said in an interview. "From all the data I
have seen ... it's the gayest city in the world."McFarland has compiled the city's first survey in five years on gay men and HIV to be presented at a meeting next week to discuss HIV/AIDS prevention.
He said it found an estimated 63,577 gay males aged 15 and above in San Francisco, a city with a total population of 764,000. That figure represents nearly one in five of the city's males above the age of 15.
0ne out of every four gay males -- 25.8 percent -- is infected with the HIV virus, giving San Francisco an estimated total of 16,401 HIV-positive men, said McFarland, an epidemiologist who has also worked on studies in Uganda, Zimbabwe and Egypt.
The survey indicates that the overall percentage of those living with HIV has dropped since the last study five years ago.
"The major changes since 2001 are that, first of all, the gay community has grown. It's largely been an influx of more HIV-negative gay men that are here," he said. "It used to be near 30 percent.
"The absolute number of gay men living with HIV has crept up partly because of ongoing transmission and partly because of improved survival with treatment," he added.
At 40 percent, Baltimore has the highest percentage of HIV-positive men among its population in a study of five cities, with San Francisco second, according to a 2005 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.
In coming up with his estimate of the number of gay men, McFarland said he took the middle point of nine previous studies.
McFarland acknowledged that it was difficult to get a precise number because of sensitivities over the issue. But he said San Francisco residents were likely to be more open about their sexuality than people in many other areas.
|
04 Apr 2006 09:34:59 GMT
Source: Reuters |
"We do not want to put any more stress on our brothers who are already suffering. This move was made out of our concern for their health," Major Felix Kulayigye told Reuters.
The east African country has been praised for running the continent's most successful fight against the disease, cutting infection rates to around six percent today from more than 30 percent in its worst affected districts in the 1990s.
Most Ugandans attribute the fall to a frank education campaign about condoms by President Yoweri Museveni at a time when many other African leaders seemed embarrassed to discuss AIDS.
Kulayigye said the decision on army training was part of efforts to professionalise Uganda's 40,000-strong military. The affected soldiers will remain in the army but will not receive any more training.
But some called the move discriminatory.
"Given the openness with which the HIV/AIDS issue has been discussed in public, as a government policy, Ugandans don't expect such statements from leaders of any institution," said one letter to a local newspaper on Tuesday.
"Being HIV-positive does not mean someone has stopped being useful to oneself, family, community and the country."
Fri Apr 7, 10:39 PM ET
Abbott
Laboratories Inc. has signed on a celebrity — Magic Johnson — as part of
its efforts in HIV/AIDS research.
The health care products maker announced Friday that it is teaming with the retired basketball superstar to address health disparities in minority communities through a multi-year, nationwide education effort.
Abbott, which makes drugs used to fight AIDS and other diseases, said it will join with Johnson and his foundation to create educational platforms in cities with a high prevalence of HIV infection. Johnson, who is infected with HIV, established the Magic Johnson Foundation in 1991 to raise funds for community-based organizations dealing with HIV/AIDS education and prevention programs.
Under the partnership, Johnson will share his story of living with HIV and free, confidential HIV testing and counseling will be offered. Those attending testing events also can have their blood pressure, peak flow levels and glucose levels checked during a 10-city tour beginning Monday in Chicago.
"Minority communities are faced with challenging health obstacles as a result of social and cultural factors — but we can change that," Johnson said in a statement released by Abbott. "I am thrilled to be teaming up with Abbott to make a difference and build awareness among vulnerable populations about health risks to which they may be socially disadvantaged, to share my personal story, and to have an open dialogue about important health facts that must not be overlooked."
Fri Apr 7, 1:36 PM ET
The
HIV/AIDS pandemic was taking a "terrible toll" on health workers,
the World Health Organization's top official said, with many communities
shorthanded of workers needed to care for those living with the disease.
Speaking in the Zambian capital Lusaka at the launch of the agency's 2006 World Health Report, WHO chief Lee Jong-wook highlighted the impact of the pandemic on the lives of doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers.
"I know that there are great difficulties to (be) overcome," Lee said at the report's three-city launch in Lusaka, Geneva and London.
"I know that HIV/AIDS is taking a terrible toll. It is taking skilled doctors and nurses from the bedside of the sick," he said in a speech.
The report issued on World Health Day on Friday under the banner "Working together for health," stressed the serious shortages of medical staff in poor countries from Asia to Africa.
The WHO said poor countries urgently needed 2.3 million health workers to deal with major diseases such as HIV/AIDS and everyday healthcare.
"The magnitude of the health workforce crisis in the world's poorest countries cannot be overstated and requires an urgent, sustained and coordinated response from the international community," the report warned.
The overall global shortage of health workers, including support staff, reaches 4.3 million, according to the report.
But 57 countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and south or southeast Asia, face "critical shortages," the WHO said.
The agency late last month reported that sub-Saharan Africa was short of some one million health workers.
"Every community needs to be able to take care of its people. We are a long way from making that ideal," Lee told delegates.
"(But) we are determined to make that change and this report is a step towards making that happen," he said.
Africa -- the world's poorest continent - is home to two-thirds of all the people infected with the HIV virus worldwide.
Children are particularly hard hit. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for just 10 percent of the world's total population but is home to 90 percent of the children worldwide infected with HIV.
