SHANGHAI (Reuters) - At least 54 hemophiliacs in Shanghai have contracted AIDS via tainted blood, the China Daily said Tuesday, a day after millions around the globe marked World Aids Day.

By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING - Health workers hit the streets of China's capital Monday, marking World AIDS Day by teaching prevention in a country whose leaders have promised an aggressive fight against the disease — and a new openness learned during the battle against SARS.

The government has been sluggish for years about disclosing the extent of AIDS here, or broaching the topic in the media.

But the harsh international response after the government's initial secrecy during the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome this year has apparently prompted more openness. State-run newspapers were filled with articles on AIDS, and the government's national midday newscast highlighted the event.

Citing a new survey by the Health Ministry, World Health Organization and UNAIDS, The China Daily newspaper said 840,000 people in China were HIV-positive and 80,000 had developed AIDS.

But whether that's an accurate figure, "I don't think anyone knows in China," said Siri Tellier, chairwoman of the U.N. Theme Group on HIV/AIDS in China. She said there has been no widespread blood testing in the country and called on Beijing to improve its monitoring.

Also, many sufferers hide that they are sick because of the social stigma attached to having a disease that many in China deem is caused by "immoral" behavior, the U.N. agency said in a report released Monday.

Also Monday, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS announced a campaign to provide 3 million HIV-infected people in poor countries with the latest drugs available by the end of 2005.

The plan focuses on simplifying the delivery of anti-retroviral therapy, ensuring a reliable source for the drugs, and creating a system for disseminating the latest information on HIV.

The U.N. agencies will also encourage financial aid to poor countries.

"Preventing and treating AIDS may be the toughest health assignment the world has ever faced, but it is also the most urgent," Dr. Lee Jong-wook, the director-general of WHO, said in the statement. "The lives of millions of people are at stake. This strategy demands massive and unconventional efforts to make sure they stay alive."

Cambodia marked World AIDS Day on Monday with calls to fight the stigma of the disease, which keeps many people with HIV — the virus that causes AIDS — from seeking treatment to prolong their lives.

Some 1,000 people, wearing white caps and T-shirts adorned with educational AIDS slogans, took part in a lively rally held at the center of the capital Phnom Penh.

In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair marked World AIDS Day by calling for a renewed international drive to combat the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.

"Unless we act now and decisively, the deepening poverty and instability (caused by the disease) will reach far beyond the parts of the world worst affected," Blair wrote in The Sun newspaper's Monday edition.

Chinese officials and the United Nations have warned that 10 million people could be infected by 2020 without better prevention.

Health workers in Beijing fanned out to construction sites and schools to teach AIDS-prevention methods and combat the stigma of the illness.

"Migrant workers are an at-risk group. They're young, they're at an age when they're becoming sexually active, and they're far from their families," said Li Xiaohong of the Beijing Center for Disease Control.

"It's easy for them to look for a partner and change partners," she said. "They have sexual needs, but they don't have knowledge (about AIDS), so it's very easy for them to spread it."

December 1st - 8:54 am ET

Activists, health workers, celebrities mark World AIDS Day in countries around the globe

BEIJING — Activists and health workers rallied around the globe Monday to mark World AIDS day, seeking support for the continuing battle against a disease that ravaged a record number of people in 2003.

In China, the government says at least 840,000 people are HIV-positive and fears 10 million might become infected by 2010 without proper prevention.

Premier Wen Jiabao visited the AIDS ward at a Beijing hospital to show his support, and health workers went to construction sites and schools throughout the capital to teach AIDS prevention.

"Migrant workers are an at-risk group," said Li Xiaohong of the Beijing Center for Disease Control, which volunteered staff for the effort. "They only know that condoms can prevent pregnancy."

In India, where an estimated 4 million people have been infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, the government says it plans to provide free antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients — buying generic versions from domestic manufacturers at a low price. In the first year, the government plans to spend $44 million to cover 100,000 patients in the six worst-hit Indian states.

Across India, volunteer groups planned exhibitions, street plays and seminars for a weeklong campaign to fight discrimination against AIDS victims as the actor Richard Gere mobilized celebrities to campaign against the spread of the disease.

In Calcutta, hundreds of prostitutes carried torches and waved posters as they walked through the streets at midnight Sunday and held a rally in the red-light district, vowing not to have sex without condoms.

A recent U.S. government report predicted the number of HIV-positive people in India could jump to between 20 million and 25 million by 2010 — a figure the Indian government rejects.

AIDS, first diagnosed in 1981 and originally called gay related immune disorder, or GRID, attacks the human immune system. There is no known cure, though various treatments significantly extend the lives of AIDS patients.

The United Nations said last week that more people than ever died or were infected by HIV/AIDS in 2003, with 3 million deaths and another 5 million cases of infection.

Globally, between 34 million and 46 million people are believed to have the virus, although accurate numbers are hard to obtain because of shortfalls in reporting and poor health care in many countries.

In the developing world, the vast majority of people with HIV and AIDS don't have access to life-extending antiretroviral drugs because of the high cost, the World Health Organization said. The agency launched a global drive Monday to provide AIDS drugs to 3 million people by 2005, using a simplified version of the drug cocktail that can turn the disease into a chronic ailment instead of a death sentence.

In Africa, only 2 percent of the people who need the drugs get them, WHO said.

Indeed, the steady advance of HIV and AIDS in Africa is devastating rural households, the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization said.

"HIV/AIDS strikes indiscriminately, but the poorest rural communities and households are always hit hardest," said Sissel Ekaas, the director of FAO's Gender and Population Division.

"For women who have lost a husband to the disease, it can mean losing everything else as well — property or assets, such as land, farm equipment or livestock, effectively undermining their capacity to earn an income and grow food to feed themselves, their children and the orphans they are often caring for," she said.

The most-affected African countries could lose up to 26 percent of their farm labor force, the FAO said.

In Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, which has the highest rate of HIV infection in Southeast Asia, some 1,000 people wearing white caps and T-shirts adorned with educational AIDS slogans participated in a rally in the city center.

After sobering speeches, performers deployed colorful wooden cutout figures to represent infected people. "I'm HIV-positive, but why do you regard me as an animal?" read one cutout. "I'm HIV-positive, but you can kiss me without getting infected," read another.

Some 160,000 of Cambodia's estimated 13 million people are HIV-positive or living with full-blown AIDS. Up to 90,000 infected people have died since the first case of the disease here was discovered more than a decade ago.

Across Europe, events were planned for Monday, including candlelight vigils in several British cities and the Swedish capital of Stockholm, as well as workshops and parades in Turkey and Portugal.

Britain said it would double its funding to the U.N. AIDS agency next year to $10.2 million.

The Vatican, which has been criticized for its opposition to condoms, urged people to "step up prevention according to the doctrine of the Church, to practice the virtue of chastity."

Of nearly 8,000 businesses in 103 countries surveyed for a World Economic Forum's Global Health Initiative report released Monday, 47 percent felt HIV will have some impact on their business. More than a third did not — or could not — estimate how many employees had HIV.

"Just as the efforts by most governments have been insufficient, the overall private sector response to date is inadequate," said Kate Taylor, director of the initiative. "A great deal more needs to be done."

By Andrew Quinn

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - After years of debate, delay and millions of deaths, South Africa heads into World AIDS Day on Monday with a plan in place to battle an epidemic which has left the country facing an economic and social breakdown.

But some wonder if it is already too late.

By William Maclean

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The United Nations unveiled plans on Monday to rush life-saving anti-retroviral AIDS drugs to three million of the world's poor in a $5.5 billion emergency strategy to fight a disease now killing 8,000 a day.

"The lives of millions of people are at stake. This strategy demands massive and unconventional efforts to make sure they stay alive," World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Lee Jong-wook said in a statement to mark World Aids Day.

"Preventing and treating AIDS may be the toughest health assignment the world has faced, but it is also the most urgent."

The world body announced last week that 40 million people around the world are infected with HIV, and that the global AIDS epidemic shows no signs of abating.

The U.N.'s WHO estimates that six million people in poor countries are in immediate need of the anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment that many rich world sufferers now take for granted, but less than 300,000 actually receive it.

The strategy requires getting ARV treatment to half of the six million by the end of 2005.

SIMPLICITY IS KEY TO TREATMENT

The WHO, whose recommendations guide policymakers around the world, is expected at the global launch of the strategy in Kenya to provide details of how to widen access to "combination therapy," which improves the effectiveness of treatment.

"The aim is to ensure that all people living with AIDS, even in the poorest settings, have access to treatment through this simplified approach," a WHO statement said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan thinks many political leaders still simply do not care enough to fight the disease, which has killed 28 million people since it was first reported among homosexual men in the United States in 1981.

Experts said a pillar of the plan will be a vast increase in the manufacture and distribution of combination therapy ARVs under which sufferers need only take two pills a day.

It is a simpler treatment regime than standard rich world programs which require eight or more pills a day, and means compliance by patients in poor countries should be good.

The distribution of combination therapy has implications for the pharmaceutical business: multinational firms have often been prevented by patent restrictions from producing combination pills, a worry not shared by generic drugs manufacturers.

The WHO strategy focuses on five themes, assigning governments much of the work on the ground.

-- Distributing simplified, standardised tools to deliver anti-retroviral therapy

-- A new service operated by WHO and UNAIDS to ensure an effective, reliable supply of medicines and diagnostics

-- Rapid identification, dissemination and application of new knowledge and successful strategies

-- Urgent, sustained support for affected countries

-- Global leadership, strong partnership and advocacy

A key body will be a proposed global AIDS Medicines and Diagnostics Service to ensure poor countries have access to quality medicines and diagnostic tools at the best prices.

The WHO is calling for money from donor governments and funding agencies.

"We know what to do but what we urgently need now are the resources to do it," said Lee. "We must waste no time."

Five million people became infected with HIV worldwide and three million died this year alone -- 8,000 people every day.

The WHO also wants to train more health workers because many of the worst-hit countries have very few trained health staff.

LONDON (Reuters) - The world has a "moral duty" to unite to fight AIDS, British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote in a newspaper article to mark World AIDS Day on Monday.

Blair said the disease had already infected 60 million people, killed 20 million and would spread poverty and instability around the world if left unchecked.

"The scale and devastation of the disease is colossal," Blair wrote in the mass-circulation Sun newspaper. "It is a human tragedy on a massive scale.

"It needs the whole world community to act together. And it is not just a moral duty -- it is also in our national interests.

"Unless we act now and decisively, the deepening poverty and instability will reach far beyond the parts of the world worst affected."

Blair's comments coincided with World AIDS Day, marked with a series of marches, exhibitions and vigils to highlight the growing dangers of the disease.

The United Nations also unveiled plans to rush life-saving anti-retroviral AIDS drugs to three million of the world's poor in a $5.5 billion emergency strategy to fight the disease.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela was joined by pop stars Bono, Beyonce Knowles and Bob Geldof at a Cape Town concert on Saturday to call for more help to fight AIDS.

U.S. ambassador to Britain William Farish said at least 75 million people would be infected with HIV/AIDS by 2010 unless action was taken.

"We know how to treat many of the symptoms," Farish told the Sun. "Stemming the tide requires a global effort."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said this weekend that AIDS was a "weapon of mass destruction" for some countries and the world was losing the fight against the epidemic.

A U.N. report last week said intravenous drug use and unsafe sex fueled the spread of the disease.

By CHRIS TOMLINSON, Associated Press Writer

NAIROBI, Kenya - Promising cheaper drugs, simpler regimens and more money, two U.N. agencies launched a campaign Monday to provide 3 million HIV-infected people with the latest drugs available by the end of 2005, potentially revolutionizing treatment of the disease.

In marking World AIDS Day, the World Health Organization also certified a new, innovative generic drug for use in treating HIV. The tablet combines three essential anti-retroviral drugs into one pill that is taken twice a day.

The pills are manufactured by two India-based generic drug makers and cost patients only $270 a year, but violates patents held by two major drug manufacturers. In order to legally import the drugs, countries must suspend the rights of the patent holder.

The WHO's approval of simplified treatment regimens and generic anti-retroviral drugs is only one part of the agency's strategy, dubbed 3x5. WHO also joined UNAIDS in encouraging greater financial aid to poor countries.

The detailed plan released Monday also focuses on establishing the United Nations as a global leader in fighting HIV, ensuring a reliable source for essential drugs and creating a system for disseminating the latest information on HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

"In two short decades, HIV/AIDS has become the premiere disease of mass destruction," Dr. Jack Chow, the assistant director-general of WHO, said. The death odometer is spinning at 8,000 lives a day and accelerating."

Treating 3 million patients with anti-retroviral drugs by 2005 will cost about $5.5 billion over the next two years, Chow said.

More than 40 million people are infected with HIV and more than 3 million have died in 2003, UNAIDS reported last week. WHO estimates more than 5 million HIV patients need anti-retroviral drugs, but fewer than 400,000 currently have access to them.

Anti-retroviral drug combinations, often called triple-therapy cocktails, allow HIV patients to live a relatively normal life by preventing them from developing full-blown AIDS. While the drugs improve the health of patients, they remain infected with the virus and can transmit the disease.

High prices have kept the drugs out of reach of most patients, but recent initiatives have made the drugs more affordable. The WHO and UNAIDS initiative will improve drug distribution channels and train health professionals in poor countries.

Noticeably absent from the program's launch in Nairobi were representatives from the world's drug manufacturers. Pharmaceutical companies holding patents for AIDS drugs have fiercely fought to block generic manufacturers from impinging on their patent rights, often lobbying governments to reject the vastly cheaper alternatives in return for discounted prices.

Chow said they have held meetings with patent holders and generic companies but said no major agreements have been reached. Expanding production of the drugs will be critical to meeting the 3x5 goals, he said.

 

U.S. Health Chief Says World Losing AIDS Fight

Mon Dec 1,11:10 AM ET

By Shapi Shacinda

LIVINGSTONE, Zambia (Reuters) - The world is losing the war on HIV/AIDS and must do more to halt the pandemic, U.S. Health Secretary Tommy Thompson said on Monday, marking World AIDS day in Zambia, one of the worst-hit nations.

"We appear to be losing the fight against AIDS at the moment. We need to redouble our efforts. This war has more casualties than any other war as we are losing three million people every year," Thompson said.

But there were glimmers of hope with a new U.N. plan set to roll drug treatment out to sufferers in the Third World.

"The WHO (World Health Organization) has pre-qualified a single pill... a simplified regimen which 20 countries will begin to use within the next six months. This will reduce the costs of AIDS drugs (per patient) to $300 a year," said WHO Director General Jong-Wook Lee.

About one in five adults in Zambia has HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, making it one of the worst affected countries in southern Africa, the epicenter of the pandemic.

The disease is devastating families, communities and economies across sub-Saharan Africa, which now has an estimated 26.6 million people with HIV/AIDS -- more than the rest of the world put together.

"We cannot leave Africa to fight this war alone -- everyone must be involved, this war must be fought by America, the European Union and everybody else," he said in the Victoria Falls tourist town of Livingstone, 375 km (235 miles) southwest of the Zambian capital Lusaka.

"I implore the business community especially to make it possible to garner more resources to help fight this war. The U.S. will take the fight against this war to every corner of the world," Thompson said.

He also pledged U.S. help to reduce transmission of HIV from mothers to children in Africa by at least 15 percent.

President Bush has promised a $15 billion, five-year plan to combat AIDS, especially in Africa.

But he came under fire from opponents and AIDS activists when he asked the House of Representatives, led by his own Republican party, for only $2 billion next year -- $1 billion less than expected for the program.

Bush has insisted he will find the full $15 billion.

Randall Tobias, Coordinator for the U.S. global fund on AIDS, said Washington intended to "... provide care for 10 million people and provide drugs to two million people as we expand the fight against HIV and AIDS.

In early November the U.S. ambassador in Lusaka announced a $350 million aid package over seven years to help fight AIDS and promote development in Zambia, whose struggling copper and cobalt-based economy leaves the country heavily dependent on foreign donors to fund key health programs and fight poverty.

In Livingstone, Thompson signed a five-year deal for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to help HIV care and prevention in Zambia, where lawmakers have recommended castrating child rapists to stem a tide of child rape cases exacerbated by a widespread belief that sex with a minor can cure AIDS.