LONDON (Reuters) - Companies around the world are
becoming increasingly concerned about AIDS, with 46 percent now expecting some
impact on their operations in the next 5 years, according to a study released on
Wednesday.News (Updated January 15,
2006)
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Thu Jan 12, 10:33 AM ET
Two Chinese women with HIV/AIDS were beaten by police with electric batons after demanding the release of a fellow hospital patient arrested for complaining about his stipend.
The women were left with bruises on their bodies after the incident at the People's Hospital in Dehui city, Jilin province, witnesses and a rights group said Thursday.
The three were among 25 people infected with HIV when the hospital used unsafe and unscreened blood for transfusions in 2003, according to the Beijing-based AIDS rights group Aizhixing Institute.
The hospital had agreed to treat them and pay them a daily stipend of 15 yuan (nearly two dollars) after infecting them.
However on Wednesday the patients had failed to receive the money for two days, and Liu Bingzhu demanded to see the director.
When the director refused to see him, Liu switched off the hospital's electricity in anger and officials called the police.
Liu was arrested by about 30 riot police who also beat the female patients when they complained.
About 10 of the patients on Thursday submitted a petition to the provincial legislature in Changchun city demanding Liu's release and punishment for the riot police.
"What they did was illegal. They're discriminating against patients," said one of the group, Wang Shuhong, who also called for the patients to be transferred to another hospital.
"We got this disease from this hospital. How can they make us stay here? How can we have confidence in the treatment?"
Six health officials in Dehui were stripped of their posts or placed on probation over the infections, state media had reported.
Thousands of people were believed to have been infected with HIV/AIDS by transfusions and unscreened blood, and many victims do not know they are carrying the disease.
Fri Jan 13, 2006 8:34 AM GMT
By Jamie McGeever
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton announced on Thursday an initiative with nine drug companies he said would cut the cost of HIV/AIDS testing and treatment in 50 developing countries and help save hundreds of thousands of lives.
The agreement between the Clinton Foundation and the drug companies aims to halve the cost of HIV/AIDS diagnosis and lower the price tag of second-line anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs by 30 percent or more.
"This is only the first step," Clinton said. "We expect to lower the cost of more second-line drugs later this year."
Clinton said the deal with the nine companies was a "step in the right direction" but admitted he would like to see more of the world's biggest drug companies on board. The deal Clinton announced involves smaller companies.
"This agreement today can help to save hundreds of thousands" of lives, Clinton said.
First-line drugs are used in the earliest stage of treatment. When patients become resistant to first-line treatment, more-expensive second-line drugs are given.
Some quarter of a million people already benefit from first-line treatment resulting from Clinton Foundation agreements announced in 2003, the former president said.
Clinton said up to 1 million people could receive first-line treatment at reduced cost through the new initiative by the end of the year.
"You're going to see an enormous explosion in 2006," Clinton said about the number of people receiving ARV treatment.
He said 40 million people are infected with HIV/AIDS and 8,000 people die from the disease every day.
Four companies - Chembio Diagnostics Inc, Orgenics, a subsidiary of Inverness Medical Innovations, Qualpro Diagnostics and Shanghai Kehua - will offer rapid HIV/AIDS testing at half the current cost and provide results within 20 minutes.
He said cutting the cost of the rapid tests would save "tens of millions of dollars" over the next four years.
Another four companies - Cipla, Ranbaxy, Strides Arcolab and Aspen Pharmacare - will offer the first-line drug Efavirenz, with ingredients supplied by Matrix Laboratories, at below-market rates. Cipla will also provide the second-line drug Abacavir at lower cost.
The drug firms involved will lower drugs costs by improving and modernizing the production process, moving production to countries with lower labour costs and reducing profit margins while increasing the volume of output, he said.
Over 90 percent of HIV carriers are unaware they are infected, so raising AIDS awareness is a fundamental priority, Clinton said.
Clinton cited the African country Lesotho, where every child under the age of 12 is now being tested, as an example of the progress that has been made in raising AIDS awareness.
The Clinton Foundation provides access to reduced prices for drugs and testing in 50 developing countries, and works with directly with 20 governments in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia in the fight against the disease.
Wed Jan 11, 2006 11:17 PM GMT
By Ben Hirschler
LONDON (Reuters) - Companies around the world are
becoming increasingly concerned about AIDS, with 46 percent now expecting some
impact on their operations in the next 5 years, according to a study released on
Wednesday.
That is a marked increase on the 37 percent of respondents who foresaw an impact in the same survey a year ago.
Professor David Bloom of Harvard School of Public Health, lead author of the report by the World Economic Forum (WEF), said deepening corporate concern matched the growing scale of the epidemic in many countries.
"It's in managers' faces now. Staff are getting sick, more are off work to attend funerals and it's getting harder to operate businesses," he told reporters during a briefing in London.
With an estimated 40.3 million people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide and a record 4.9 million new infections last year, the disease has the potential to cripple economies and decimate workforces, hitting the bottom line of many businesses.
Yet although nearly half the 11,000 corporate leaders in 117 countries surveyed recognised that HIV/AIDS would hurt their business in future, only 9 percent had conducted a quantitative risk assessment.
Furthermore, it is only in regions where HIV prevalence exceeds 1 in 5 of the population that the majority of firms have formal HIV/AIDS policies in place. Where the incidence is lower, only 20 percent of companies have enacted policies, and these are likely to be informal.
Francesca Boldrini, director of the WEF's Global Health Initiative, said better workplace programmes were needed and she urged more companies to draw up clear plans to prevent and treat the sexually transmitted disease.
Standard Chartered <STAN.L>, a bank with major operations in sub-Saharan Africa, is one company that has already done so.
Richard Meddings, the group's executive director responsible for risk assessment, said there had simply been no choice.
Standard Chartered calculates that more than 10 percent of its Kenyan employees are off work every day as a result of AIDS, either because they are sick, are caring for relatives or are attending a funeral.
Meddings said it was a similar story in other parts of Africa where the company has operations.
Coping with the challenge of AIDS and other diseases -- including the growing threat posed by bird flu -- will be a theme of the WEF annual meeting later this month in Davos, Switzerland.
NEW DELHI
(Reuters) - Gay activists held a rare and noisy protest in the Indian capital
on Thursday demanding the release of four men arrested for homosexuality and
running an online gay club.
Homsexuality is banned in India under a 19th century law but is prevalent undercover.
About two dozen gay men and women and their supporters gathered outside the New Delhi
The protesters from the largely closetted gay community waved banners and placards which read: "My sexuality, My right," "Queer and Proud," and "I am a man. I love a man. That's my only crime".
"The entire case is fabricated," said Gautam Bhan, a gay rights activist. "None of the men were having public sex. They have been arrested simply because they are homosexual."
Human rights and anti-AIDS groups have slammed the arrests saying such discrimination will hurt the fight against HIV/AIDS.
"Criminalisation of people most at risk of HIV infection may increase stigma and discrimination, ultimately fuelling the AIDS epidemic," UNAIDS India coordinator Denis Broun told Reuters.
India has 5.1 million people with HIV/AIDS, the second largest number after South Africa.
New York-based Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, protesting against the arrests.
"Lucknow police have a shameful record of harassing gay men as well as non-governmental organisations that work with them," said Human Rights Watch official Scott Long in a statement.
In a similar incident in 2001, Long said, police in Lucknow raided the offices of two non-government organisations working on HIV/AIDS prevention and arrested four staff.
They were accused of running a gay sex racket. An outcry by activists led to their release after a month.
VEIL OF SECRECY
India's gay community is trying to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding homosexuality in a nation where public hugging or kissing among heterosexuals invites angry stares and lewd comments.
"I am queer and I know how difficult it is," said Pramado Menon. "We have to hide our lives."
In the past year, three lesbian couples have hit the headlines as they struggled to stay together despite public pressure for them to split up.
Although activists have been pressing for the scrapping of the anti-homosexuality law, the government said last year society was not ready to accept legalised homosexual behaviour.
By SERGIO DE LEON, Associated Press WriterWed Jan 11, 5:20 PM ET
Roman Catholic priests in a Colombian town are furious over a councilman's proposal that people 14 and older must carry a condom at all times to reduce unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.
William Pena, a councilman in Tulua, said Wednesday he will present a formal proposal requiring all men and women — even those just on a visit to the town — to carry at least one condom. Those caught empty-pocketed could be fined $180 or ordered to take a safe sex course, he said.
"Sexual relations are going on constantly," Pena told The Associated Press in an interview. "If you carry a condom, chances are you'll use it during the day. It's not going to be there forever."
Tulua has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in Colombia, he said. The proposal will be debated by other town leaders and could go into effect by March.
Roman Catholic priests in the Cauca Valley town, 150 miles southwest of Bogota, were fuming over the plan.
The Rev. Jesus Velasquez said it would only encourage sexual relations and ridiculed it as absurd. "I would have to have a condom even though I'm a member of the clergy," he was quoted as saying in the newspaper El Tiempo.
Another town priest, the Rev. Roberto Sarmiento, said improved sex education would be a better solution.
"Nobody can force someone to carry a condom in their pocket," he said. "They should instead carry the responsibility of what sexual relations mean."
Ramiro Cano, a 19-year-old laborer in Tulua, said Wednesday the proposal was the talk of the town and most young people he talked to support it.
"I try to always carry a condom on me, especially if I go to a discotheque, in case I can pick someone up," Cano said.
The proposal is perhaps the most radical in a series of pro-condom efforts across Colombia, where 190,000 people are infected with the HIV virus, a figure only surpassed in Latin America by Brazil, according to the World Health Organization.
The capital city of Bogota handed out more than 2 million free condoms last year as part of a campaign titled "Use it instinctively — make yourself sexy."
In the city of Tunja, where 17 percent of all pregnancies last year were to women under 18 years of age, condom dispensers will be installed in bars and movie theaters starting in February.