News (Updated June 25, 2006)
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Mon Jun 19, 2006 05:43 PM ET
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Sarah Jane Porter, 42, was sentenced at Inner London Crown Court after admitting grievous bodily harm recklessly.
One of her victims, a 36-year-old man, said she did not reveal she was HIV positive and encouraged him into having unprotected sex.
In May 2005 he contacted police who tracked down some of Porter's lovers.
One of them, a 31-year-old man who was her lover for two years, is HIV positive.
Forensic tests, carried out during a year-long investigation by police, proved that Porter, from Kennington in south London, was the source.
Porter, who refused to help detectives track down her victims, deliberately led these men into a potentially lethal nightmare, said Detective Sergeant Brian McClusky of Brixton police.
"Once found, we were then introducing them (her victims) to a potential nightmare," McClusky said in a statement issued after the court hearing.
"It is hard to comprehend how or why Porter set about this deliberate chain of events. She gave us no help to identify potential victims throughout the investigation."
Deborah Jack, chief executive of the National AIDS Trust, said she had serious concerns about the way the Porter case had been investigated.
"The prospect of the police investigating the sexual history of people living with HIV in this speculative way is profoundly stigmatising, and appears to treat everyone with HIV as a potential criminal," Jack said in a statement.
Porter will serve half of her sentence in jail and the rest on licence.
Thu Jun 22, 2006 11:21 AM ET
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Abused Kenyan women, many of whom have little control over
their sexual encounters, are six times more likely to become infected with
HIV/AIDS than men of the same age, a United Nations report said on Thursday.
Kenya's HIV/AIDS prevalence rates have declined from 14 percent in 2000 to 7 percent in 2004, according to the government. The government attributes its success in part to a program advocating abstinence, faithfulness and condom use.
But in Kenya's traditionally patriarchal society, where violence against women is often ignored and sometimes condoned, women are unable to insist on such measures, the report by the UNAIDS Kenya office said.
"Many women and girls are simply not in a position to abstain from sex, rely on fidelity or negotiate condom use," Jane Kalweo, a UNAIDS program officer told Reuters.
The report said cultural practices like wife inheritance, where a widow is forced to marry to her dead husband's brother even if he died of AIDS, polygamy and early marriage were also to blame.
The report said myths like having sex with a virgin as a cure for HIV result in sexual abuse against younger girls.
Kenya's parliament recently passed new laws introducing more severe penalties for sexual offenders but rape within marriage is not recognized by the law.
The government says one woman is raped every 30 seconds, but the rate is believed to be higher since many rapes go unreported due to culture, stigma and a tradition of blaming the victim.
Mon Jun 19, 2006 01:45 PM ET
By Krittivas Mukherjee
MUMBAI (Reuters) - The Indian housewife is facing a "tremendous threat" from HIV/AIDS as age-old social customs and a lack of awareness restrict access to protection from sexually-transmitted infections, experts warned on Monday.
Recent studies carried out at clinics have revealed higher than expected HIV infection rates among groups of previously deemed low-risk women, such as monogamous housewives.
In India's deeply conservative and male-dominated society, women -- both married and engaged -- are prevented from actively protecting their health when it comes to sex, the research shows.
"We need to expand the focus to include married, monogamous women who may not perceive themselves to be at risk, but whose personal risk is inextricably linked to the behavior of their husbands," said Suniti Solomon, of the Y.R. Gaitonde Center for AIDS Research and Education, a leading center monitoring HIV/AIDS.
"As more and more women get infected, notions of risk group need to be redefined to more accurately assess potential for HIV infections."
The surveys show that a majority of HIV-infected women did not report a history of multiple partners, intravenous drug use or blood transfusions, and appear to have been infected through sex with their infected husbands.
Solomon's organization recently reported that in a study of 3,357 women more than 85 percent of those who tested positive had a single sexual partner.
Experts say the Indian housewife's perception of the HIV risk she is facing, and even her awareness of HIV/AIDS, may be low since traditionally intervention programs have targeted high-risk populations, such as sex workers and drug users.
"The housewife is under tremendous threat. It is now an established fact in the high prevalence states. But we know nothing about the low prevalence states," said Akhila Sivadas, executive director of Center for Advocacy and Research.
Last Month, UNAIDS, the U.N.'s AIDS prevention agency, said there were an estimated 5.7 million Indians living with the deadly virus at the end of 2005, more than in any other country and ahead of South Africa's 5.5 million cases.
But the Indian authorities have dismissed the figure, saying the number of infections stood at an estimated 5.2 million.
Experts say the number of people infected could quadruple within five years and the World Bank warns HIV/AIDS will become the single largest killer in India unless there is more progress on prevention.
Thu Jun 22, 3:02 PM ET
A South African court ruled that 13 HIV-positive prisoners demanding free antiretroviral drugs in line with a government scheme launched in 2003 should be put on treatment immediately.
A lawyer representing the prisoners from Westville jail said the Durban High Court judge Thumba Pillay had ordered that all the prisoners "and anybody else in a similar situation should be put on treatment at once."
"We basically got everything that we asked for," said Jonathan Berger from the AIDS Law Project (ALP), which along with the Treatment Action Campaign -- the country's main AIDS lobby group -- had championed the case of the prisoners.
Berger said the state would have to submit an affidavit on July 7 to underline "the measures it has taken in line with the order."
South Africa has one of the world's biggest AIDS caseloads with about six million people -- approximately 15 percent of the population -- infected with the virus, according to the health ministry.
Some 130,000 people are receiving free ARV treatment under the scheme launched by the government at the end of 2003.
Scores of prisoners staged a two-day hunger strike at Durban's Westville prison in late March to press demands for treatment.
The prisoners' lawyers had underlined that 78 prisoners in Durban's Westville jail had died of AIDS since 2005 and said that all the applicants were seriously ill and urgent need of treatment.
Wed Jun 21, 8:50 AM ET
A Japanese court has ruled that drugmakers and the state were responsible for transmitting hepatitis C through a tainted medical product, and awarded damages to nine people with the disease.
It was the first ruling in a number of court cases filed by hepatitis C carriers across Japan.
The Osaka District Court Wednesday ordered the government and Mitsubishi Pharma Corp. to pay a total of 256.3 million yen (2.24 million dollars) to nine plaintiffs, although it turned down claims by four others.
The plaintiffs said they contracted the potentially fatal disease, which attacks the liver, when they were given contaminated fibrinogen, which forms clots to stop bleeding.
All but one of the plaintiffs were women treated with the product when they gave birth. Ten of the 13 plaintiffs have since shown symptoms of the disease.
Presiding judge Toshitsugu Nakamoto ruled that the drugmaker, then called Green Cross Corp., was responsible for the nine who were infected after August 1985, the date that the risks became known. He rejected damages for the four who contracted the virus before the date.
He also said the state was responsible for failing to stop use of the product.
But plaintiffs did not welcome the ruling with open arms.
"The ruling recognizes the responsibility of the state but it also draws the line late" on when risks were known, said Satoko Kuwata, one of the few plaintiffs who revealed her identity.
"The ruling was not anything we can accept without reservation," she said.
Yoshiaki Yamanishi, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said: "With the ruling handed out, which clearly recognizes the state's responsibility, we want to directly negotiate with the health minister."
The hepatitis C carriers in the case represent only the tip of the iceberg. More than 280,000 people are estimated to have been administered with fibrinogen -- produced and sold by the company with the state's certificate -- after 1980. At least 10,000 of those are said to have contracted the disease.
The first case was filed against the drugmaker and the government in 2002. Since then more than 90 people have joined as plaintiffs in four other major cities including Tokyo.
The tainted blood product was widely used at Japanese hospitals until 1988 even though the US government had informed the public of the danger and retracted its certificate in 1977.
Green Cross Corp. was hit by a series of scandals due to its HIV- and hepatitis C-tainted products and was rescued through a merger.
The Japanese Supreme Court last week awarded damages to five people who said they had contracted hepatitis B because needles were reused in a government immunization program.
Tue Jun 20, 11:33 AM ET
The Irish government has paid out 660 million euros (830 million dollars) in legal fees and compensation so far to some 2,000 victims of a contaminated blood scandal, the health ministry has said.
Most of the victims are women who were infected with Hepatitis C when they received a tainted blood product during pregnancy.
A government-funded Hepatitis C and HIV compensation tribunal headed by a senior judge has been hearing claims on a continuous basis since 1996.
About 1,000 of the victims were recipients of an Anti-D blood product and 700, mainly kidney patients and haemophiliacs, received blood transfusions.
The remainder were secondary claimants or dependents who are entitled to claim under a range of headings including loss of consortium, loss of society and carer's expenses.
There are additional healthcare costs of approximately 15 million euros a year.
Deputy Prime Minister Mary Harney, who is also the health minister, said the infection of people with contaminated blood products was "catastrophic" for them, as she announced an assistance scheme for victims seeking insurance.
"While no monetary support or compensation can ever repair the damage done, Ireland is doing as much, and more, for victims compared with other countries in similar circumstances," she said Tuesday.
"Since 1997, it has been clear that infected people's inability to buy life assurance or mortgage protection policies added further problems to the damage they had already suffered."
In 1997, a report of a sworn judicial inquiry found a "catalogue of failures, neglect and inadequacies" in the operation of the then Irish Blood Transfusion Service Board.
Then health minister Michael Noonan described the blood scandal as one of the worst in Ireland's history.