News (Updated March 28,
2005)
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Under the new rules, announced Monday and effective immediately, those testing positive will be fired, Xinhua said, citing the text of the regulation.
But Wang Yinsheng, an official with the Yunnan AIDS Prevention Center, said health authorities wouldn't insist that those found to be infected be fired. They could instead be moved to jobs not involving contact with the public, he suggested.
The free tests are meant to identify people with HIV and AIDS in order to provide them with treatment and curb the disease's spread, said Wang.
"Identifying this special group of people helps to reduce the chance of spreading and helps them to get timely treatment," Wang said.
Those who test positive for HIV/AIDS or for venereal diseases would be denied a certificate of good health, without which they cannot legally work in the hospitality or service industries, Xinhua said.
Employees of hotels, bath houses, beauty salons, night clubs and other entertainment venues are covered by the rules, which appeared to be an implicit official recognition of the role such facilities play in the country's thriving sex industry.
Bordering on Southeast Asia's drug-producing Golden Triangle, Yunnan has China's second largest population of registered AIDS sufferers _ 18,000 according to official figures. The province has taken some of the country's most aggressive measures, including promoting condom use and clean needles and setting up AIDS centers.
Most of the 1 million people infected with HIV/AIDS in China became so through intravenous drug use, although unsanitary blood-buying schemes mainly in the central province of Henan _ the worst affected area _ accounted for large numbers as well.
Henan has also mandated AIDS tests for people in service industries.
China for years hid its AIDS outbreak but has become increasingly open amid warnings the disease is spreading from high-risk groups to the general population.
The U.N. AIDS agency says the number of infected people in China could rise to 10 million by 2010 unless urgent action is taken.
Since last year, health officials have offered a free AIDS test to anyone who wants one and free treatment for the poor. Health officials are also now encouraging pregnant women to be tested.
Despite the new openness, infection still carries a heavy stigma. Few AIDS sufferers have gone public and entire villagers have been shunned after residents were found to have contracted the disease.
Fri Mar 25, 2005 05:25 AM ET
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's health ministry has closed 147 illegal blood
collection agencies and arrested dozens of people since last May to prevent the
spread of the virus that causes AIDS, the Xinhua news agency said.
The central government had told local authorities to check blood collection and supply agencies more thoroughly to prevent illegal operations from resurfacing, it reported overnight.
China had hundreds of blood collection and supply agencies, Xinhua said, without specifying how many were illegal under a law passed in August 2004 banning the buying and selling of blood.
Blood stations in China are required to test for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
But tens of thousands were infected with HIV in central China in the 1990s through local blood sales schemes that involved state-run health clinics, indicating a failure to properly screen donors.
The ministry had set up a national task force to ensure a secure blood supply, Deputy Health Minister Ma Xiaowei was quoted as saying on Thursday.
"Thirty people were arrested and 15 others were jailed," Ma said, adding that another 86 blood collection agencies and more than 100 people had been punished in the crackdown.
China has been criticized for being slow to recognize its growing AIDS problem. The United Nations has said the country could have as many as 10 million cases in 2010 if the epidemic is not taken seriously.
At least 25,000 people, and perhaps as many as one million, in the central province of Henan were infected with HIV in the 1990s in blood-selling scandals that were initially covered up.
Villagers were paid to give blood that was pooled and the plasma extracted for hospitals. The remainder of the blood was then returned to donors, to avoid anemia, meaning that one infected donor could pass the AIDS virus to the others.
China, which recently has been raising the public profile of its fight against AIDS, says it has 840,000 HIV/AIDS cases. Experts believe the figure is more likely to be between one million and 1.5 million.
SINGAPORE, (AFP) - Singapore is drafting stiffer penalties against HIV/AIDS sufferers who knowingly have sex without informing partners about their condition, a senior health official said in remarks published.
Senior Minister of State for Health Balaji Sadasivan said the proposed changes to the Infectious Disease Act were necessary to stem the sharp rise of HIV/AIDS infection in the city-state.
Health statistics showed a record 311 people in Singapore contracted HIV last year, 28 percent more than in 2003."If a person is HIV-positive and engages in behaviour that is going to endanger another person, he has committed an offence," Balaji was quoted as saying in the Straits Times.
Under existing laws, HIV-positive sufferers can be jailed up to two years if they engage in sex and hide their health conditions from their partners. HIV is the virus that can lead to full-blown AIDS.
The stiffer penalties being drafted by the government will place the onus on sexually active persons to go for regular testing, Balaji said.
He said earlier this month the government may introduce legislation empowering health workers to ask HIV patients for information on their sexual partners.
Under existing regulations, HIV patients are not compelled to reveal the names of people they have been in sexual contact with.
Last year, the city-state included non-compulsory HIV testing as part of a routine medical checkup for pregnant women.
There are now more than 2,000 HIV-infected or confirmed AIDS patients in Singapore, which has a population of about 4.2 million people including resident foreigners.
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Wed Mar 23,11:01 AM ET
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SINGAPORE (AFP) - An application by a local gay Christian support group to hold a concert in April has been rejected because it will promote a homosexual lifestyle, a Singapore government agency said.
The Media Development Authority (MDA) said it made the decision after reviewing past performances of the main concert performers, a Los Angeles-based Christian gay couple named Jason and deMarco.
"Based on the duo's website and reports of their performances in the United States, it is assessed that their performance will promote a gay lifestyle which would be against the public interest," the MDA said in a statement.
"Their application has therefore been turned down."
Susan Tang, spokeswoman for the concert organiser Safehaven, told AFP the group had lodged an appeal with the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Lee Boon Yang, who oversees the MDA, for the decision to be overturned.
"We were not expecting a rejection... it was not pitched to be a gay concert," Tang said.
She said the aim of the concert, scheduled for April 3, was to raise funds for HIV/AIDS sufferers here and promote awareness of the illness.
"We have appealed to the minister... Until the minister gives the answer, we are still going ahead as planned," Tang said.
It was the latest setback for the city-state's gay community, which was alarmed recently when a senior health official said a sharp rise in new HIV infections could have been caused by an annual gay and lesbian party.
Senior Minister of State for Health, Balaji Sadasivan, said earlier this month that an epidemiologist suggested the rise may be linked to the annual Nation party on Sentosa island, a key date in Asia's gay festival calendar.
A record 311 people in Singapore contracted HIV last year, 28 percent more than in 2003, Balaji said. He said 90 percent of the people who contracted the virus last year were men, a third of them gay.
There are now more than 2,000 HIV-infected or confirmed AIDS patients in Singapore, which has a population of about 4.2 million people including resident foreigners.
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Fri Mar 25,12:10 PM ET
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TOKYO (AFP) - A Japanese court upheld a guilty verdict but declined to jail a former senior health official accused of killing two patients by failing to ensure HIV -free blood in the 1980s.
Akihito
Matsumura, 63, who headed the health ministry's biologics division from July
1984 to June 1986, had been given a one-year prison sentence suspended for two
years over one of the AIDS deaths in 2001.
Neither side was happy and both appealed the earlier ruling, with Matsumura seeking to be cleared in both cases and prosecutors wanting to convict him in the second death.
But the Tokyo High Court agreed with the District Court, saying that he was negligent in failing to stop the use of blood contaminated with HIV for a liver patient who was infected in April 1986 and later died.
But the judge ruled that Matsumura could not bear responsibility for the death of a haemophiliac who contracted HIV, the virus which leads to AIDS, during treatment in May or June 1985.
"Doctors were continuing to administer unheated blood products" at the time the haemophiliac was infected, the court ruled.
"It is difficult to say that Matsumura was then in a position to call for it to stop," it said.
Matsumura said the health official only knew about the risks of HIV from blood in 1987.
"It is only now that we can know about the risks," Matsumura said.
The widow of the liver patient AIDS victim, who died in 1995, told reporters on Thursday that her anger had grown as Matsumura did not recognize responsibility.
"My husband would not have become a victim if Matsumura had ordered the collection of and stopped sales of blood," she said.
"I want him to recognize (his crime) and apologize," she said.
International aid groups slammed India's passage on Wednesday of a new patent law that ends the decades-old practice of allowing domestic drug companies to make low-cost copies of expensive Western medicines, saying millions of poor people across the world will be affected.
The changes in patent rights stem from India's membership in the World Trade Organization, which enhances the country's participation in global trade but requires it to enforce stricter patent rules for its US$5 billion (3.8 billion) pharmaceutical industry.
International aid groups said the new law will curb the supply of cheap generic drugs to impoverished nations, threatening the survival of AIDS and cancer patients there.
Some 50 percent of 700,000 HIV patients taking antiretroviral medicines in Africa, Asia and Latin America rely on low-cost drugs from India. A month's dose of a generic AIDS drug cocktail costs US$30 (22), or 5 percent of similar drugs sold by Western producers.
"Because India is one of the world's biggest producers of generic drugs, this law will have a severe knock-on effect on many developing countries which depend on imported generic drugs from India," said Samar Verma, regional policy adviser at Oxfam International.
The Paris-based Doctors Without Borders described the Indian move as "the beginning of the end of affordable generics."
Multinational drug companies welcomed the decision.
It "will move India toward the patent mainstream and support and encourage innovation and investment in research and development in India," said Ranjit Sahani, managing director of Novartis India.
The bill was approved on Wednesday by Parliament's upper house. On Tuesday, it was ratified by the powerful lower house after the government agreed to last-minute changes demanded by leftist allies to placate fears that multinational companies could extend the duration of their patents indefinitely and gain dominance of India's market.
The amendments sought to tighten the definition of "new inventions" to prevent drug companies from winning new patents by making minor changes to existing drugs. The law also allows patents to be challenged even before they are granted _ a move opposed by multinationals but long demanded by the domestic industry.
Officials also allayed fears that the new law will push up prices of essential medicines. Jairam Ramesh, the governing Congress party's economic adviser, said more than 90 percent of essential medicines currently sold in the country are generic products with expired patents. Also, nothing in the new law prevents the government from setting caps on prices of new essential drugs in the future, Ramesh said.
Ellen 't Hoen of Doctors Without Borders, who led representatives from more than two dozen aid groups, said the bill was still vague in many respects and allowed for abuses by multinational companies.
"We are deeply disturbed and concerned that you are failing to listen to the voices of your people who have entrusted you with their welfare, not to mention the poor in the developing world who rely on affordable medicine from India," the aid groups said in a letter to Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the governing coalition.
A key concern relates to the government's ability to override patents on medicines that a large number of people need, but can't afford to buy. The bill says the government must wait at least three years before this is allowed, except in a national emergency.
Even though India has some 5.1 million HIV-infected people _ the second largest number after South Africa _ the disease is not seen as a national emergency, and Indian companies will therefore no longer be allowed to copy new inventions in AIDS treatment, Hoen said.
Another concern relates to royalties to be paid by generic producers to the companies holding patents for drugs. The new law doesn't set any cap on royalty rates, as is done in many countries in the West.
"TB is curable and yet over 1,000 Indians die of this disease every day. It remains one of the biggest challenges facing the country. We must ensure the entire country is covered under the Directly Observed Treatment Shortcourse (DOTS) by June 2005."
In its annual update, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that in 2003 -- the latest year for which figures are available -- there were around 8.8 million new cases of TB in the world. It said major progress has been made against TB in hard-hit Asian countries like India, but warned that in Africa infection rates had tripled in the last decade.
According to the report, India had achieved case detection rate of 72 percent and a treatment success rate of 86 percent.
The WHO estimated that 4.5 million Indians were living with TB in 2002.
"There has been major progress in China and India, which account for one third of the global TB burden. Both are leading the accelerated response to TB control by rapidly scaling up DOTS," it said.
The latest figures compiled by India's TB Control Programme show that four million people are living with TB in India.
The WHO report praised India's application of the DOTS strategy which seeks to improve detection of TB and combat the worsening problem of resistance to mainstream antibiotics.
"Indias DOTS programme is the fastest expanding programme and the largest in the world in terms of patients initiated on treatment. More than 100,000 patients are put on treatment every month," said S. Sahu from the WHO office in India.
However, health workers warned that people were still shying away from treatment due to discrimination and stigma.
"Workers are scared to get TB treatment because they fear their offices will ask them not to come to work as the disease is infectious," said S. Sarla, a patient who recovered from the disease and now runs a TB support group called "Saahasee" (Brave).
"It is a poor-man's disease and poor people cannot afford to lose their jobs," she added.
People living with HIV-AIDS in India urged the government to use the DOTS model for national AIDS programmes.
"With TB being the major cause of death among people living with AIDS, it is good news for us to know that free TB treatment is available out there," said Elango Ramachandar of the Indian Network of People Living with HIV-AIDS.
"We hope that the TB programme will serve as a model for the national AIDS control programme and make anti-retroviral drugs more easily available," he added.
Around 1.7 million people died of TB in 2003 around the world, including those co-infected with HIV, the WHO report said.
India which is plagued with AIDS cases accounts for 25 percent of the world's tuberculosis patients.
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Mon Mar 21,12:20 PM ET
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NAIROBI (AFP) - Scientists meeting in the Kenyan capital warned that Africa, a continent blighted by malaria and AIDS, is set to lose out on the benefits of genome research without adequate funding to facilitate further studies.
"Genome sequencing can help us solve the problems of HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, Africa's three killer diseases," the scientists said in a statement released here Monday.
"Though we should not neglect meningitis, pneumonia, diarrhoea, cholera, leprosy, the plague, sleeping sickness and other diseases that also take their toll," added the statement released by the South Africa-based Africa Genome Education Institute (AGEI), organisers of the four-day conference.
World researchers have made notable progress in mapping human genetic variations, a move that could lead to newer ways of making drugs against stubborn pathogens that have struck down humans and animals.
But less cash has been spent on research into malaria and tuberculosis, diseases that have ravaged much of the population in Africa for decades, the scientists said.
"Although public research funding has considerations other than profit maximisation, it is nevertheless the case that pneumonia, diarrhoea, tuberculosis and malaria, which together account for more than 20 percent of the disease burden of the world, receive less than one percent of the total public and private funds devoted to health research," they added.
The more than 100 scientists, including Nobel-winning virologist David Baltimore, said that in order to make headway, "it is the interaction between host and pathogen that have to be properly understood and remedies and interventions developed."
"The aim is to see how we can reduce the time-scale of delivery in what fundamentally remains a problem of science, and to concentrate the collective mind on a single momentous effort that makes a genuine difference," their statement added.
In 1998, out of the 70 billion dollars spent globally on health research, only 300 million went on vaccines for HIV/AIDS and 100 million on malaria research.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that more than a million people are killed by malaria each year, and at least 300 million acute cases of the disease occur annually, 90 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
But a study published early this month in the British weekly science journal Nature suggested that in 2002, 2.2 billion people -- more than a third of the world's population -- were potentially exposed to the pernicious malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum.
It puts the number of clinical infections at a "conservative" 515 million cases per year in a range of 300 million to 600 million, and says Southeast Asia accounts for about a quarter of the total. It does not attempt to give a death toll.
Of the 39.4 million people in the world living with AIDS or the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), nearly two-thirds -- 25.4 million -- live south of the Sahara, where food shortage and poverty is also acute.
Malaria and AIDS have a unique ability of wrecking the body's immune systems and much-needed vaccines are yet to be found, according to scientists.