News (Updated November 13, 2005)
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Around 30 people who
contracted HIV from tainted blood transfusions were briefly detained by
police in central China after they tried to submit a petition to the
government.
The detainees were among a group of about 50 people from the province of
Henan who travelled to the provincial capital Zhengzhou in hopes of
submitting a letter to Vice Premier Wu Yi, whom they thought would be
attending an AIDS conference there.
The conference, which opened on Monday, is being attended by about 500
people, including officials from the Ministry of Health and UNAIDS, the UN's
office dealing with HIV/AIDS.
Wu, who was the first high-ranking central government official to visit
villages stricken by AIDS, was not actually at the conference which is
sponsored by China's cabinet or State Council, said Beijing-based AIDS
activist Wan Yanhai.
"The meeting is being held in the Huangheying Hotel. Some people who
got HIV/AIDS from transfusions were hoping to hand the letter to Wu Yi but
police found them at motels the night before and sent most of them
home," Wan said.
However one infected woman, Li Xige, 38, said she and around 10 others
remained in the capital and were still trying to reach participants at the
hotel.
"We want the government to admit many people got HIV/AIDS from blood
transfusions. The courts won't accept the cases," said Li, who has been
trying for a year to persuade the local courts to take up her lawsuit.
"Until the courts accept the cases, we cannot receive
compensation."
The postal worker said she became infected when a doctor gave her a
transfusion during childbirth.
Another Beijing-based activist Hu Jia told AFP by telephone that he was
also detained by Zhengzhou city police Monday. He remained in detention on
Monday evening.
Henan province is the center of a scandal involving many farmers who got
the disease from selling blood in government-approved blood collection
stations from the 1990s.
The government has admitted the problem after years of denial and is now
providing free drugs for those affected, many of whom are poor farmers.
Less is known about people who contracted HIV/AIDS from transfusions but
Wan said the figure could be high. Blood used in hospitals at the time was
sourced from the collection stations.
China has begun to clean up its supply only in the last few years. Even
now some rural hospitals prefer to buy blood from farmers instead of
purchasing from blood banks which test their supplies.
In the letter to Wu the victims made 16 demands, among them appeals for
better health care, drugs with less side-effects, help in paying living
expenses and punishment for those responsible for the mistakes.
"Severely punish the corrupt officials in Henan province... crack
down on hospitals with no conscience," said a copy of the letter faxed
to AFP.
More than 50,000 people
flocked to the opening day of a racy sex festival in southern China in a
sign the conservative nation is shedding its sexual taboos, state media
reported.
The three-day event, which began on Saturday in the southern province of
Guangzhou, featured lingerie shows and adult toy exhibitions as experts and
local authorities sought to convey information about the dangers of unsafe
sex.
"Holding this festival shows the mainland is open and bold about
sex," said Xu Tianmin, president of the China Sexology Association, a
sponsor of the Third (Guangzhou) Sex Culture Festival, according to the
China Daily.
Other cities are planning similar festivals. Shijiazhuang, the capital of
Hebei Province in north China, is next in line to host such an event, the
paper said.
Experts worry that sex education in China has fallen behind over the past
25 years as economic development changed people's attitudes about sex.
In one of many recent studies, the average age of first sexual experience
for most Chinese had dropped to 18 from 22 only a few years ago, the
newspaper said, citing a survey by global condom manufacturer Durex.
Xu said a lack of classroom education and general ignorance about safe
sex was one reason that HIV/AIDS and venereal diseases were spreading in
China.
The government estimates China has 840,000 HIV-positive cases, although a
new survey is now being carried out.
About 30 percent have been infected through unsafe sex, and that figure
has been rising steadily, prompting calls from health experts for
100-percent condom use programs throughout China.
The United Nations has warned that China may be on the brink of an AIDS
epidemic, with potentially 10 million HIV-positive people by the end of the
decade.
LONDON (AFP) - Doctors urged a British man to come forward for further tests
after he claimed to have become the first person in the world to shake off the
HIV virus.
Andrew Stimpson was diagnosed as HIV-positive in August 2002 but tests 14
months later showed the virus had completely disappeared from his body,
according to hospital officials.
The 25-year-old, from Largs on Scotland's west coast, told two British
newspapers he felt special and blessed to have been "cured" and
pledged to help medics in their fight against the condition, which usually leads
to AIDS.
"It's so amazing to think that one day I was staring death in the face
and now I am waving it goodbye," Stimpson told the News of the World.
But doctors at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London who carried out
the initial tests on Stimpson's blood, were more cautious Sunday, stopping short
of saying he had been given the all-clear.
"I can confirm that he has a positive and a negative test," said a
spokeswoman. "I can't confirm with you that he's shaken it off, that he's
been cured.
"When we became aware of his HIV-negative result, we offered him further
tests to help us investigate and find an explanation. So far he has declined to
do so."
She added: "We urge him, for the sake of himself and the HIV community,
to come in and get tested."
On hearing of the negative results, Stimpson told newspapers he considered
suing the hospital for bungling the initial test.
But he received a letter from the hospital last month stating there was no
case to answer. An investigation had confirmed the blood in all the samples was
his and there were no mix-ups.
"Those tests are both accurate, the positive and a negative. They are
correct," said the hospital spokeswoman.
The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported that in two previous cases of so-called
"spontaneous clearance", it was impossible to prove that both the
positive and negative tests had come from the same person.
Stimpson was all the more surprised, given that on hearing he had tested HIV
positive, he gave up safe sex with his infected boyfriend, 44-year-old Juan
Gomez.
"I have no idea how I got rid of the virus," he told the News of
the World. "I was just taking daily supplements to keep myself as healthy
as possible so as not to get full-blown AIDS.
"But maybe it's all down to some genetics in my immune system -- so it's
important for me to help with research because it can be a big step forward
towards a cure for everyone."
He told the Mail on Sunday: "I can't help wondering if I hold the cure
for AIDS. There are 34.9 million people with HIV and if I have something to
contribute, then I am willing and ready to help."
Doctor George Kinghorn, an HIV specialist at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital
in Sheffield, described Stimpson's case as highly unusual.
"If we can better understand what happened inside Andrew's body, it
could prove to be a step towards a breakthrough in beating the HIV virus,"
he told the News of the World.
Stimpson first went for tests in May 2002 after feeling weak and feverish.
They came back negative. However, the virus can take three months to appear in
the blood after contraction.
Tests in August that year found an exceptionally low level of HIV
anti-bodies.
Because he was in the early stages, he did not require medication, but
doctors were surprised by his continuing good health.
Repeat tests in October 2003 and ever since have come back negative.
Wednesday November 9, 11:52 AM
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP)
- Women and children are the most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS and failure to
protect their legal rights is exposing them to the disease, experts said at an
international convention for women lawyers.
The convention heard that the prevalence of HIV/AIDS was increasing among
women, with the burden of the pandemic greatest in sub-Saharan Africa where
many women are unaware of their rights.
"In most parts of Africa, girls and women face particular risks of HIV
infection due
to their disadvantaged physical, economic and legal positions and social
status," Nigerian lawyer Victoria Awomolo told the International
Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA).
"Women cannot negotiate for safe sex or say no to unfaithful partners.
Monogamous married women are powerless against infection by husbands with
outside partners. To worsen their situation, economic dependency prevents
women from leaving unsafe sexual relationships," she said.
Rights extend to protection from sexual violence such as rape, physical
abuse and discrimination, as well as property rights, said experts.
"If you protect women's legal rights, you go a long way towards
protecting them from HIV," said Marina Mahathir, president of the
Malaysian AIDS Council and daughter of the former premier.
"The point is to reduce violence against women as a whole using legal
means, and that would by and large also reduce women's vulnerability to HIV
through violence," she said.
While women have been traditionally disadvantaged through cultural
practices in many African countries, experts said the HIV/AIDS crisis
highlighted the urgent need to reform laws to help women and children.
The general secretary of FIDA in Uganda, Lorna Juliet Amujojo, said
discriminatory cultural practices such as "widow inheritance" --
where women whose husbands die are "inherited" by their
brothers-in-law -- were still continuing.
Other practices, such as raping women and children who are virgins in the
belief it will cure HIV/AIDS, are also unabated, she said.
"There is this cultural belief that if you defile a small child who is
still a virgin, you will get healed of HIV/AIDS," Amujojo said.
"That is a myth and it is actually a very destructive cultural
practice which the law even in southern Africa has not been able to deal with
because of the loopholes in their criminal law."
The five-day conference which started Monday brings together 200 delegates
from 25 countries and hopes to highlight the plight of victims, particularly
women and girls, and promote gender rights.
Libya said a row over Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death in the north
African country for infecting children with the HIV virus is an issue that
must be settled legally rather than politically.
"It is a legal problem which has nothing to do with politics,"
Libyan Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem said on a visit to Croatia, stressing
ties between Libya and Bulgaria would remain strong.
Tripoli has come under mounting pressure recently from the United States
and Europe to release the five Bulgarian nurses who along with a Palestinian
doctor face death by firing squad in Libya.
The six were found guilty in May 2004 of knowingly injecting 426 children
with blood tainted with the AIDS-causing HIV virus at a hospital in
Benghazi, northern Libya. Of 380 children who were infected, 47 have died.
"I assure you that there is no political basis for the problem. It
is a humanitarian problem," Ghanem told journalists in Zagreb after
meeting with Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader.
"It is not a problem concerning the nurses but rather of 400
children who were infected."
The six appealed the death sentence on the basis of testimony by medical
experts who said the AIDS epidemic was caused by poor hospital hygiene long
before the arrival of the foreign workers.
Libya's Supreme Court was expected to make a ruling Tuesday on whether to
uphold the death sentences or to order a retrial.
"The case is before an independent court. We are awaiting the
court's ruling and then we will discuss it further," Ghanem said in
Zagreb, without elaborating.
However Ghanem's comments came as Bulgarian press cited Western diplomats
in Tripoli as saying that a political solution to the issue could be found
if the court actually upheld the sentences.
"Despite its initial horror effect ... (it) is indeed the best
option for the Bulgarians since it will open possibilities for political
negotiations between Tripoli on the one hand, and Sofia, Brussels and
Washington, on the other," said the Dnevnik newspaper.
Meanwhile, Bulgaria's government said it would not pay any compensation
to secure the release of the nurses even though it felt sympathy for the
infected children and their families.
"This is not acceptable for us. You pay if you are guilty and that
is not the case with the nurses," Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivaylo
Kalfin said earlier in Sofia.
The Libyan government said last December that the six convicts could be
freed if the victims' families were offered compensation equal to that paid
by Tripoli to relatives killed in the 1988 bombing of a passenger jet over
the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
Bulgaria refused, a position that still holds as the appeal ruling nears.
According to a report in Arabic daily last week, another option the
Libyan government is considering in a bid to settle the row is to scrap the
death penalty.
Tripoli was "about to announce the abolishment of capital punishment
to pave the way for commuting the sentences," the London-based Asharq
Al-Awsat said at the time, citing Arab diplomats close to the Libyan
government.
The newspaper said the deal would involve financial compensation through
a fund financed by the Bulgarian and Libyan governments, as well as
charities.
The European Union, the Council of Europe, and the United States have
lobbied intensively for the release of the doctor and nurses.
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