Oct05-2

China reports 126,808 HIV infection cases (more added)

BEIJING, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) -- By the end of June 2005, China has reported 126,808 people infected with HIV, including 28,789 AIDS patients.

The death toll of HIV/AIDS had reached 7,375, according to Hao Yang, deputy head of the disease control department with the Ministry of Health on Friday.

Hao revealed the figures at a press briefing on the preparation of a government-organized evening show, as publicity of the 18th World AIDS Day which falls on December 1.

In March this year, vice health minister Wang Longde said that by the end of 2004, China had reported 106,990 people infected with HIV, including 23,955 patients, but the figures only accounted for 12.7 percent of the total infected.

This year's World AIDS Day highlights participation of governments, organizations and individuals in fighting HIV/AIDS, said Hao, noting that the Chinese government has been exerting efforts in the fight.

The evening show, initiated by the Ministry of Health and jointly held by a group of government departments, will stage around November 25. Each of the annual shows in past three years have had sound effect, he said.

Some international organizations also have sponsored the show, including the United Nations Children's Fund, the World Health Organization and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS.

Experts estimate that China now has 840,000 people infected with HIV including 80,000 AIDS patients. The number of people living with HIV/AIDS in China is predicted to exceed 10 million by 2010 if no strong measures are taken.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS

Monday October 10, 12:53 PM

China gays under pressure to stay in the closet

Attitudes towards heterosexual relationships have relaxed since China began Western-style market reforms in 1978, unleashing a boom in extramarital sex which the Communist Party has blamed on liberal, bourgeois mores imported from the West.

But few of the "official number" of 30 million homosexuals among China's 1.3 billion people were open about their sexual orientation, the China Daily said.

Pressure on gays to keep silent came less from society at large than from families, driven by traditional beliefs that homosexuality is amoral, the newspaper said.

"On the mainland, 80 to 90 percent of homosexuals are prepared to marry or have married the opposite sex," Professor Gao Yanning was quoted as saying. He did not elaborate.

To try to shatter common stereotypes about homosexuals, Shanghai's prestigious Fudan University had launched two courses on homosexual health and research, the first of their kind at the school, the China Daily said.

"We hope to help people change their mentality, to begin to see the world from varying perspectives and take a more tolerant attitude towards the outside world," Gao was quoted as saying.

Many Chinese associated homosexuality with HIV/AIDS, fears of which ran so strong that some people refused to go to hospitals they believed had treated AIDS patients, the newspaper said.

Gao blamed widespread misunderstanding of HIV/AIDS and homosexuality on a lack of education.

China was slow to acknowledge its HIV/AIDS problem and rights groups say AIDS activists still regularly face harassment, censorship and other persecution.

The government claims to only have 840,000 HIV/AIDS cases nationwide, while the United Nations has warned the country could have 10 million cases by 2010 unless urgent action is taken.

Wednesday October 12, 4:43 PM

Swaziland's AIDS orphans battle drought, hunger

"It was last year sometime. My brother brought home a big bag of rice and potatoes as a special treat," he said in a timid whisper during lunch break at his school in this remote village.

Hungry, frightened and with his trousers gaping at the knee, Qciniso is one of tiny Swaziland's 80,000 children orphaned by HIV/AIDS and lives in one of the driest regions, where drought has left most households hungry for a fifth consecutive year.

Like much of southern Africa, Swaziland is facing yet another food crisis after poor rains. Children like Qciniso, with no parents to grow maize or buy food, are the main victims.

Crop yields in Swaziland this year were nowhere near as disastrous as in Malawi and other countries in the region.

But shortages in this country of 1 million people have been exacerbated by Swaziland's HIV/AIDS rate, the highest in the world at some 40 percent of adults, which is killing farmers and workers and leaving armies of hungry children and pensioners.

"The breadwinners are dying," said Abdoulaye Balde, head of the U.N. World Food Programme in Swaziland, squashed between South Africa and Mozambique. "Even if the drought ceased, we would have only the old and the orphans to produce food."

WFP says around a quarter of people need food aid and half of Swazis experience hunger at some point during the year.

At Qciniso's school in Kutsimleni, almost half of the 700 children have no parents and nearly a fifth eat nothing but the sole cup of rice and soup their school provides at lunch time.

"I eat at school but sometimes there is nothing at home -- no mealie meal (maize) because of the drought, nothing," said 16-year-old Ncamiso Myambi, who walks 7 km (4 miles) to school every day on an empty stomach.

Aid workers fear lack of water could provoke a cholera outbreak. In the parched, low-lying plains of central and eastern Swaziland, hundreds queue alongside dried up streams as early as 5 a.m. to draw murky brown water, littered with animal faeces, from holes dug deep into the mud.

"There has been no rain here since last summer," says 61-year-old Elisabeth Mabaso who tramps across the brown, shrivelled fields twice a day to fetch water.

Aid workers and the government say poor rains are not new, but that five years of drought and the merciless spread of HIV are slowly whittling away this tiny country's capacity to cope.

Some aid workers privately blame the king, sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch who is lambasted by opponents for indulging a penchant for multiple wives and flash cars while his subjects either die of AIDS or suffer in abject poverty.

Aid workers say that while Swazis are much better off than the starving people of Niger in West Africa, where TV footage of emaciated children stunned the West into action, Swaziland is stuck in a vicious cycle of hunger, poverty and sickness.

"It is a small country, so we are not getting to the starvation and death stage," said WFP's Balde. "The issue is breaking out of the cycle of hunger, dependency and HIV."

WFP and other NGOs hope to work with traditional chiefs to revive a centuries-old community redistribution scheme that would care for the most vulnerable. It is also lobbying the government to stop the state-owned maize-importing company from fixing prices at rates too pricey for ordinary people.

In the meantime, although widespread famine is unlikely, hundreds of thousands like Qciniso struggle through their day on the equivalent of two bowls of rice.

"This has been happening for five years and it's only getting worse," said Sibongile Hlophe, secretary general for Swaziland's branch of the Red Cross.

GENEVA, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Rates of HIV infection in Zimbabwe have fallen to around 20 percent of the population from 25 percent five years ago, apparently due to more condom use and fewer sex partners, the UNAIDS agency said on Tuesday.

"UNAIDS sees the evidence of decline as encouraging, but underlines that the challenge now is to ensure that the downward trend in Zimbabwe is sustained," it said in a brief statement posted on its website www.unaids.org.

Its preliminary review of epidemiological and behavioural data will be officially published in December as soon as final data is incorporated, the statement said.

"From 1-in-4 people being infected, the declines mean this is now roughly 1-in-5," said UNAIDS spokeswoman Beth Magne-Watts.

The HIV prevalence rate among pregnant women has declined to 21.3 percent last year from 24.6 percent in 2002, UNAIDS said.

"Other research suggests a decline in the prevalence rate over the past five years," it said.

Review of the data suggested several elements of behaviour change may have played a part.

"It appears as if there could have been a reduction in the reported number of sexual partners in recent years and an increase in condom use with non-regular partners," it said.

Group: Africa Turns Back on AIDS Kids

By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS, Associated Press WriterMon Oct 10, 7:44 PM ET

Governments, schools and communities are turning their backs on the education needs of children affected by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, an international rights organization said Monday.

More than 12 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and more than a third of them are not in school, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report. The group said lack of education puts children at risk of sexual exploitation, unemployment and hazardous labor — as well as becoming infected with HIV themselves.

"It is part of the cruel logic of the AIDS epidemic that when parents become sick or die, it reduces their children's access to education, which in turn makes them more vulnerable to HIV," the report said. "Governments must do far more to break this cycle."

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to more than 25 million of the nearly 40 million people around the world infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. More than 2.2 million people died of AIDS-related illnesses in the region in 2004 — most of them parents.

When Kenneth Kyambadde's father died three years ago in Uganda, he was left responsible for three of his 10 siblings. The children take turns going to school based on how much money the 17-year-old can scrape together selling fuel on the black market.

Now his mother is also ailing and Kyambadde wonders if he will ever graduate from university, where he is studying accounting.

"I am going through this nightmare and I do not know whether I will succeed, and yet I cannot leave my helpless mother alone," the solemn, wide-eyed youth told The Associated Press. "I am a child as well as a parent and there is nothing I can do about it."

The 57-page Human Rights Watch report was based on interviews with dozens of children affected by AIDS and their caregivers in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda in June.

It found that many children are dropping out of school to care for terminally ill parents and younger siblings. Some are forced to work long hours to make up for lost family income.

Children who are themselves infected miss long periods of school because of poor health, inadequate access to treatment and fear of stigma. The taunts of their peers also discourage them from discussing their difficulties with teachers.

South Africa, Kenya and Uganda do not officially exclude children who cannot afford to pay school fees. However, children in all three countries told researchers they were turned away by schools because they did not have the money for other expenses — such as uniforms and textbooks — or could not produce documents proving they were eligible for free tuition.

In addition, few schools provide support to children caring for sick parents or coping with deaths. Most institutions simply accept it when emotionally scarred children fall behind or drop out of school, the report said.

Vuyiswa Peter, a 14-year-old South African, already lost one year of school when her mother died eight years ago. In August, her father also died. Her grandmother cannot afford to pay her school fees, and she worries she won't be allowed to take exams next month.

"Sometimes I feel like crying," the shy girl said, tugging nervously at her knee socks. "It seems like I am useless to (others) when they look at me."

South Africa has taken steps to place needy children in foster care and issue them grants, but AIDS has overwhelmed the system, and these benefits are only reaching a tiny fraction of those who need them, the report said. In Kenya and Uganda, there is no comparable system to care for orphans.

All three governments rely heavily on over-stretched extended families, faith-based organizations and other groups to fulfill this role — in some cases exposing children to abuse by unregulated and ill-intentioned caregivers, the report said.

Uganda's information minister, James Nsaba Buturo, acknowledged the difficulties keeping children in school but said Human Rights Watch should also recognize the financial constraints faced by African governments.

The report's author, Jonathan Cohen, urged governments to review legislation and school policies to ensure no child is turned away for lack of money, and alternate parental care is provided to those who need it.

Americans playing risky game of sexual roulette: survey

Mon Oct 10, 5:01 PM ET

Americans are playing a risky game of sexual roulette, according to a new poll that found only 39 percent of respondents always ask a new lover if they are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The new poll by Zogby for MSNBC.com also found that 73 percent of respondents were involved in a monogamous relationship and 66 percent of those surveyed had had unprotected sex while under the influence of alcohol.

Just 39 percent of respondents to the online survey, conducted between September 12 to 16, said they always asked whether a new partner is infected with HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases.

Thirty-one percent said they never discuss the touchy issue with a new partner, according to a summary of the survey findings published on MSNBC.com.

The same survey also found that 15 percent of Americans had paid someone for sex, and 25 percent of those surveyed anonymously in the online poll had sex three times a week or more, while 20 percent made love fewer than twice a month.

Some 35 percent of respondents said they had been with between one and five sexual partners, while 19 percent said they had gone through more than 25 partners.