News (Updated October 22,
2005)
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Mon Oct 17, 2005 3:47 PM BST
By Nick Macfie
BEIJING (Reuters) - Expatriates living in plush suburban estates near the
site of a planned new infectious diseases hospital in Beijing are circling their
wagons, determined that it be built elsewhere.
It is a rare case of foreigners borrowing from the Chinese right to
"petition," one of the few avenues for the disgruntled to seek redress
that has increased in recent years with the widening gap between rich and poor.
Beijing is moving the Ditan Infectious Disease Hospital from downtown to the
northeastern Beigao suburbs, famous for their European-style compounds, grassy
back yards, tennis courts and international schools.
Residents are worried about the impact of the hospital, which treats HIV and
SARS patients, among others, so close to the estates with names like Grand Hills
and Beijing Riviera -- both on the residents' health and the price of their
properties.
"If we continue to do things slowly and sporadically as we are doing
now, we can hardly overturn the decision to move the hospital," the
residents said on their Web site.
"Then, we will see people panic, people move out of the villa area and
property prices and rent come down."
One resident said the issue was not expatriates versus local Chinese, but the
quality of the proposed building, waste treatment and maintenance in years to
come.
SHODDY WORKMANSHIP
The northeastern suburbs, near the airport, have grown furiously in the last
10 years as foreign investment has picked up, but many residents complain about
shoddy construction standards and workmanship.
"This is not a question about why locate the infectious disease hospital
among foreigners versus domestic residents," said Ellen Grogan, a U.S. IT
executive and working mother.
"This is a question of why locate the new, primary infectious disease
hospital for the nation in a densely populated area with highly congested
traffic."
She said the possible recurrence of SARS and a forecast of bird flu pandemic
added to residents' fears.
"Given that many, many of the CEOs of the most prominent, foreign
investors and statesmen in China live within a few kilometers of this hospital
and send their children to schools across the road from the hospital, what do
you think will happen to foreign direct investment?"
SARS emerged in southern China, swept through the province of Guangdong, and
spread globally in 2003, infecting 8,000 people and killing 800.
The residents applied for an administrative review at the end of last month
and the Beijing government had 60 days from then to make a decision.
"If we are not satisfied with the decision, we may appeal to the State
Council or submit our case to the People's Court," the residents said on
their Web site.
Beijing Health Bureau officials in September assured the residents of
advanced methods of waste treatment.
"All in all, we will factor preventive measures into the design,
construction, operation and management of the hospital and we will adhere to
strict standards of sanitation and segregation," Guo Jiyong, deputy
director of the Beijing Health Bureau, told the residents.
Government and hospital officials declined to make any comment and said they
needed an application for an interview.
The Beijing News quoted Guo as saying the project would start at the end of
this year and is expected to be completed at the end of 2007.
Tuesday October 18, 07:11 AM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Monday urged Libya to free
five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death on charges of infecting hundreds of
Libyan children with the HIV virus.
"The position of the United States is the nurses ought to be free,"
Bush told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with visiting Bulgarian
President Georgi Parvanov.
The nurses were convicted last year of deliberately infecting more than 400
children at a hospital in Benghazi. They insist they are innocent and that the
only evidence against them is confessions extracted under torture.
Bush said he and Parvanov discussed the issue at length.
"We have made our position known to the Libyan government. There should
be no confusion in the Libyan government's mind that those nurses should be, not
only spared their life, but out of prison, and we'll continue to make that
message perfectly clear," Bush said.
A White House official said U.S. diplomats had been giving the same message
for months to the Libyan government, including lader Col. Muammar Gaddafi.
Libya's supreme court is to rule in November on an appeal by the Bulgarian
nurses and a Palestinian doctor. The verdicts have impeded Tripoli's efforts to
emerge from decades of diplomatic isolation and renew ties with the West.
At least 40 of the 42 infected children have died of AIDS, fueling widespread
outrage in Libya over the case.
"Like the president, my heart breaks when young children get sick,"
Bush said.
Several
hundred Libyans demonstrated Tuesday in the Libyan capital to protest
President Bush's call for the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a
Palestinian doctor sentenced to death for allegedly infecting 400 children
with the AIDS virus.
The United States and European Union have been pressuring Libya to free
the six, who were sentenced to death in May 2004 on charges they infected
Libyan children with HIV-contaminated blood in an experiment to find a cure
for AIDS.
The defendants have appealed the verdicts, and international observers
say the charges were contrived and extracted by torture.
Speaking to reporters Monday after a meeting with Bulgaria's president,
Bush reiterated the U.S. position that the medical workers should be freed.
"There should be no confusion in the Libyan government's mind that
those nurses ought to be not only spared their life, but out of prison. And
we will continue to make that message perfectly clear," Bush said.
Tuesday's protest was arranged by the Infected Children's League and
included about 100 relatives of children suffering from the virus. The
relatives gathered outside the U.N. headquarters in Tripoli as anti-riot
police and ambulances stood by.
The protesters, most of whom were students, chanted: "We want to get
our children's rights" and "Bush supports criminal nurses."
Some raised banners calling for the death sentences to be carried out.
The protesters marched to a hotel where several U.S. diplomats work and
delivered a letter protesting the U.S. defense of the six medical workers.
The United States is planning to establish full relations with Libya's
one-time outcast government by the end of the year if Tripoli cleans up its
record on human rights and terrorism.
17 Oct 2005 14:31:18 GMT
Source: IRIN
MBARARA, 17 October (IRIN) - The number of Ugandans who become infected with the
HI virus and those who develop AIDS annually has overwhelmed treatment capacity
despite the declining prevalence of the disease across the country, the head of
an AIDS support NGO said.
"Uganda has 100,000 new infections every year and 50,000 people develop
AIDS every year out of the 800,000 who carry the virus," the executive
director of The Aids Support Organization (TASO), Alex Coutinho, said on Friday.
"[The] HIV prevalence has gone down to 6 percent from 30 percent in the
early 1990s, but the number of people developing AIDS is increasing and there is
a lot of pressure for us to provide support," he added. "The epidemic
is going down but the number of people developing AIDS is going up and AIDS
charities are overwhelmed by the numbers."
Speaking at the opening of a new treatment facility funded by American
pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in the southwestern town of Mbarara, Coutinho said
charities manning treatment and counselling services were facing a huge
challenge in coping with the increasing numbers of the sick.
"In the past, people who had AIDS just died. Now people's lives have
been prolonged by the drugs. As we scale up the treatment for new entrants, we
have to look after people who are already on treatment," he said.
"We have over 65,000 people on treatment for ARVs [antiretrovirals] and
yet we have to cope with another 50,000 we expect to get sick annually," he
added.
The new US $700,000 three-floor centre, half of which was funded by Pfizer,
is the second of four TASO regional facilities to be upgraded in Uganda.
In addition to scaling-up ARV therapy to patients in the area, the centre
also hosts a CD4 count laboratory that supports clients from two other centres
in the region.
"The facility will boost our capacity by 100 percent, increasing patient
medical sessions to 50,000 in 2006 and counselling sessions to 15,000 - up by 60
percent," Coutinho said.
He said TASO had handled 140,000 AIDS patients since its inception in 1987,
90,000 of whom had died.
Pfizer chairman Hank McKinnell, who officiated at the opening, told reporters
that, "as the world's largest pharmaceutical company, we have to play a
role in the fight against AIDS. We either sit down and people die or we join to
save lives."
"We can make a difference in the fight against AIDS. Thinking about what
we can do to fight AIDS, we know that the task is enormous with 28 million
people being HIV-positive[...] Most people with AIDS do not live in cities; they
live in villages and that is why we are funding this facility which is situated
in a rural area," McKinnell added.
Pfizer funded another AIDS treatment and training centre at Uganda's main
referral facility, Mulago Hospital, in the capital, Kampala, with 13,000
clients. Over 300 physicians from 15 African countries have been trained at the
centre.
"The battle to fight HIV/AIDS will not be won in years or in decades, it
will take a long time because the problem is enormous. But together with
different partners we can win the war," McKinnell said.
Uganda was once seen as the epicentre of the AIDS pandemic in Africa in the
1980s, but has significantly reduced its infection rates through a
government-driven campaign that placed great emphasis on HIV testing and the
so-called ABC (Abstinence, Be faithful and use a Condom) approach.
The country has, however, seen close to one million people die due to the
pandemic, according to government and UNAIDS statistics.
Monday October 17, 05:55 PM
MOSCOW (AFP) - Almost one in 150 people in Russia lives with HIV/AIDS and
tuberculosis and other health problems are spiralling.
"HIV infection in the Russian Federation has acquired an epidemic
character," the United Nations Development Agency said Monday.
According to a UNDA statement, 860,000 people live with HIV/AIDS in Russia,
which has a population of about 148 million.
Russia is also "one of 22 countries with high tuberculosis and with the
highest TB mortality rate in Europe," the report, entitled "Russia in
2015: Development Goals and Policy Priorities," said.
Changing men's lifestyle habits that include excess alcohol consumption, drug
addiction and smoking is key to solving the country's problems, the report said.
"Stereotypes of men's behaviour in Russia include excess alcohol
consumption, drug addiction and smoking as stress reduction measures and ways of
demonstrating manhood. Growth of suicides among men is an extreme form of
reaction to growing socio-economic pressure and inability to perform the
traditional role of breadwinner," the statement said.
The report also calls for a change in attitude to immigration, saying that
Russia would need to accept more immigrants in order to maintain current
economic growth rates.
With
a mug of fermented rice beer and a plate of grilled garlic chicken, burly
trucker Parminder Singh relaxes after a hard day of driving on some of
India's most dangerous roads.
"Life away from home is always tormenting and you need some
relaxation to ease the stress," says Singh, who has completed a
2,000-kilometer (1,250-mile) trip carrying rice from the Punjab to this
remote corner.
But while he looks relaxed on a string-bed outside a roadside food stand
called a dhaba at Byrnihat, 70 kilometres (45 miles) from Shillong, capital
of northeastern Meghalaya state, there are plenty of reasons to worry.
Singh, 38, has stopped for the night in a place wracked by dozens of
separatist insurgencies and on a route that leads to the golden triangle of
heroin trafficking from Laos, Myanmar and Thailand.
He also plans to sleep with a prostitute that night in the region with
the highest rates of HIV infections in India, which has the second largest
number of cases in the world at 5.1 million according to official figures.
"There is no harm in having fun on wheels as long as one uses
condoms," Singh says.
That message is being spread by community healthcare experts who have
launched a campaign to halt the spread of HIV by truckers, the virus that
leads to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
Some 10,000 trucks are on the highways in the northeast on a single day
and more than half of the drivers and their helpers go for casual sex,
according to a study conducted by Healthcare Foundation, a local charity.
More than two-thirds of three million long-haul truckers on India's
8,000-kilometer highway network are 10 times more likely to be infected with
HIV, according to the TCI Foundation, an HIV prevention advocacy arm of one
of the country's largest trucking companies, Transport Corp of India.
But only 11 percent of the truckers, who account for 12 percent of the
HIV infected population in the country use condoms, TCI says.
"HIV/AIDS infection rate in the northeast is indeed very high and
truckers who frequent local sex workers without using condoms are found to
be potential carriers of the virus," says T. Singh, a community
healthcare expert engaged in anti-AIDS awareness campaigns in the region.
At least 100,000 people are infected with the virus in the northeast with
the state of Manipur leading at more than 20,000, according to official
figures that likely underestimate the spread as they rely solely on cases
reported by hospitals.
At Byrnihat, one of the many halts among the thousands of kilometers of
mountainous pot-holed roads in the northeast, scores of truckers like Singh
arrive at dusk and stay overnight. Sleeping with prostitutes is commonplace.
"The highway is our home and these women are like our family,"
explains Suki Ram, another truck driver. Like many of the men, he delivers
essential items to the region such as rice, wheat and medicines.
Drug use raises the dangers for all of them. HIV is prevalent among 39
percent of intravenous users, according to the National AIDS Control
Organization.
"Many of the women sex workers in the region have a history of
sharing needles to take drugs and hence the risk of being HIV-positive is
even more. The truckers could be passing on the virus contracted here to
other sex workers in different parts of India where they travel," says
Nilima Devi, a woman rights activist who works with sex workers.
The threat is so high, that India's Defence Ministry instructed its
nearly 50,000 army and paramilitary soldiers fighting insurgencies in the
northeast to carry condoms as part of their official kit.
"Poverty is forcing women to sell sex on the highways and this is a
matter of grave concern as the truckers often go for unprotected sex without
realizing the dangers of contracting HIV/AIDS," says S.I. Ahmed, head
of the AIDS Prevention Society, a community healthcare group.
Scores of outreach workers from the society conduct regular AIDS
awareness campaigns along the highways in Meghalaya and neighbouring Assam
state as part of a drive called the "Healthy Highway Project".
"Many drivers are aware about HIV/AIDS but they still take risks by
going for unprotected sex. Maybe their reckless lifestyle and the strenuous
job makes them let out their stress drinking alcohol and going for
sex," says Yousuf Ali, a project volunteer.
Workers like Ali hold slide shows and distribute pamphlets at stopovers
with the underlying message, he says, to "use condoms and go for
regular health checkups".
As part of the campaign, free condom kiosks were installed outside the
dabhas as well as mobile health clinics with doctors and paramedics working
exclusively for truckers.
"We counsel truckers to come for voluntary testing and not ignore
ulcers or abscesses. During routine tests we have found many of them
infected with HIV," Ahmed says.
By Tizoh MosenyiFri Oct 21, 9:48 AM
ET
Neo
Modibedi says she owes her life to an emergency blood transfusion after
childbirth.
"I nearly died. I felt dizzy, was disorientated and when I got to
the hospital they told me my life was in danger and I had lost a lot of
blood. I only felt better after I was given a blood transfusion," said
Modibedi, now 31.
Modibedi was lucky. In Botswana, which until recently had the world's
highest rate of HIV/AIDS, contaminated blood can easily turn a life-saving
transfusion into a death sentence.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says up to 10 percent of HIV/AIDS
infections worldwide are caused by contaminated blood transfusions or blood
products.
A new project called "Pledge 25" recruits young people to
supply Botswana's hospitals with safe blood and educates them on how to stay
free of the HIV virus that causes AIDS.
"The project targets in-school and out-of-school youth," said
Dr Mukendi Kaembe, a National Blood Transfusion Service pathologist at the
Princess Marina Hospital in the capital Gaborone.
"This is because most of them are not yet sexually active, which
means they are still free from HIV. The project aims at making donors pledge
to donate blood 25 times in their lifetime -- hence young people,"
Kaembe said.
The U.S.-based Safe Blood for Africa Foundation has helped Botswana's
health ministry with Pledge 25 and other programmes to improve the quality
and supply of blood.
Pledge 25 is based on a model which originated in neighbouring Zimbabwe
and has been copied as far away as Malawi and Uganda, Haiti and India,
according to WHO.
In Botswana, the programme is being piloted in a handful of places but
given its success, it is now due to go nationwide.
LIVING HIV-FREE
The Foundation says projects like this have helped double Botswana's
supply of safe blood in the past two years as well as halving the amount of
HIV-infected blood donated through better screening of donors and
counselling.
"We've added an element to the programme which basically counsels
the kids to have an HIV-free lifestyle ... It's not just about
donations," said Jeff Busch, a U.S. investment banker who founded Safe
Blood for Africa after witnessing the problems that clinics around Africa
face finding safe blood.
Botswana's life-prolonging HIV/AIDS treatment programme, funded by
diamond dollars and U.S. aid, is already a model for other African countries
at the epicentre of the AIDS pandemic, and now its safe blood donor scheme
could also lead the way.
Building on its Botswana experience, Safe Blood for Africa has already
started a similar pilot called "Club 25" in Nigeria, which is
re-launching its blood transfusion service from scratch after years of
neglect under military rule left people dependent on unregulated suppliers,
increasing the risk of infection.
It is impossible to be 100 percent sure that donated blood is HIV-free
due to a "window period" of several weeks after a person contracts
the virus, during which it does not show on tests but is nevertheless
infectious.
That makes donor counselling and screening vital, to make sure people who
may have contracted HIV through unsafe sex during the preceding weeks do not
give blood.
"You can not have 100 percent HIV-free blood (but) if you do it
properly with repeat donors and questioning of donors, you can be above 99.9
percent HIV-free," Busch said.
Safe Blood for Africa has hired and trained blood collection experts,
donor recruitment specialists and scientists to screen donors and test blood
to ensure donations are free of HIV, hepatitis, syphilis and other sexually
transmitted diseases.
SAVING LIVES
The group is also educating donors on how to avoid HIV.
"The most assuring thing that showed us that the project was working
tremendously is the fact that the percentage of discarded blood has come
down dramatically. This convinced me that people are keeping themselves
clean and free of HIV," the National Blood Transfusion Service's Kaembe
said.
Thato Leetile, 18, donates blood three times a year and says Pledge 25
has helped her stay healthy.
"I've been donating since 2003. This has helped me maintain my HIV
status because we have been taught safe sex practices," says Leetile, a
lively university student in the second year of a business administration
course in Gaborone.
As well as improving their own chance of surviving an epidemic that has
infected nearly two in five adults here, young donors are encouraged by
knowing they are helping saving lives -- like that of Modibedi.
Sitting in her house in a middle-class neighbourhood of Botswana's
capital Gaborone, her baby daughter Maduo asleep in a cot nearby, Modibedi
praises the Pledge 25 volunteers.
"I believe it's very good that other people can donate blood because
I nearly died."
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