News (Updated October 1,
2005)
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From Monsters and Critics.com
Health News
By UPI
Oct 1, 2005, 19:00 GMT
London (AIM) - The latest edition of the respected medical journal, \"The
Lancet\" has questioned the commonly held belief that poverty and lack of
economic opportunity are important contributors to the AIDS epidemic.
The authors, James D Shelton, Michael M Cassell and Jacob Adetunji, all of
whom work for the United States Agency forInternational Development (USAID),
noted that an article previously published by the journal asked whether poverty
reduction was the only sustainable solution to preventing AIDS.
In response, the authors point to recent findings from Tanzania which, they
claim, show that HIV rates increase with wealth. They stress that \"the
difference in prevalence for women between the lowest and highest wealth
quintile is four-fold\".
The authors state that these findings are similar to those reported for
Kenya, and also note that HIV rates are highest insome of the most economically
advanced countries in Africa - suchas South Africa and Botswana.
The authors admit that poor women are especially vulnerable to sexual
exploitation. In an attempt to explain the apparentanomaly, the article points
out that wealth corresponds to urban living, where HIV rates are higher. It also
states that HIV infection rates depend on the survival of the carriers, and
wealthier people with HIV tend to live longer lives.
In contrast, the authors concede that people with HIV eventually tend to lose
wealth because they lose their jobs andhave to pay expensive health bills,
\"thus blunting a positive relation between wealth and HIV\".
The authors suggest the notion that \"perhaps wealth simply enables
people and especially men to have more sexual partners\", but immediately
knock this down by stating that \"in Tanzania neither number of partners
nor sex with a prostitute in the past 12 months were related to HIV prevalence
in men\".
Instead the authors suggest that the high rates are as a result of
\"established concurrent sexual partnerships\", with people being
involved in \"networks of longer-term concurrent oroverlapping
partnerships\". Through these links, the risk ofcontracting HIV is high,
even though the average number of partners is not.
The article claims that wealth is the key for such networks, because
\"wealth is associated with the mobility, time, and resources to maintain
concurrent partnerships\".
The authors note that in both Tanzania and Kenya the correlation between HIV
and wealth is stronger for women, and state \"we tend to think of men using
their economic means toachieve more partners, and better-off wives may be
infected by their better-off husbands. But it appears women to some extent also
have concurrent relationships. Indeed a concurrent heterosexual network must
include both men and women. Perhaps wealth allows for such behaviour in women as
well, in part by increasing mobility and social interaction. Or women might
improve their economic situation by having more than one concurrent
partner\".
For the authors the link between wealth and HIV \"reinforces the
importance of promoting social norms to foster fidelity and specifically
supporting a franker discussion and understanding of the dangers of having
overlapping sexual partnerships\".
Copyright 2005 AIM Distributed by UPI
Tuesday September 27, 09:15 AM
LONDON,
(AFP) - Former South African president Nelson Mandela said it was a
"crying shame" a fund to fight AIDS and other disease had only
collected half the money needed from international donors for 2006 and 2007.
He called on all nations to dig deep or risk losing a tremendous momentum
that has built up to help prevent, treat and search for a cure for the
illness.
"Of all the major challenges facing the world, none is more lethal nor
more globally pervasive than the blight and trauma
of HIV/AIDS," Mandela wrote in an opinion piece for The Times
newspaper.
Great steps have been made over the past five years to address the problem
through international funding to improve treatment and prevention in all parts
of the world, both rich and poor, he said.
"It is a crying shame, then, that the most significant instrument to
fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic -- the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and
Malaria, created by developed and developing countries together -- is battling
to secure the resources it needs to sustain its operations," said
Mandela.
He said the Global Fund had worked well initially marshalling and
disbursing international resources for locally developed initiatives to fight
HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
"But now, barely three years into its operation, the Global Fund has
received only about half of the 7.1 billion dollars (5.9 billion euros) it
needs from its international donors to fund projects for 2006 and 2007,"
he said.
"The shortfall could hamper its efforts to stimulate and sustain
precisely the kind of international partnerships that have the greatest
potential for success," Mandela warned.
It was vital for countries to donate what they can at a time when progress
in the battle against HIV and AIDS was starting to show.
"We call on all nations to contribute their fair share. Failure to do
so will undermine the worldwide political leadership on HIV/AIDS we have
worked so hard to establish and progress in combating the pandemic will stall.
"Once the current spirit of global commitment to the fight against
HIV/AIDS is lost, it will never be restored."
Mandela, 87, lost a son to AIDS in January, a personal tragedy that he
disclosed in an effort to fight the stigma surrounding the disease.
Sat Oct 1, 2005 5:47 AM ET
By Darren Schuettler
BANGKOK
(Reuters) - Thailand rolled out a national plan on Saturday to give life-saving
drugs to people living with HIV-AIDS, one of the few Asian nations to offer
universal treatment in a region where the virus threatens to run rampant.
Thailand, long a model for prevention against a virus that infects some
540,000 Thais, says 80,000 people will receive anti-retroviral drugs under an
expanded program covered by the public healthcare plan.
"This will help people live a normal life. That means they can go back
to work and earn money for their families," said Dr. Sombat Thaenprasertsuk,
director of the Public Health Ministry's HIV-AIDS division.
Some 60,000 Thais already get ARVs through ad-hoc programs funded mostly by
short-term budgets, he said.
Now, the drugs will be covered by Thailand's "30-baht scheme" -- an
ambitious program to provide the country's 63 million people with cheap but
high-quality public healthcare.
"Including it in the universal plan guarantees that everyone can get
access," he said, adding that another 20,000 people would go on treatment
over the next 12 months.
Under the plan, a patient can walk into any of the 900 designated hospitals
and pay 30 baht for drugs costing between 1,200 a month for locally-made generic
versions to 10,000 baht a month for imported drugs.
Most will receive generic ARVs produced in Thailand. But a few thousand
believed to be resistant to those drugs will receive drug combinations that
include imported medicines, Sombat said.
The government, which expects the number of people needing ARVs to rise to
200,000 over the next five years, has budgeted 2.8 billion baht for the drug
program in fiscal 2006.
WHAT ABOUT PREVENTION?
"It's good news and other countries like China and India should learn a
lesson from this," Prasada Rao, a senior UNAIDS official in the
Asia-Pacific region, said of the Thai plan.
The United Nations says 12 million people could be infected with HIV in Asia
over the next five years, driven by low condom use, limited access to testing,
gender inequality and widespread sex work and injection drug use.
AIDS has spread to all provinces in China, where the government says there
are 840,000 patients and experts fear infection rates could spiral higher.
India is home to 5.1 million of Asia's 8.2 million people infected with the
human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
AIDS has killed some 551,000 Thais since the first case was diagnosed in
1984, but the toll could have been much worse.
Experts say the country averted 5.7 million new infections thanks to a
massive prevention campaign in the 1990s that focused on getting people to use
condoms.
The government bombarded billboards and airwaves with safe sex messages,
while health workers promoted condom use in the country's notorious sex trade.
But activists say that success has made Thais complacent.
The number of new infections is no longer falling as rapidly as it did in the
last decade, said a study by the World Health Organization and Public Health
Ministry in August.
It said Thai youths were engaging more frequently in risky sex than their
peers a few years ago. And the success of the "100 percent" condom
campaign was being eroded due to inadequate condom supplies and resources to
reach out to sex workers.
"It's a good thing that we have a program to treat people, but we have
fallen asleep on prevention," said veteran AIDS activist Senator Meechai
Viravaidya.
Thai newspapers reported last week that the government had approved 3.4
billion baht for public education on HIV-AIDS, but Meechai said Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra should take a lead role in that effort.
"The Prime Minister has been chairman of the national AIDS committee but
has not attended one meeting," he said.
Thursday September 29, 10:53 AM
WASHINGTON
(AFP) - Actress Angelina Jolie sought business allies to fight AIDS and HIV,
reasoning that US war spending in Iraq dwarfs the country's international AIDS
and HIV budget.
"I'm not saying I'm for or against war, but the amount that is spent
every month, being, I think they said, five billion dollars, and to ... realize
that we're spending 15 billion on AIDS, for over, what is it? Three years, five
years?" Jolie said in an interview with CNN.
The movie starlet spoke as she visited Washington in a bid to woo more
donations from corporations to fight AIDS and HIV.
Earlier, she hosted a forum of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS with
Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to discuss business contributions in fighting
HIV/AIDS.
Jolie pointed out that the United States has not yet spent all of the funds
allocated.
"We haven't spent that. It's been 2.3 (billion) which is what, two
weeks?" of spending on the Iraq war, she told CNN.
Trevor Neilson, of the coalition, told CNN, "We're trying to call on the
world's business community to better respond to the AIDS pandemic and trying to
use business leaders to put pressure on government to do more."
He said that 8,000 people die from AIDS each day.
Jolie also said she had adopted a daughter, Zahara, from Ethiopia, a
so-called AIDS orphan, meaning that her parents are believed to have died from
the disease.
Outgoing Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa has expressed concern in a
regular address to the nation over the rising number of AIDS related orphans
in the east African nation.
In his routine end of the month address late on Friday he said the
increasing numbers pose a big threat to the future of the nation and urged
increased care and compassion to the affected children.
"If we care about the destiny of our nation, we must take care of
these orphans as they are part and parcel of the nation," he said.
Mkapa said Tanzania, which is burdened with 2.5 million orphans, is
projected to have 4.2 million orphans in 2010 as a result of a continued
fast spread of HIV/AIDS.
He added that most of them were forced by circumstanes to indulge in the
worst forms of child-labour due to lost families and lack of protection,
which is the foundation of self-reliance.
He also decried the discrimination against AIDS orphans by relatives,
aggravating the psychological distress undergone by the orphans.
"It is important that relatives of the orphans take the
responsibility of caring for them. This is important because our country is
poor. It cannot build enough centres for the orphans," he said.
A recent survey by the Tanzania Aids Commission (TACAIDS) shows that
about seven per cent of adults in the country (about two million people) are
HIV positive.
By WILL LESTER, Associated Press WriterThu
Sep 29, 9:19 AM ET
Angelina,
Condoleezza and Hillary combined their considerable star power Wednesday
night to cast a spotlight on the international effort to fight HIV and AIDS.
For one night, the campaign against HIV trumped the buzz over Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton's re-election bid, speculation over whether Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice will run for president, even gossip about actress
Angelina Jolie's relationship with Brad Pitt.
The women were all speakers at a dinner of the Global Business Coalition
on HIV-AIDS, helping raise $1.3 million.
Volkswagen of South Africa, Getty Images, MAC Cosmetics,
Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Virgin United and DeBeers were honored for their work
against AIDS.
While the women went out of their way to praise each other, Clinton drew
loud applause when she called on the Bush administration and Congress to
recognize the importance of condoms in the fight against AIDS.
"There is a great deal of political pressure to only talk about
abstinence, and to deny support for condoms and education on using
them," Clinton said. "This policy will lead to the unnecessary
deaths of many people."
She said girls and women were increasingly at risk, especially in the
countries most affected.
Earlier, Rice told the crowd at the Kennedy Center that the involvement
of businesses along with government is crucial in fighting AIDS, which she
said can threaten the stability of countries and entire regions.
She praised the bipartisan cooperation in Congress in support of funding
AIDS prevention and singled out Clinton's work, telling the New York
senator, "It's a pleasure to share the podium with you."
Jolie called on countries to commit more to the fight against AIDS and
said the failure to properly treat the disease internationally "is a
disgrace."
Clinton got one of the big laughs of the evening when she pondered the
life of a glamorous movie star.
"It's hard being a beautiful celebrity," Clinton said. "I
wouldn't know, but I've got to imagine it has to be very difficult."
Hoping to speed AIDS drugs from port to patient, the Bush administration
awarded a $77 million contract Tuesday to help establish a new supply system
for medicines and other HIV-related aid to Africa.
The effort to provide worldwide HIV treatment has been complicated by
developing nations' lack of basic medical supply chains: how to buy drugs at
competitive prices, store them in secure warehouses, truck them thousands of
miles to clinics and train workers to administer them.
The new U.S. initiative, part of President Bush's five-year, $15 billion
Africa AIDS program, aims to help individual countries and aid organizations
working in them to take such steps.
The contract, awarded to a network called the Partnership for Supply
Chain Management, will provide one-stop shopping to obtain and import
HIV-related products, from medications and HIV test kits to such routine
medical equipment as gloves and sterilization supplies.
Among the partnership's services: estimating how much of various drugs a
country or region will need, negotiating prices and setting up local systems
to store and distribute products.
"The need for this is apparent to anyone working in the field
now," said Dr. Mark Dybul, deputy U.S. global AIDS coordinator,
describing a patchwork of systems that attempt to provide such services.
The contract provides up to $77 million over three years for the
partnership to perform such work, and anticipates that the new system could
handle over $500 million worth of drugs and other supplies during that time.
The partnership is made up of 15 groups with expertise in such areas as
African health care or medical supply systems, led by JSI Research and
Training Institute and Management Sciences for Health.
By MICHELLE SAXTON, Associated Press WriterWed
Sep 28,10:02 PM ET
West Virginia University is the latest higher education institution in
the state to offer an orally administered HIV test to students that requires
no blood tests or needles.
The test is administered with a cotton pad or swab that is placed between
a patient's cheek and gum for five minutes to draw antibodies from blood
vessels in the mouth, health officials said.
Results of the confidential test are available within two weeks,
according to WVU, which started offering the test earlier this month. WVU
has tested about 20 students so far.
"What prompted it was a long-standing desire to have more HIV
prevention, counseling, education and testing," Dr. Jan Palmer,
director of WVU's Student Health Service, said Wednesday.
Fairmont State University and Glenville State College also offer the test
through student health services, and Marshall University offers the test to
students through the Cabell-Huntington Health Department.
"Testing for any potential HIV-infected individual is very important
because of (the) severity of the illness and likelihood of prolonged care
and potential death and because of the contagious nature of the
infection," said Dr. Harry Tweel, director of the Cabell-Huntington
Health Department.
HIV can be transmitted through unprotected sex and shared needles, health
officials have said.
The number of AIDS and HIV cases reported in West Virginia has dropped
slightly since 2003.
During the first six months of this year, 65 new cases were reported in
West Virginia, compared to 139 for all of 2004 and 158 in 2003, according to
state health officials.
The FDA has said the orally administered test is more than 99 percent
accurate.
Having HIV tests available to students on site is helpful, Glenville
State spokeswoman Allison Minton said.
"I think it's important that if a student has a concern that they
have a disease that they have access to the health care that can give them
answers," Minton said.
Counseling may also be offered as part of testing services.
"We want to help them change behaviors that continue to put people
at risk," said Yolanda Kirchartz, director of student health services
at Fairmont State.
That includes talking about how alcohol may affect behavior and stressing
condom use and abstinence, Kirchartz said.
"Too often college students feel a false sense of security because
they are young and appear to be healthy. They think, 'It can't happen to
me,'" Palmer said "HIV affects people regardless of age, gender,
race or sexual orientation."
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