Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 58 678 508 at noon on Wednesday August 18
Latin outbreak: While most Latin American countries have not yet experienced large-scale HIV/Aids, recent trends suggest the disease could reach pandemic proportions in the region unless its nations step up prevention-promotion measures.
This is the theme of HIV/Aids in Latin American Countries: The Challenges Ahead, a Spanish-language study published by the Pan American Health Organisation (Paho) and the World Bank. Seventeen Latin American countries were included in the report.
While the study acknowledged significant under-reporting of cases, it states that the best estimates indicate that about 1,4-million people in Latin America have HIV/Aids. The feminisation of the pandemic is evident by the increasingly equal proportion of men and women with HIV/Aids, and by the growing HIV-infection rates among pregnant women and children. Rising infections among women between the ages of 20 and 29 indicate that adolescents are at high risk, the study said. Research shows that regional levels of knowledge and information are sufficient but, ‘we are not seeing behavioural change toward [less risky] sexual practices,” said Dr Mirta Roses, director of Paho and author of the prologue.
Source: AIDS Weekly and Law
Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 58 580 614 at 5.30pm on Wednesday August 11.
Quick cash: Britain is to become the first nation to use the international bond market as a direct mechanism to raise money for a developing country public health programme.
A vaccination programme will be launched next year as a public-private partnership between the British and French governments and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi), together with the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Gavi will fund vaccination programmes in 56 low-income countries backed by $400-million a year from donors and up to 10 times that amount raised from selling bonds.
Gavi seeks to raise money quickly to ramp up global spending on infectious diseases, especially HIV/Aids. UNAids estimates that $20-billion a year will be needed to fund HIV care by 2007.
Source: Aidsmap
Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 58 476 515 at noon on Wednesday August 4
Arrested: Two HIV-positive Chinese villagers are being detained for leading a group of HIV-positive people into a hospital in Henan province to protest against the country’s treatment of HIV-positive people, a Chinese Aids advocate said last Sunday.
The two were arrested in early July and are expected to remain in detention for 30 days, said an Aids activist.
The province gained international attention in the early 1990s after it was discovered that farmers there were among hundreds of thousands of poor Chinese who contracted HIV through a government-sponsored blood collection programme.
‘The villagers were trying to get the government to admit that they had been wronged and hoped that they would get a fair answer to what had happened to them,” the activist said.
Source: Kaisernetwork.org