Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 64 121 103 at 12 noon on Wednesday, August 31 2005
Bushwacked: A senior United Nations official has accused President George W Bush of ‘doing damage to Africa” by cutting funding for condoms, a move that may jeopardise the success-ful fight against HIV/Aids in Uganda.
Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary general’s special envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa, said US cuts in funding for condoms, and an emphasis on promoting abstinence, had contributed to a shortage of condoms in Uganda, one of the few African countries that has succeeded in reducing its infection rate. In 2003, Bush declared he would spend $15-billion on his emergency plan for Aids relief, but receiving aid under the programme has moral strings attached.
Recipient countries have to emphasise abstinence over condoms, and — under a congressional amendment — they must condemn prostitution.
Brazil announced last month that it would refuse to accept $40-million in US aid rather than stigmatise prostitutes, who, Brazilian health workers said, were essential to their anti-Aids strategy. Senegal was also cut off from US aid because prostitution is legal there.
Campaigners accuse Uganda’s first lady, Janet Museveni, of being instrumental in the switch towards a policy of abstinence. In one poster campaign, signed by the office of the first lady, the slogan alongside the picture of a smiling young woman says: ‘She’s saving herself for marriage — how about you?”
While Uganda needs between 120-million and 150-million condoms a year, only 32-million have been distributed since last October. The Health Minister, Jim Muhwezi, denied there was a policy change on condoms. ‘She [Museveni] cannot tell young people to use condoms, she is a mother,” he said.
Source: Guardian Newspapers 2005
Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 64 021 441 at 2pm on Wednesday, August 24
Sex ban ends: As a generation of young Swazi women ended a five-year vow of chastity in a traditional ceremony this week, health officials are debating the impact of the custom on reducing the risk of HIV infection.
‘We have anecdotal evidence that girls are using the ‘sex ban’ as a way to avoid unwanted intercourse with demanding men. That is proof that some good has occurred — no one expected the custom to eliminate premarital sex entirely,” said Goodness Simelane, an HIV counsellor in Manzini.
The custom is known as umcwasho, after the tasselled woollen headgear worn by young women for five years.
It was re-introduced in 2001 as the government tried to prevent Aids in a country where an estimated 40% of adults are HIV-positive.
Health officials do not anticipate a sexual free-for-all now that the period of virginity has officially ended, but they would like to see the custom followed by all teenage girls, instead of occurring only once a generation. The last time the umcwasho was observed was in the 1970s.
A Health Ministry report, released in April, showed a decline in the number of HIV-positive pregnant girls from 33,5% in 2002 to 29,3% last year.
Analysts acknowledged that the data showed a stabilising of the infection rate among teenage girls.
Health officials also credit Aids-awareness campaigns and the effect of regular burials of relatives and friends who have died of Aids-related illnesses for influencing sexual behaviour. — Source: Irin
‘ARV kids’ doing well worldwide
Children on antiretroviral (ARV) therapy gained an average of 4kg after 18 months of treatment and only 5,5% experienced side effects, according to a study of 1 840 children presented to the International Aids Society conference in Rio de Janiero last month.
By March, 83,9% of these children were alive and on treatment and their probability of survival after 24 months was 91%, according to the study conducted by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) at 22 sites worldwide.
But, warns MSF, ‘only a fraction of children with HIV/Aids in need of treatment is receiving life-prolonging antiretroviral treatment today. As a result, half of all children with Aids die before their second birthday.”
Barriers to treatment include the lack of paediatric doses of ARVs.
Almost three-quarters of the children in the MSF study had CD4 counts of more than 15% after 18 months of treatment. Children’s CD4 counts are measured as a percentage of the total lymphocytes (white blood cells made up of B and C cells) in the blood. A healthy child will have a CD4 count of more than 25%.
The Department of Health’s treatment guidelines recommend that HIV-positive children over the age of 18 months should be given ARV treatment if their CD4 count is less than 15%. For children under 18 months, treatment is recommended if the child’s CD4 count is less than 20%.
Adults’ CD4 counts are measured by the number of CD4 cells per cubic millimetre of blood, and those with CD4 counts of below 200 are eligible for ARV treatment. — Health-e News Service
Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 63 819 023 at 12.30pm Wednesday August 10
Conspiracy theory: A survey conducted by members of the United States’s HIV Vaccine Communications Campaign of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has uncovered mixed feelings about HIV vaccines.
Subjects were chosen from three groups that are highly affected by HIV: African-Americans, Hispanics and men who have sex with men (MSM).
One of the most shocking discoveries was that several people believe an HIV vaccine already exists and is being kept a secret.
Forty-seven percent of African-Americans, 26% of Hispanics and 13% of MSM said they believed this conspiracy theory.
Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black Aids Institute, was not surprised by the numbers. ‘I think, quite frankly, there is a general distrust of the medical industry,” he said.
‘The bottom line is we have too few black organisations with the infrastructure and capacity to address the problems of HIV/Aids.”
Source: Gay.com
Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 63 719 743 at 3pm on Wednesday August 3
African bias: The tragic situation in Africa has led Aids researchers to ignore the realities of other regions of the world, including Latin America, local activists stressed at the end of a major inter- national conference held in Brazil last week.
A prime example is the impact made by a recent study that recommends male circumcision as a means of preventing HIV infection, presented at the Third International Aids Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis and Treatment, which took place from Sunday through to Wednesday last week in Rio de Janeiro.
Using circumcision to prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that causes Aids, ‘does not correspond to Latin American realities, in terms of sexual behaviour and culture,” Dalva Pereira Lopes, a member of the International Community of Women Living With HIV/ Aids, said.
‘This is important for Africa, but not for Latin America,” said Katia Braga Edmundo, a coordinator with the Centre for the Promotion of Health.
The conference highlighted advances made in the development of Aids drugs, as well as crucial issues such as ‘re-infection”, the results of which are ‘more serious than had been imagined”, said Edmundo.
But research focused on Africa tends to draw attention away from aspects that are of part- icular interest to Latin America, where drug treatment has been available to people living with HIV/Aids for a longer period of time, she said.
The conference, aimed primarily at the scientific, pharmaceutical and medical community, drew together 5 500 researchers, health authorities, health professionals and people living with HIV/Aids from 128 countries.
Source: IPS