AIDS/HIV
Sex workers march for rights at AIDS conference
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Sex workers and their supporters from 21 countries marched on Wednesday through the 16th International AIDS Conference to demand their own place not only at the conference, but in their own societies.
Wearing turquoise T-shirts, they marched from a gauze-draped bed in the Toronto conference’s Stiletto Lounge, one of the exhibits at the meeting, through art displays, exhibits about prisoners with AIDS and around booths offering information to drug users and religious groups.
“Sex work is work. Sex workers are workers,” said Philal Sri Kumzaw from Thailand, standing amid pillows and sex toys in the Lounge.
Pricing, lack of tools hamper child AIDS treatment
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Doctors trying to treat HIV-infected newborns in sub-Saharan Africa are being held back by over-priced treatments, an absence of diagnostic tools, and a general lack of focus from policymakers and international organizations, Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Tuesday.
The group, also known as Doctors Without Borders, said in a report released at the 16th International AIDS conference in Toronto that only five percent of the 660,000 young children in urgent need of treatment were actually receiving it. Unfortunately, they added, the treatment was hard to come by, and what was available was over priced.
“We want to do more. We know what we’re doing is not enough, because our hands are tied,” Moses Masaquoi, an MSF doctor working in Malawi, told a news conference.
On the move, Chinese prostitutes raise AIDS risk
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Mainland Chinese prostitutes, who flock to Hong Kong in large numbers to make a living, are failing to protect themselves, and the number of HIV/AIDS infections is expected to rise, social workers say.
Groups that counsel sex workers say prostitutes are frequently questioned by police, searched, detained and expelled if condoms are found on them. This is prompting many prostitutes from mainland China to ditch the prophylactics for fear that they will be caught.
Although condoms are legal and Hong Kong laws do not empower police to detain anyone found with a condom, police are intimidating and expelling prostitutes from China, the groups say. Prostitution is legal in Hong Kong, but foreigners violate the conditions of their stay if they are caught working.
AIDS grandmothers do what grannies do best - love
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Maclarka Jeanet Rakhiba did what any good grandmother would do: she told her HIV-positive grandson a white lie to make him feel less alone and afraid.
She told the orphan she was infected too.
“I didn’t know how to tell him,” said Rakhiba, from Katlehong, South Africa, where she was counseled at a local workshop on what to tell the nine-year-old.
“I’m not positive. I was just lying to him so that he can be free. I thought maybe he would be scared and he’d feel that he’s not like others.”
Study Shows Promise For Simplified Treatment of HIV Infection
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A preliminary study indicates that using a single boosted protease inhibitor instead of the standard regimen of 3 drugs for maintenance therapy may be an effective treatment for select patients with HIV infection, according to a study in the August 16 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on HIV/AIDS.
Susan Swindells, M.B.B.S., of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, presented the findings of the study today at a JAMA media briefing at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto.
The long-term adverse effects, expense, and difficulty of sustained adherence to multidrug antiretroviral regimens have prompted studies of simpler therapies for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection. Treatment cessation, intermittent therapy, and induction-maintenance (a few months of triple therapy followed by simplified therapy) regimens have been evaluated with mostly inferior results, according to background information in the article.
Rapid Expansion of HIV Treatment Services in Sub-Saharan Africa Feasible
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A massive scale-up of HIV/AIDS treatment programs at urban primary care sites in Zambia has produced favorable patient outcomes, demonstrating that expansion of such programs in sub-Saharan Africa is feasible, with good results, according to a study in the August 16 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on HIV/AIDS.
Jeffrey S.A. Stringer, M.D., of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia, Lusaka, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, presented the findings of the study today at a JAMA media briefing at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto.
Zambia’s 11.5 million residents are among the world’s poorest and most severely affected by acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), according to background information in the article. About 16 percent of the adult population is infected with human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV 1), including 22 percent in the capital city Lusaka.
AIDS virus hides out in “accomplice” cells
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The AIDS virus has an accomplice that helps it infect the immune system cells it attacks—other immune system cells, U.S. researchers reported on Saturday.
In fact, these other cells, known as B cells, may be key to infection, the University of Pittsburgh researchers told an international AIDS conference. “The research supports a new role for B cells in the development and spread of HIV between cells,” said Dr. Charles Rinaldo, who led the study.
The findings may help find a way to block infection, and help explain why the virus can hide out in “reservoirs” inside the body for decades.
New guidelines help sort out HIV drug maze
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Simpler drug combinations can control the AIDS virus well, researchers said on Sunday in several reports that will help in trying to mix and match nearly two dozen different HIV drugs in lifesaving cocktails.
The reports published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and presented to the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, show that simplified drug regimens can be safe and effective, and safely relieve side effects in some patients.
The HIV drugs, called antiretroviral drugs, are usually combined into three-drug cocktails called highly active antiretroviral therapy or HAART. They once had to be carefully planned out, with patients forced to take several different pills at various times of day.
Drugs don’t work for many India AIDS patients
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The drugs Shyamal Kumar Dey takes to fight AIDS don’t work anymore.
The 38-year-old father of one has been swallowing antiretroviral pills for the last five years, enough time for the HIV virus to mutate into a drug-resistant form.
Since then, the virus has found a new lease on life in his body, sapping both his immune system and his hopes for the future.
U.S. AIDS groups battle over federal funding
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The bill would mandate that three-fourths of the funds from the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, the nation’s largest HIV-specific federal grant program, be used for medical services.
Opponents say the mandate would force them to cut non-medical services they consider critical for overall patient care.
Designed to fill gaps in local funding, the Ryan White program has never in its 16-year history included a broad prescription for how money should be spent.
Gates gives $500 million to Global AIDS, TB fund
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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said on Wednesday it was giving $500 million to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, by far its biggest grant to the fund, which says it sorely lacks cash.
The money, to be given over five years, is the largest private donation to the fund, founded nearly five years ago to serve as the primary financing vehicle for efforts to fight the HIV pandemic, tuberculosis and malaria.
The fund has always struggled to persuade rich nations to contribute.
Indian health groups welcome new rural HIV push
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Indian health groups welcomed a government plan that was announced this week to involve tens of thousands of rural politicians in the fight against an HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has made deep inroads in the countryside.
India recently overtook South Africa as the country with the most number of people living with HIV/AIDS, according to the United Nation’s AIDS agency, and nearly 60 percent of the 5.7 million people infected with the virus live in rural areas.
On Tuesday, ministers and officials attending a national meeting of mayors and district council chiefs called upon local leaders in rural areas to join the anti-AIDS campaign.
Libya HIV outbreak was deliberate, court hears
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Someone deliberately infected hundreds of children with HIV/AIDS at a Libyan hospital, Libyan experts on Tuesday told a court retrying five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of causing the outbreak.
The retrial, as well as questions over Libya’s human rights record, have been seen as hurdles to improved relations with the West at a time when Washington is in the process of resuming full diplomatic relations after decades of hostility.
Five Libyan experts on HIV/AIDS told the Tripoli court that they stood by a 61-page report they wrote in 2003 that found the infections were the result of a deliberate act.
Calif. court expands liability for HIV infection
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A person who has reason to believe he or she has HIV may be sued by sexual partners if they become infected, the California Supreme Court ruled on Monday, broadening the state’s view of when liability arises from the disease.
Knowingly passing along HIV, which leads to AIDS, is already illegal in California and people who do so may be sued for damages in state court.
The California Supreme Court’s decision widens the scope for law suits against sexual partners over negligent transmission.
Young adult blacks in US hit hard by HIV infection
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Non-Hispanic blacks between 19 and 24 years of age are 20 times more likely to be infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, than young adults in any other racial or ethnic group in the United States, according to new estimates.
The overall HIV infection rate for young adults is 1 case per 1,000 people. However, the infection rate in this age group among blacks is 4.9 per 1,000, compared to a rate of 0.22 per 1,000 for all other races of similar age, researchers have shown.
The findings, reported in the American Journal of Public Health, are based on a random sample of more than 13,000 19- to 24-year-olds who agreed to be screened for HIV infection as part of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, or Add Health Study.
