Results tagged “AIDS Worldwide” from AIDS & HIV

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Estimated Number of AIDS Cases and Deaths among Adults and Adolescents with AIDS, 1985–2005—United States and Dependent Areas
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The Center for Public Integrity (http://www.publicintegrity.org/default.aspx) today released "Divine Intervention," (http://www.publicintegrity.org/aids) a year-long investigation into how President Bush's $15 billion initiative for care, treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS abroad has failed countries struggling with the pandemic.

The special report, the first of its kind to examine the policies, politics and goals of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), looks at its effects on specific "focus countries," as well as India and Thailand, where the sex-trade industry is driving high rates of infection. Reporters affiliated with the Center's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (http://www.publicintegrity.org/icij) in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa, Haiti, India and Thailand found that faith-based ideology -- including abstinence -- often trumps science in the guise of federal rules, regulations and support of the organizations receiving taxpayer money.

GENEVA - The global HIV epidemic is growing, leaving an estimated 39.5 million people worldwide infected with the deadly virus, the United Nations said Tuesday.

AIDS has claimed 2.9 million lives this year and another 4.3 million people became infected with HIV, according to the U.N.'s AIDS epidemic update report, published on Tuesday. Spread of the disease was most noticeable in East Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since the first case was reported in 1981, making it one of the most destructive illnesses in history.

CAIRO (AFP) - Over 300 religious leaders from 20 Arab countries have gathered in Cairo to discuss means of raising awareness in their communities of the spread of the HIV/AIDS.

"It is time to stop what happens in some Arab countries like expelling (HIV positive persons) from their community," Arab League Assistant Secretary General Nancy Bakir said at the opening of the three-day forum.

It is time to get rid of the fictitious ideas of AIDS and its spread," she said Monday.

Partcipants explained that taboo which long surrounded the sexually-transmitted disease in the region had hampered early efforts to tackle the epidemic.

New Delhi, (IANS) A leading economic think tank has urged policymakers to ensure equal access to treatment and livelihood opportunities for HIV-positive women to reduce their economic and social vulnerability.

'It is imperative to see that women who are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS get equal opportunities to access treatment,' stated the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a report on 'Gender impact of HIV and AIDS in India', published in its latest monthly bulletin.

'One of the ways (to do so) is to provide more education to women. Creating livelihood opportunities for more women will reduce their dependency and expand their financial freedom,' stated NCAER, which conducted a household survey during October 2004 to May 2005 with the support of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO).

Reuters - A Libyan court will deliver its verdict on six foreign medics accused of deliberately infecting Libyan children with HIV on Dec 19, the judge said on Saturday.

Following is a chronology of key events in the case.

Feb 1999 - Nineteen Bulgarian medical workers in Libya detained in connection with investigation into how children in a hospital in the eastern town of Benghazi became infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS. Thirteen are later freed.

Feb 2000 - Trial of six Bulgarians - five female nurses and a male doctor - and a Palestinian doctor and nine Libyans opens at Tripoli People's Court. They are accused of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV-contaminated blood products as part of conspiracy by foreign intelligence to undermine Libya. Libyan defendants are charged with negligence.

Baltimore could lose more than half of its HIV/AIDS federal funding if the Ryan White CARE Act -- which provides funding for HIV/AIDS programs in the U.S. -- is not reauthorized by the end of 2006, local officials said Monday, the Baltimore Sun reports. According to the Sun, the CARE Act is the region's primary funding source for HIV/AIDS services (Bor, Baltimore Sun, 10/31).

Congress last month adjourned without the Senate passing a measure to reauthorize the CARE Act. Five senators, including some from New Jersey and New York, blocked Senate consideration of a House-approved bill (HR 6143) sponsored by Rep. Mary Bono (R-Calif.) that would change CARE Act funding formulas so that rural areas experiencing increasing numbers of HIV/AIDS cases receive higher funding amounts, which would decrease funding allocated to urban areas.

Some legislators from states with large urban areas -- including California, New Jersey and New York -- have opposed measures that would change CARE Act funding formulas, saying they could harm HIV/AIDS programs in areas with higher HIV prevalence (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 10/17). 

NIGERIA - Governor Goodluck Jonathan of Bayelsa State has affirmed the administration’s determination to come up with a master plan for the development of Yenogoa, the state capital even as he has taken  education as the first priority of his government.

At an interactive session with Bayelsans living in Abuja, Monday, Governor Jonathan also disclosed the government’s policy of giving N10,000 monthly to carriers of the HIV/AIDS virus in addition to distribution of free anti-retroviral drugs. The session which was thronged by Bayelsans living in the federal capital also had in attendance, the President of the Ijaw National Congress (INC), Prof. Kimse Okoko, the state’s immediate past commissioner for Information, Mr. Oronto Douglas and top Federal Government officials from the state living in Abuja.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- How close are the scientific and medical communities to marketing a vaccine for HIV and AIDS?

Over the past 25 years a number of vaccines have been researched, but only one candidate has gone through full testing, only to be ineffective, said Seth Berkley, president and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.

Currently about 30 other trials are being conducted in 25 countries. One promising candidate, from Merck, consists of a common cold virus in which pieces of the virus have been replaced with HIV. Preliminary efficacy results are due in 2008, with final data in 2010.

Fake condoms that look like they are made by the country's biggest supplier are putting youngsters at risk of unwanted pregnancy and HIV infection, it was revealed today.

Worried bosses at Durex have placed adverts in the national press warning that a batch of counterfeit "extra safe" condoms has been sold in the UK.

The counterfeit condoms could put users in danger of catching Sexually Transmitted Infections, including HIV, as well as getting pregnant, a Government body warned.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Papua New Guinea has failed to stem abuse by police who beat, torture and rape children, undermining the fight against an escalating HIV-AIDS epidemic, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report on Monday.

In its second report in two years on police brutality in Papua New Guinea, the human rights group said a lack of prosecutions meant people feared the police as much as criminals in the South Pacific island nation.

"Police rapes and torture are crimes, not methods of crime control," said Zama Coursen-Neff, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch's Children's Rights Division.

The South African Government is seeking to shake off years of international denunciation for its handling of the AIDS epidemic - including a fixation on the supposed protective powers of beets and lemons - while expanding treatment, testing and prevention programs.

Over the past six weeks, the Deputy President, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, has emphasised that the Government now believes unequivocally that HIV causes AIDS, a link that the President, Thabo Mbeki, once publicly questioned. She has also said antiretroviral drugs must be the centrepiece of the Government's response while playing down the dietary recommendations long cited by the Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, as central to fighting AIDS.

"The beetroot and all that lemon stuff is out the window," an adviser involved in recasting the Government's policy said. "These guys are now serious about getting it right."

Twenty-five years of AIDS: Where are we now? The 16th International Conference on AIDS highlighted enormous progress that has been observed since the first cases were reported 25 years ago in MMWR.

Our greatest successes in the management of HIV infection are now 10 years old. Highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, has transformed HIV infection into a chronic, manageable condition in the affluent countries in which these drugs are widely available. In contrast, over 20 million HIV-infected individuals in Africa alone will die unless they obtain access to these lifesaving medications.^[1]

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South Africa's cabinet on Thursday endorsed a revised version of its national blueprint to fight HIV/AIDS, which has come under increasing criticism as the epidemic cuts an ever deeper swathe through the population.

Sub-Saharan Africa's most powerful economy, South Africa faces a public health crisis as it battles to contain burgeoning HIV infection rates amid an outbreak of extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis, which could prove particularly deadly for HIV positive people.

South Africa already has an estimated 5 million people infected with HIV and 500,000 more are infected annually.

Kochi, Oct 26: The Indian Armed Forces have introduced pre-induction HIV/Aids screening test for those joining the services, a top official of the Forces' Medical Services Wing said today.

"From now onwards the screening test would become mandatory for those entering the Armed forces", Surgeon Vice Admiral V K Singh, Director General Armed Forces Medical Services (DGAFMS) said.

The Indian Armed Forces' HIV programme was considered the best in the world and the US was taking a cue from India, Singh, who is also the senior colonel commandant of the Army Medical Corps (AMC), told a press meet after inaugurating the Orthopaedic Centre of the Naval Hospital INHS Sanjivini here.

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - Activists in eastern India battling to curb  HIV/AIDS infections in one of Asia's biggest red light districts have recruited an unusual group of people to help fight the deadly virus -- the customers of prostitutes.

Kolkata's notorious red light area, Sonagachhi, is home to about 10,000 prostitutes, who live in brothels lining the narrow lanes in the north of the city, catering for the needs of more than 25,000 clients every day.

While most customers are either unaware of AIDS or not interested in safe sex, anti-AIDS activists say they have enlisted almost 200 regular clients to Sonagachhi to teach fellow visitors about using condoms and having frequent blood tests.

SHYMKENT: The guilty of the HIV cases among children in South Kazakhstan must be punished. Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstan, has stated this during his official visit to South Kazakhstan region, the presidential press service told Kazakhstan Today.

"It is necessary to rectify the situation in the region. We should take urgent measures to make the regional healthcare system healthier. The course of investigation of the HIV cases among the children must be brought to the end. Each guilty person must be punished," - he has said.

Children with HIV and Aids in the developing world are half as likely as adults to get life-saving drugs. This means fewer than one in 10 of over two million children infected get anti-retroviral treatment (ARVs).

The BBC's Angus Crawford met three children living with the illness in Swaziland, which has the highest rate of infection in the world.

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- Howard University Hospital Monday became the first in the nation to offer routine HIV testing for all patients, employees and students.

The Washington hospital will begin posting HIV screening liaisons in each department to administer free, voluntary HIV tests. The staff will use Food and Drug Administration-approved OraQuick Advance, a saliva-based test that determines a person`s HIV status within 20 minutes.

BUKAVU, 22 October (IRIN) - In 2004 the United Nation's World Health Organisation estimated there were 25,000 survivors of sexual violence in South Kivu, the Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern province, but those working to rebuild shattered lives consider this a fraction of the real number.

"I have no doubt that over 100,000 women have been raped in this province," said Christine Schuler-Deschryver, of the German Technical Corporation (GTZ), who remained in Bukavu, the provincial capital, during the war, and registered more than 14,000 rape survivors.