Results tagged “AIDS awareness” from AIDS & HIV

MUMBAI, India —  Actor and AIDS activist Richard Gere brought thousands of sex workers to their feet on Wednesday, urging them to insist their clients use condoms.

"No condoms, no sex!" Gere shouted at an AIDS awareness event in Mumbai, the country's financial and entertainment hub.

He urged the crowd of more than 15,000 people to repeat the chant after him. Gere and Indian actress Bipasha Basu presented awards to those spearheading HIV prevention campaigns.

Earlier, Gere met sex workers who explained how they use pictures and books to persuade fellow prostitutes to insist on safe sex. But they said it was difficult getting regular customers to use condoms.

During Sex, Vaginal Gel Would Liquefy, Release Anti-HIV Drug.

Dec. 11, 2006 - University of Utah scientists designed a "molecular condom" women could use daily to prevent AIDS by vaginally inserting a liquid that would turn into a gel-like coating and then, when exposed to semen, return to liquid form and release an antiviral drug.

"We have developed a new vaginal gel that we call a molecular condom because it is composed of molecules that are liquid at room temperature and, when applied in the vagina, will spread and turn into a gel and effectively coat the tissue," says Patrick Kiser, an assistant professor of bioengineering. "It's a smart molecular condom because we designed this gel to release anti-HIV drugs when the gel comes into contact with semen during intercourse."

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.

Tattoos, once the sole domain of inmates, soldiers and sailors, have become a popular and accepted body art form.

Celebrities who openly sport them are credited with spreading the trend, and more women than ever are getting tattoos.

But the fad has some experts and health professionals concerned that people must seek out only licensed tattoo artists and facilities to avoid infections and injuries that can be spread by unskilled operators who use dirty needles and work in unsanitary conditions.

"The problems arise from roadside tattoo artists that operate in bars or out of their homes or customers' homes," said William Wolff, public facilities program manager for the El Paso City-County Health and Environmental District.

The United Nations Children's Education Fund (UNICEF) has released an online game to help Kiswahili-speaking youths to know more about HIV prevention and the need for voluntary testing.

The move seeks to reach East African adolescents and young people in the battle against Aids. This is UNICEF's first interactive feature in Kiswahili that empowers the young to make good life choices.

The game, called 'ungefanyaje' or 'what would you do?' in Kiswahili, takes the player through a series of relationship-based scenarios that emphasize the importance of HIV prevention and testing.

An email in circulation warning of HIV-infected needles in public places was a hoax, the Australian Red Cross Blood Service (ARCBS) said today.

 

The email, which said infected needles had been found in a cinema seat and at an ATM, was sent illegally using a staff member's name and email address, spokeswoman Dr Philippa Hetzel said.

"This email is not from the blood service," she said.

"We have no knowledge of the alleged incidents described in the email occurring anywhere in Australia."

 

Thousands of schoolchildren across London are set to learn about HIV and Aids following the launch of a major new charity-funded education kit today.

Leading Aids charity, Crusaid, has developed the new media kit to complement the GCSE English curriculum and will distribute it to 1,500 schools across London following today's launch at the British Council.

Crusaid has funded the pilot project and distribution to London schools with a view to encouraging the Government to provide funding for national distribution.

The "Aware!" media kit will be sent out to the schools during 2007 following a successful pilot project in eight schools during the 2005/06 school year.

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.

PARIS (AFP) - India is making perilous mistakes in its fight against AIDS by assuming the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is being spread overwhelmingly by sex and especially by prostitutes, a study warns.

India is considered by many specialists to be an easy target for AIDS, despite the health authorities' insistence that they are making headway against the disease.

In May, the Geneva-based agency UNAIDS said India had 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS -- the highest figure in the world, ahead of South Africa where the figure stands at 5.5 million. The government says the tally is 5.2 million.

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.

NEW DELHI, Oct 26 (Bernama) -- In order to create awareness among people living with HIV/AIDS, the government has planned a series of ad campaigns, starting with information on providing free of cost Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) drugs in more than 95 state-run hospitals, a state-media reported.

The ART drugs is being provided for free of cost to 45,000 people.

Press Trust of India (PTI) quoted Director General of India's National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) Sujatha Rao said many people are still ignorant of this fact and NACO wants to create awareness among them.

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.

As an experimental project to study HIV and AIDS in the Twin Countiesenters its second year of operation, the activists involved say they're making progress.

Project GRACE was established in September 2005 as a program to explore high rates of HIV and AIDS in the Rocky Mount area using community-based participatory research – a relatively new method intended to involve the subject community in the research process.

Unlike traditional studies that bring in outside researchers, research for the project is undertaken by a consortium of community leaders and citizens directly affected by the problem.

By Nwabisa Nofemele, The Herald Online, 23 Oct 2006

AUTOMOTIVE giants in the Eastern Cape have a received a thumbs-up from the National Union of Metalworkers of SA for their effective HIV/Aids wellness programmes.

However, at a strategy workshop hosted by the SA Business Coalition against HIV/Aids, most businesses conceded that there were companies which did not implement HIV/Aids wellness programmes because they did not understand the long-term negative impact of ignoring the disease.

The workshop in Port Elizabeth gave companies in the province the opportunity to exchange ideas on how to improve their health and wellness programmes.

The story of HIV/AIDS is an oft written story yet there are more and more ways of writing it. It is a living story, ever developing for good and bad. As a reward for the Thomson Foundation EU-India Media Initiative Award for excellence on reporting on HIV/AIDS issues in India, six journalists – two each from print, television and radio – were at London for a week-long study tour.

During the week, the journalist team visited different organizations, both governmental and non-governmental, in a bid to get a clearer picture of the problems, dynamics and manifestations of the most challenging health issue of our times - HIV/AIDS.

A visit to the Department of Health, a department of State, responsible for carrying out the decisions of the democratically elected members of the Parliament, provided the much-needed introduction to HIV/AIDS in the UK, particularly London.

FIJI - It will take more than a year to see the establishment of a Voluntary Counselling Confidential Testing unit for HIV/AIDS in the military become reality.

Military spokesman Major Neumi Leweni said they welcomed the idea and there was a need to educate the military on the issue.

He said this was the reason they took the initiative to try and formulate an HIV policy guideline.

Gap Inc commits half of sales of its RED-branded product line to the Global Fund, exemplifying this new business model for generating sustainable funds for addressing the AIDS pandemic.

SocialFunds.com -- The business community response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic has been largely philanthropic, or individual companies such as Coca-Cola (ticker: KO) or Ford (F) addressing the issue as it affects their own operations. Now comes the (PRODUCT) RED campaign, the brainchild of U2 singer and activist Bono and Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa Chair Bobby Shriver, which applies a strong business model to help solve HIV/AIDS with a focus on Africa. Six companies--including Gap, Motorola, Apple, and American Express - have signed on to create RED-branded products with significant portions of profits going to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

ASTANA, Oct 18 (Reuters) - A seventh child has died in Kazakhstan after receiving blood suspected of containing HIV in a transfusion, the health ministry said on Wednesday.

Health officials have tested thousands of children for the virus near the southern city of Shymkent since the outbreak started earlier this year. The number of reported cases has been growing steadily over the past weeks.

JOSHUA TREE, Calif. - Jeff Getty, a prominent AIDS activist who in 1995 received the first bone-marrow transplant from a baboon to treat the disease, has died. He was 49.

Getty died Monday of heart failure, following treatment for cancer and a long struggle with AIDS, at the High Desert Medical Center in Joshua Tree, said Ken Klueh, his partner of 26 years.

SOUTH African and international mining analysts think mining companies operating in the country don’t fully understand the cost HIV/AIDS on their operations, according to a survey by Deloitte.

Management respondents from the local gold production industry, which is generally labour-intensive deep-level mining, are unanimous that HIV/AIDS, which is estimated to have a prevalence rate of no less than 20%, is a significant problem.