Results tagged “awareness” from AIDS & HIV

UN health agencies on Wednesday gave the stamp of approval for including male circumcision in the panoply of arms to fight the spread of AIDS, stressing though that its success also depended on safe-sex awareness, sensitivity and resources.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the specialised agency UNAIDS declared that millions of lives could be saved if circumcision were widely and safely practised.

They issued guidelines at a press conference in Paris following a debate among experts, health officials and grassroots groups in Geneva on March 6-8. 

"The recommendations represent a significant step forward in
HIV prevention," said Kevin de Cock, director of the WHO's HIV/AIDS Department.

The German cabinet approved a national action plan against the spread of HIV and AIDS, which focuses on increased preventive measures and research into new strains of drug-resistant viruses.

When it comes to HIV and AIDS, the discrepancy between knowledge of the disease and actual behavior is widening, German leaders warned this week.

According to government statistics, almost 100 percent of the German population is aware of the most frequent modes of HIV transmission and ways to protect against infection.

BANJUL, Gambia -- From the pockets of his billowing white robe, Gambia's president pulls out a plastic container, closes his eyes in prayer and rubs a green herbal paste onto the ribcage of the patient -- a concoction he claims is a cure for AIDS.

He then orders the thin man to swallow a bitter yellow drink, followed by two bananas.

''Whatever you do, there are bound to be skeptics, but I can tell you my method is foolproof,'' President Yahya Jammeh told a reporter. ''Mine is not an argument, mine is a proof. It's a declaration. I can cure AIDS and I will.''

Over 9,000 youth will have access to counseling and guidance on HIV and AIDS prevention in Saint Petersburg through a project called 'Channeling Hope'. World Vision started the prevention activities earlier this month. More than 80 faith leaders and social workers will be involved in the project, trained by World Vision to support and better equip them to reach out to vulnerable youth.

The most vulnerable youths identified are aged between 14-24. This age group makes up almost one third of newly diagnosed HIV infec¬tions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, according to UNAIDS 2006 data.

Bill Clinton was back on CNN on World AIDS Day being portrayed as an expert on how to stop AIDS. It shows how the media will not let any of Clinton's sex scandals interfere with his public rehabilitation. The Clinton answer, which is quite unique, is to use an international airline tax to buy more anti-AIDS drugs of dubious value.

The U.N.-backed Unitaid agency is using the proceeds from a global airline tax to pay the Clinton Foundation to buy and distribute the drugs. They don't tell you that the drugs are toxic and can kill, or that they may cause the AIDS virus to mutate, making the disease even more deadly. In other words, it's not an issue that the Clinton plan could make the problem worse.

By Raymond S. Blanks, The Washington Post

The promises made by former mayor Anthony A. Williams more than a year ago to bolster the battle against HIV have not been realized.

The HIV-AIDS epidemic in the District remains disturbing and depressing. The rate of infection remains 10 times the national rate. African American women make up 90 percent of all infected female residents, and many thousands of residents with HIV do not know their status.

Black residents make up 60 percent of the District's population but represent more than 80 percent of AIDS cases. Nearly 20,000 of the city's residents are living with HIV. Recent tests indicate that, among the 16,700 persons tested, 580 tested positive, a new increase of nearly 4 percent.

Youngsters in western China know more than their parents about how HIV and AIDS are spread, but they still lag well behind their peers in more developed parts of the country, a recent survey suggests.

The survey found 73.3 percent of youth in western China know how the HIV virus is spread and what they can do to protect themselves. That is about 20 percent points lower than youth in the rest of the country.

Many young people in the west know the HIV virus can be contracted through unprotected sex and blood transmission, according to the survey, which was published by China's Juvenile Research Center and the National Research Center for Science and Technology for Development.

By Linda B. Blackford, HERALD-LEADER

Michael Thompson, a Lexington actor and long-time survivor of AIDS who helped nourish thousands of Kentuckians with the same disease, died Monday. He was 51 and had been suffering from cancer.

Thompson founded Moveable Feast, which delivered hot meals to people in Central Kentucky suffering from HIV and AIDS, in 1998. He got the idea after nursing a destitute artist with AIDS who starved to death just a few blocks from Lexington’s city hall, said fellow activist and friend Robert Morgan.

The operation started in the basement of St. Augustine’s Church with one volunteer, Thompson himself. But thanks to his will and personality, it soon grew to an organization that still feeds 100 people a day. The group served its 100,000th meal just four years after it started.

A stocky woman in blue jeans with spiky, gelled black hair dances on stage at one of Vietnam's rural rehabilitation centres, leading a hip-hop style chant.

"Hold hands together, we'll stop AIDS together," shouted the former heroin addict patient who returned to the rehabilitation centre to encourage over a thousand recovering drug users and prostitute inmates, a third of whom have HIV or AIDS.

People face stigma and discrimination when they leave the minimum security centres, especially if they are infected with HIV or have AIDS. HIV-infected people are often refused employment and their children denied schooling.

"Everybody should unite in combating this disease," said Danh Thu Hanh, 36, a former addict who spent two years as an inmate.

The British Embassy in Dublin has announced that U2 frontman Bono is being awarded an honorary knighthood by the Queen.

The singer, whose real name is Paul Hewson, has been given the honour for "his services to the music industry and for his humanitarian work," it said.

Prime Minister Tony Blair congratulated him, telling the singer in a letter: "You have tirelessly used your voice to speak up for Africa."

Bono will receive the honour in Dublin early in the new year, and British ambassador David Reddaway will conduct the ceremony.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. In the 25 years since the U-S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified AIDS, misconceptions still surround the disease in Tennessee.

Many people still associate H-I-V and AIDS with gay white men, but in Hamilton County last year, 51 percent of all reported cases of H-I-V were blacks.

Increasingly, AIDS sufferers also include Hispanics, women and children.Meantime, misconceptions persist about how someone can become infected with H-I-V.

Some youngsters still think you can get H-I-V from mosquitoes or from sitting on a toilet seat.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press

Patna, Dec 16 (IANS) In the absence of vaccine against HIV/AIDS, the 'social vaccine' of mass awareness needs to be strengthened to prevent spread of the deadly virus, a top UN official here said Saturday.

"Social vaccine is the main weapon to fight against the HIV/AIDS," said Peter Piot, executive director of United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

"By social vaccine I mean to create a mass awareness to educate the people about the killer disease and on how to prevent it" said Piot, who was member of a delegation on a daylong visit to Bihar along with Suma Chakrabarti, permanent Secretary, Department for International Development (DFID) of Britain.

NIGERIA - "AIDS is real, Avoid casual sex," "Abstinence is the best protection against AIDS," "Avoiding AIDS, as easy as... (ABC) Abstain, Be faithful (to your partner) Condom use," "A Hug gives comfort, not HIV/AIDS, Show love and care to people living with HIV/AIDS," "Stop AIDS, Keep the Promise,"... and so the campaign against the spread of the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) on bill boards the world over seem innumerable.

Bill boards are not the only media used to mount the campaign against the spread of the pandemic. News reports, jingles and programmes are aired and televised in the broadcast, and news reports, features, opinions, editorials and advertisements published in the print media against its spread, have permeated the surface of the globe. All these are apart from public awareness rallies.

The campaigns increase and rage broader by the day, seemingly at the same speed with the reported spread of the pandemic, at some instances, seeming at a higher speed, to remoter human settlements, especially in African and Asian countries, most especially in those reportedly having the highest prevalence rate.

The deadline for the “World Awards for Best TV and Radio Programs on HIV and AIDS” has been extended from December 1, 2006, to January 15, 2007 to allow reports broadcast on World Aids Day to be submitted.            

The awards are being sponsored by the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD) with UNAIDS and will be presented during its “HIV and AIDS Global Media Strategies” conference in May 2007.

Freelancers and producers from broadcasting organizations with reports that were broadcast between December 1, 2004, and December 1, 2006, are invited to apply.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recognizes the faith community’s influence on knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors about health. Since 1996, CDC has provided resources to faith-based organizations and worked to make them part of HIV prevention efforts. Faith-based organizations have conducted many HIV prevention activities. These activities include capacity-building assistance and training programs for faith leaders whose communities have high rates of HIV/AIDS.

CDC held a two-day meeting on “Faith and HIV Prevention” on February 13-14, 2006 in Atlanta, GA. The meeting was held to expand and strengthen CDC’s partnerships with faith communities. People who attended the meeting included faith leaders, people who provide HIV services, and public health workers. They discussed the role of faith-based organizations in helping prevent HIV/AIDS. There were 48 people at the meeting, including 29 leaders from many faiths, including Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Hebrew-Israelite, Muslim, and Buddhism.

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the nation's largest provider of HIV/AIDS healthcare, education and prevention and direct provider of HIV/AIDS medical care to tens of thousands of AIDS patients in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean and Asia, launches a print advertising campaign this week calling on Pfizer, Inc., the world's largest pharmaceutical company, to end its marketing of its erectile dysfunction drug, Viagra, as a sexual enhancement drug, thereby encouraging its recreational use and fueling the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.

The first wave of the Viagra + Meth = Rx for HIV Infection ad campaign begins in New York and Los Angeles this week with full-page ads in The Village Voice, The New York Blade and LA Weekly, with an ad appearing next week in L.A.'s Frontiers Magazine. The ads alert the public to the dangers of combining Viagra with crystal methamphetamines (an illegal drug, also know as crystal meth) and urges the pharmaceutical giant "to exercise responsibility by discontinuing marketing to men with mild erectile dysfunction, and by initiating an educational campaign on the dangers of Viagra and crystal meth, targeting men who have sex with men."

A Bangladeshi women's group was awarded a cash prize of $20,000 on Monday for its work in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) said.

The "Durjoy Nari Shongo" (indomitable women's council) shared the UNDP's "Red Ribbon" 2006 award with four other groups in Ukraine, Thailand, Zimbabwe and Zambia.

The Bangladeshi group distributes condoms, gives information about AIDS to sex workers and provides for the education of their children.

For two years she laboured in the shadow of her boss, South Africa's notorious health minister, who declared garlic, lemon and beetroot a suitable treatment for the country's victims of Aids.

Now Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a plain-speaking 55-year-old Quaker, is being feted as a heroine by health campaigners, Aids sufferers and much of South Africa's media, for daring to end a decade of denial on the disease by the ruling African National Congress.

In the space of a few weeks the deputy health minister has helped turn government policy on its head.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the US' largest provider of HIV/AIDS healthcare, education and prevention and operator of free AIDS treatment clinics in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean and Asia, today joined scores of other global AIDS advocates in praising Thailand's Ministry of Health announcing its intention to issue a compulsory license for the lifesaving HIV/AIDS drug Efavirenz, made by Merck. World Trade Organization regulations include flexibilities, which allow governments to issue compulsory licenses without consulting the foreign patent owner.

"We applaud Thailand's Ministry of Health for courageously issuing this compulsory license to make an affordable version of the AIDS drug Efavirenz," said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. "With this one move, Thailand has placed the health of its citizens ahead of drug company profits and now stands with Brazil and Malaysia as a model for countries around the world whose people are in need of lifesaving AIDS medicines. We call on governments in countries where people continue to lack access to urgently-needed AIDS drugs to follow Thailand's lead and pursue all tactics necessary to provide their citizens with lifesaving medicines."

source - Phama Lexicon 

RIYADH, 6 December 2006 — The pale young man suddenly got up from his chair, walked to the stage, and began his presentation.

“I stand before you today as perhaps the longest living person infected with AIDS in Saudi Arabia,” said the 30-year-old Makkawi at an AIDS symposium organized yesterday by the National Society for Human Rights at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center here.

“My name is Rami ibn Faisal Al-Harithi Al-Shareef. I was infected with HIV when I was six years old when my mom took me to get circumcised,” he said.