Results tagged “preventing HIV” from AIDS & HIV

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.

Mobile phones will be used to help fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa, it was announced at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona.

A public-private partnership between five member groups of the mobile phone industry and the US government has formed the Phones for Health initiative.

Phones for Health is a $10m scheme aimed at using mobile phone coverage to strengthen health systems in 10 African countries.

Firms working on the project include the GSM Association, the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, Accenture, Motorola, MTN and Voxiva.

Developed by Temple University researchers, 2-5AN6B could someday work as an effective treatment for HIV especially in conjunction with current drug treatments. Their work is published in the January issue of AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses.

A nucleic acid, 2-5AN6B inhibited HIV replication in white blood cells from a group of 18 HIV infected patients by up to 80 percent, regardless of the patients’ treatment regimens.

"A cure for HIV infection remains an elusive goal despite the significant impact of current treatments because of the virus’ ability to adapt to and resist those treatments, and bypass the immune system’s natural defenses," said Robert J. Suhadolnik, Ph.D., prinicipal investigator and professor of biochemistry at Temple University School of Medicine. "This compound prompts the body to restore its natural antiviral defense systems against the invading virus."

Current drugs for HIV work by blocking one of the steps toward virus replication.

In the United States, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is a health crisis for African Americans. At all stages of HIV/AIDS—from infection with HIV to death with AIDS—African Americans are disproportionately affected compared with members of other races and ethnicities [1, 2].

STATISTICS

HIV/AIDS in 2005

• According to the 2000 census, African Americans make up approximately 13% of the US population. However, in 2005, African Americans accounted for 18,510 (49%) of the estimated 38,096 new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in the United States in the 33 states with long-term, confidential name-based HIV reporting [2].*
• Of all African American men living with HIV/AIDS, the primary transmission category was sexual contact with other men, followed by injection drug use and high-risk heterosexual contact [2].
• Of all African American women living with HIV/AIDS, the primary transmission category was high-risk heterosexual contact, followed by injection drug use [2].
• Of the estimated 141 infants perinatally infected with HIV, 91 (65%) were African American (CDC, HIV/AIDS Reporting System, unpublished data, December 2006).
• Of the estimated 18,849 people under the age of 25 whose diagnosis of HIV/AIDS was made during 2001–2004 in the 33 states with HIV reporting, 11,554 (61%) were African American [3].

Researchers have halted two studies of an anti-AIDS vaginal gel in Africa and India after early results suggested it might raise the risk of HIV infection instead of lowering it.

It was "a disappointing and unexpected setback" to efforts to get a simple tool to protect women from the risk of AIDS through sex, the World Health Organization said.

More than half of all new infections with the AIDS virus in Africa involve women and girls. Scientists and groups like the Gates Foundation have long sought a method of protection women could use, even without their partners' knowledge, since many men refuse to use condoms.

The studies were testing Ushercell, a gel containing cellulose sulfate, a cotton-based compound developed by Polydex Pharmaceuticals, based in Toronto.

by Peter Tremblay

Is AIDS an "accident of nature", or bio-terrorism created by a hideous intelligence? The cure to the worsening AIDS pandemic may lie in appreciating its origins. Are we as human beings, still such a self-destructive and barbaric species, that individuals or groups among us, would resort to such a prospective Crime Against Humanity?

Let's hope not, but a growing constituency of doctors as well as scientists are expressing alarm at statistics which suggest that AIDS is a "bio-weapon" designed to target population groups.

A striking feature of AIDS is that it has ethno-selective characteristics. The rate of infection is twice as high among Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans as among whites, with death coming two to three times as swiftly. And over 80% of the children with AIDS and 90% of infants born with it are among these minorities. "Ethnic weapons" that would strike certain racial groups more heavily than others have been a long-standing objectives of eugenics movements. (See - A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare by R. Harris and J. Paxman, p 265, Hill and Wang).

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.

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.

Campaigners mixed joy with prudence after new trials, described as a watershed in the quarter-century-long tragedy of AIDS, showed circumcision nearly halves a man's risk of catching HIV.

They hailed it as a golden opportunity Thursday for braking a pandemic that has claimed 25 million lives, left another 40 million infected with HIV and for which there is no cure, only a costly, lifelong dependence on drugs.

Until now, the only prevention strategies have depended on condoms and sexual abstinence, both of which are of only limited effect.

But the campaigners also cautioned that circumcision -- while low-cost, one-off and effective -- was no silver bullet.

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.

As usual, The Washington Post has another brilliant article. this time it is about HIV, and how many employers still lack policies on AIDS prevention and care.

Two weeks after she started to work at Catholic Relief Services in 2004, Jennifer Munthali decided to tell her boss that she was HIV positive.

"I barely knew my supervisor," said Munthali, who was the program manager for AIDS relief in Zambia. "It was indeed a scary time. Even though I was at a higher management level, I was afraid I was going to lose my job."

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."

"The ultimate hope for this technology is to protect women and their unborn or nursing children from the AIDS virus," but the molecular condom is five years away from tests in humans and roughly 10 years until it might be in widespread use, Kiser says.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will prosecute people who deliberately infect others with HIV, state media said on Wednesday.

"Those who know they are infected with AIDS or are sick with AIDS and deliberately infect others will be severely punished according to the law," the Beijing News said, citing an unnamed police officer as telling an AIDS prevention workshop.

It provided no details on what kind of sentences would be meted out, nor how police would prove the virus had knowingly been passed on by someone.

Police would also deal just as severely with criminal suspects who have AIDS as those who do not, the report said.

It takes more than just passing along good information to stop the spread of HIV, a new US-government-backed study on HIV/AIDS prevention programs has found.

It takes "enhanced education, where you actually build their skills and don't just give them information," said lead author Cynthia Lyles of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta in a statement.

To help arm local health agencies with the most effective HIV prevention programs, Lyles and colleagues examined 100 HIV behavioral intervention programs developed and tested between 2000 and 2004. Their findings appear in January's American Journal of Public Health.

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.

Businesses, and consequently South Africa’s economy, lose big money each year to HIV/Aids. A study commissioned by AIC Insurance last year showed that South Africa lost about R12-billion a year because of workplace absenteeism, of which between R1,8-billion and R2,2-billion could be attributed to HIV/Aids.

And it is also worrying that according to the Actuarial Society of South Africa, close to one in five South Africans between the ages of 20 and 64 are infected with HIV -- a large part of South Africa’s workforce.

Thus, for many companies, looking after their HIV-positive employees has become a necessity. HIV/Aids has become the new brain drain.

But, large corporations with the financial resources to implement HIV/Aids workplace programmes are making inroads into addressing the problem in their sectors.

In September 2006, CDC published revised recommendations for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing in health-care settings to 1) increase early detection of HIV infection by expanding HIV screening of patients and 2) improve access to HIV care and prevention services (e.g., by conducting screening in locations such as emergency departments and urgent-care facilities, where persons who do not otherwise access HIV testing seek health-care services) (1).

HIV screening is now recommended for patients aged 13--64 years in all health-care settings after patients are notified that testing will be performed unless they decline (opt-out screening). This represents a substantial change from earlier recommendations to 1) offer HIV testing routinely to all patients only in health-care settings with high HIV prevalence and 2) conduct targeted screening on the basis of risk behaviors for patients in low-prevalence settings (2). This report examines HIV and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) case reporting in South Carolina before the 2006 recommendations were published.

PARIS (AFP) - The French government said it would make 10 million cut-priced condoms available in high schools, night clubs, cinemas and hospitals to try to combat the spread of HIV-AIDS.

Health Minister Xavier Bertrand said the campaign aimed to ensure safe-sex becomes "a reflex", with condoms to go on sale for 20 euro cents (25 US cents) in 20,000 outlets around the country from early next year.

The condoms will also be available in thousands of tobacconist shops, newsagents and pharmacies.

According to the French sanitary institute INVS, 6,700 new cases of HIV were reported in France in 2005, compared to 7,000 the previous year.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India must get on top of its HIV epidemic by next year or risk seeing it spiral out of control, the man who controls the richest private anti-AIDS fund in the country and a senior United Nations official warned.

"The signs are still ominous," Ashok Alexander, the director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's $258-million Indian HIV-prevention project, told Reuters in an interview.

He said the rising prevalence of HIV in more than 100 districts in which the foundation operates showed that a decade of government efforts had not slowed the virus, which is now estimated to have infected 5.7 million Indians.

Perinatal HIV Transmission

• Accounts for nearly all pediatric AIDS cases. HIV transmission from mother to child during pregnancy, labor and delivery or by breast feeding accounted for approximately 91% of all AIDS cases reported among U.S. children between 1985 and 2004 (1).
• Can be prevented. Data indicate that when appropriate antiretroviral medications are given during pregnancy, labor and delivery and after birth, the risk of transmission can be reduced to less than 2% (2) compared with approximately 25% when no interventions are given (3).