News (Updated December 29, 2008)

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Japanese porn actress-turned-AIDS activist found dead

Wed Dec 24, 12:06 pm ET

TOKYO (AFP) – Former Japanese porn actress Ai Iijima, who campaigned for AIDS awareness in a nation where it is still widely seen as a foreign disease, was found dead at her home Wednesday, police said.

The body of the 36-year-old, who retired in March last year from a lucrative career as a television personality, was found lying in the lounge of her condominium in downtown Shibuya by a friend.

"There were few signs of foul play. We will conduct a post mortem tomorrow to determine if the cause of her death was an illness, suicide or something of a criminal nature," a police spokesman said.

Iijima, who was also known in the rest of Asia , gained popularity at home as a straight-talking character since her debut on television variety shows in the 1990s.

Her AIDS awareness campaign started around the time she published the autobiographical "Platonic Sex" in 2000, describing her younger days as a porn actress and club hostess.

The book has sold some two million copies and been made into a movie and a television drama.

Citing kidney problems and a lack of motivation, Iijima retired from the show and television business world but continued her AIDS campaign.

"In Japan , HIV-positive patients are increasing year by year and many people's lives are lost," she wrote on her blog on December 2. "Is your boyfriend alright? Is your girlfriend alright? Why don't you take an AIDS test to know yourself."

She stopped writing her blog on December 5 and was seen at an AIDS seminar in a provincial city the following day.

In a recent interview with the weekly Asahi, Iijima said she had just borrowed money from an investment back and would "open a shopping site dealing with cosmetics."

Opposition MP in Malaysia 'withdraws HIV remarks'

Sun Dec 28, 11:21 am ET

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – A senior opposition politician withdrew his statement that people with HIV should be banned from marriage, after he was criticised by AIDS activists, a report said Sunday.

Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin, of the conservative Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and chief minister of the northern state of Perak, said people with HIV should be allowed to marry and have children.

"No one is out to sideline HIV carriers," he was quoted as saying by the New Sunday Times newspaper.

However he also said that people with HIV should be housed in special isolated wards when in hospital and when marrying should be required to prove to their future spouse that they are receiving medical treatment.

Nizar appeared to chance his stance after last week when he was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times newspaper: "I think it is a gross error to allow somebody very sick like that, an HIV carrier, to marry."

"If there's any breeding -- sorry for having to use that word -- the embryo will also carry the same virus. It's very unjust to the child," he was quoted as saying.

Deputy premier Najib Razak had earlier said that all Muslim couples would have to undergo mandatory HIV screening before they wed -- a test so far only applied in certain states.

Irene Fernandez, director of the women's group Tenaganita, said the government "should not be making such choices for people."

"It is a screwed-up perspective. After so many years of HIV/AIDS education they (the government) come up with such views. This is very worrying," she said last week.

"If a couple gets married and one partner is found to be HIV positive, does it mean they will have to divorce? This clearly does not make sense."

Precise data are hard to obtain but according to United Nations figures, more than 82,500 Malaysians have been infected with the virus since records began in 1986 and around 80,000 are currently living with HIV/AIDS.

The number of new HIV infections appears to be falling, however.

Last year 5,400 new cases were reported compared to 6,900 the year before, the health ministry says, a figure expected to have dropped further in 2008 to nearly 3,500.

At the same time, infections among married women through sex increased from five percent of total cases in 1997 to 16 percent last year.

Pakistan takes fight against AIDS into mosques

by Hasan Mansoor Hasan Mansoor Wed Dec 24, 12:07 pm ET

KARACHI (AFP) – Mohammad Azeem leads prayers every Friday at his local mosque in Pakistan 's largest city of Karachi , but one week his sermon contained a shock for the deeply conservative congregation.

Azeem had been tasked with educating his flock about the dangers of AIDS, long a taboo subject in this Islamic country.

"Breaking that barrier sent shock waves through the community," said Azeem, who admitted he saw sufferers as sinners against Allah until he was invited to a meeting organised by Pakistan's National AIDS Control Programme (NACP).

"What impressed me most about the programme -- and transformed my view of the disease and its victims -- was that it was aimed at saving lives," said the 36-year-old prayer leader.

"That inspired me to play an active role in the awareness campaign."

The meeting was part of a progressive government scheme to educate religious leaders in Pakistan about the dangers of HIV and encourage them to take the AIDS prevention message to their communities.

Officially only 5,000 people in Pakistan have the virus, but the NACP puts the real number of victims at between 70,000 and 80,000.

It estimates 0.1 percent of the population is infected, but says the disease is spreading among high-risk groups, especially drug users, who mostly inject and often use dirty needles.

"We started the programme because the religious leaders are widely respected and people listen to what they say," said NACP programme manager Hasan Abbas Zaheer.

Zaheer said almost all those who attended the meetings were open to the idea of preaching to their congregations on issues outside religion because they viewed Islam as a way of life.

But it was more difficult to persuade them that AIDS was a problem in Pakistan -- they initially saw it as a foreign disease symptomatic of immorality in other societies.

"As we told them more about the disease, they said they could contribute to raising awareness through mosques, using Islamic teachings for support," said Abdul Mateen, one of the volunteer trainers who lead the sessions.

Hundreds of prayer leaders now regularly deliver sermons that feature AIDS awareness messages, mostly focusing on family matters and the rights of the poor, who are disproportionately affected by the disease.

Preachers from Pakistan 's minority Christian and Hindu communities have also been targeted, as have teachers in religious seminaries.

"A large number of seminary teachers are also helping us by talking about the disease and its prevention at their schools," Zaheer said.

Politicians, especially those from religious parties, have been the most reluctant converts to the scheme, not least because they often refuse to believe Pakistan has a problem.

Munawwar Hasan, secretary general of Pakistan 's hardline Islamic party Jamaat-i-Islami, agreed that preachers should be used to raise awareness but said it should not be restricted to AIDS.

"Despite these alarming figures, I believe the AIDS problem is not as serious here as it is in the West, because we largely stick to Koranic teachings, which forbid contact between a man and a woman out of wedlock," he said.

Authorities here believe AIDS was initially spread in the late 1980s by Pakistani men working abroad, who unknowingly infected their wives on their return.

Since then, a number of people have been infected with HIV through blood transfusions in Pakistan , where only around 50 percent of the blood supply is screened for the virus.

Zaheer said the Pakistani authorities were making a major effort to tackle the disease, although there are as yet only 12 AIDS treatment centres across the country, looking after 3,500 patients.

"We are in the process of scaling up treatment and services for HIV patients to meet deadlines by 2015," he said.

Prayer leader Azeem said people were initially reluctant to listen to his AIDS sermons, but they came round eventually.

"People actually do want to know about these issues," he said. "But it has to be communicated in the right way, and that is what we can do."

 HIV gaining ground in the Highlands

MOUNT HAGEN , 24 December 2008  - Dr Petronia Kaima was appalled. She had just been told the two young HIV-positive mothers she greeted as they were leaving the Rebiamul Centre in Mount Hagen, in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG), were married to the same man. Their husband had two other wives, also living with the virus, and yet he refused to come for treatment.

"You have to talk to him, you have to go and meet him," she told Joshua Jochapai, the nursing and counselling officer at the centre, which provides HIV testing and antiretroviral therapy (ART). He responded, slightly exasperatedly, that he was trying.

The Western Highlands are a jumble of broad valleys, steep mountains and fierce rivers – part of a rugged geology that runs across the centre of the Melanesian island. It is the most heavily populated part of the country, with a growing economy based on gold, copper and agricultural produce cultivated on the highly fertile land.

PNG's most important road, the Highlands Highway, which begins in the eastern coastal town of Lae, has encouraged trade, migration and a mixing of cultures along its route to the mines in the west. Some time in the recent past, HIV was added to this amalgam, and the area now has the highest prevalence in the country outside the capital, Port Moresby .

Dr Kaima runs the Tinanga Clinic at Mount Hagen general hospital. Three days a week, she treats sexually transmitted infections (STIs) – a much earlier, and still deeply-rooted epidemic in PNG - while two days are set aside for HIV counselling and treatment. Out of 2,000 registered patients at the clinic, 900 are on ART.

Stigma waning?

When HIV first began to emerge in the late 1980s, families often hid away those believed to be infected, there were even reports of killings. The first real study into attitudes towards people living with the virus conducted in 2005 found a mixed response in the Western Highlands.

"While people in some communities said they would help and look after the person with AIDS, often through the help of God, others said they would isolate themselves from the person, never share food or drink with him/her and would not wash in the same running water," the study noted.

Dr Kaima believes the stigma is waning. "A lot of people have seen the trauma of their relatives dying and are starting to come forward, they are realising the importance of getting tested early before they die. With ART, they can see how the quality of life improves."

She is certain more people would test for HIV and enroll on ART if the facilities at the primary health care level were less basic. Instead, people are forced to travel to the urban health centres, which many cannot afford.

HIV prevalence nationally is estimated at just over 2 percent out of a population of 6 million, and is projected to climb to more than 5 percent by 2012, with over two-thirds of the cases in rural areas.

In 2006, the Tinanga Clinic tested 1,300 people of which 150 were found to be HIV positive; in 2007, 1,600 tested and 200 were positive. "HIV is overtaking STIs," said Kaima.

Men not coming forward

Agnes Mek runs the Rebiamul Centre. She has 300 patients on ART, the overwhelming majority women. Although polygamy is common in PNG, so are extra-marital affairs; women test in higher numbers because they know how HIV is transmitted, and they are worried about their husbands' cheating, she said.

"Our women don't have much say as to how things are done. Once you get married you submit to your husband, and that extends to the bedroom," she told IRIN/PlusNews, adding that this was especially true in the Highlands with its warrior traditions and well-guarded male privilege.

Mek has difficulty getting men to test for HIV, or even to go onto treatment along with their wives. It is not so much their fear of discrimination, she believes, but the shame associated with being responsible for bringing the virus into the home; or perhaps just as importantly, the proof it provides their peers of "loose" moral behaviour.

It is possible that the man with four HIV-positive wives, whose irresponsibility so incensed Dr Kaima, could be on treatment; it is not uncommon for men to seek ART outside their communities – one reason why Port Moresby has such a disproportionately high HIV prevalence rate. Mek suggested that he could also be in deep denial, and accusing his wives of being responsible for his infection.

Communities under strain

PNG society is under extreme pressure. Accelerated cultural change – the first European contact with the Highlands was not until the 1930s – is taking place against the backdrop of an economy that cannot create enough jobs, or keep its children in school.

The traditional egalitarian imperative, that the community takes care of its own and wealth must be redistributed to those in need, is beginning to unravel.

The Rebiamul Centre is looking after 150 children who have lost their parents to HIV, sending 40 of them to school. "With life becoming more stressful, extended family members cannot take on an extra mouth to feed," Mek explained.

And for adults on ART who are now living when they thought they would die, there is the problem of readjustment. "As they recover, their needs become harder to meet; they need jobs and those are hard to find."

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