News (Updated
August 23, 2009)
[Home]
[Previous
news]
Fri Aug 21, 2:20 pm ET
In a statement, President
Barack Obama said HIV remains a serious challenge in the
The White House says there
are 56,000 new HIV infections in the
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES, Aug 20, 2009
(Reuters) - An AIDS advocacy group filed complaints against 16 adult-film
studios in California on Thursday, accusing them of violating state workplace
safety rules by failing to require porn actors to wear condoms.
The complaints, submitted
along with five dozen DVD copies of pornographic films produced by the companies
as evidence, formally call on the state's Division of Occupational Safety and
Health to conduct an inquiry.
A former porn actress
joined the filing with a complaint of her own against three additional
production companies.
The agency swiftly vowed
to investigate the complaints.
"We take it
seriously, and it will be addressed," Cal-OSHA spokesman Dean Fryer said of
the situation.
The filing marks the
latest effort by the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation to safeguard
adult-film performers.
The $12 billion-a-year
Last month, the foundation
sued
The suit was filed after
the disclosure that a porn actress had tested positive for HIV in June, leading
health officials to reveal 16 more previously unpublicized cases among
adult-film performers since a 2004 outbreak that prompted tougher testing and
reporting rules.
The latest complaints say
the films demonstrate that they were made without performers wearing condoms, in
violation of state regulations requiring workers be protected from blood-borne
pathogens in the exchange of bodily fluids.
"They have a valid
point here," Fyer said of the filings. "The blood-borne pathogens
standard is designed to protect workers where there is risk of transmission of
diseases through bodily excretions that occur as part of adult film
activity."
Public health figures show
that more than 2,800 sexually transmitted disease cases were diagnosed among
1,884 porn performers in
Porn executives insist the
industry has successfully policed itself with voluntary guidelines that call for
monthly testing and quarantines of actors found to be infected.
"If
Flip through the country's
most widely read magazines and one story in the advice columns soon appears to
be a theme: girl meets boy, boy meets girl, boy cheats on girl.
A report released on 19
August by The Soul City Institute for Health & Development Communication
notes that about 40 percent of letters to agony aunts asked for advice about
multiple concurrent partnerships, but less than half received answers that
included anything related to HIV and the increased risk of infection that
accompanies such relationships.
Research into advice
columns in 13 mainstream publications over a three-month period found the
columnists chose to focus on the emotional or "moral" issues of
concurrent partnerships.
Sue Goldstein,
Among the report's
recommendations were that columnists talk more about HIV-risk behaviours, avoid
moralizing and provide readers with additional resources for further
information. It also recommended that editors set guidelines on what "good
advice" should or should not include.
In response to the study
findings and workshops with journalists,
"[Journalists] argued
that people were tired of hearing about HIV, or that their aim was to entertain
their audiences," Goldstein told IRIN/PlusNews. "They may be trying to
entertain their audiences, but the reality is that these letters are often
serious requests for advice, and one often finds young people reading them ...
it's critical they be given the appropriate information."
AMURIA, 18 August 2009 (IRIN)
- HIV-positive patients in drought-hit eastern
"In our assessment in
Teso, we found that HIV/AIDS patients in the region take their ARV drugs on the
understanding of food [being available]; in the absence of food, many stop
taking their ARVs and this risks their lives," Musa Ecweru, State Minister
for Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees, told IRIN/PlusNews.
A prolonged dry spell has
withered the region's traditional crops, leaving hundreds of thousands of people
hungry; instead of eating a balanced diet from their farms, they are surviving
on a diet of bought maize meal.
"I have never seen a
famine like this - people can't afford a meal for several days," said Omax
Hebron Omeda, Resident Commissioner of eastern
Julius Ochen, a resident
of Amuria, told IRIN/PlusNews that he had stopped taking his HIV medication.
"When you take these drugs without eating, they make you weak and reduce
your strength - you feel like vomiting," he said.
"If the government
doesn't address the food crisis, many of us who are on ARVs are going to
die," said Rose Anyiat, another resident.
Keeping patients on drugs
"It's true that TB
drugs and ARVs are very strong; if taken without food, they make someone doze
and feel weak, but we encourage our clients to take them," said Beatrice
Okware, branch manager for the AIDS Support Organization in Soroti district.
"We are carrying out
sensitization and encouraging our clients on ARVs to continue taking the drugs
because if they default, there are side effects," she added.
Poor nutrition weakens the
body's defences against the virus, hastens progress from HIV to AIDS, and makes
it difficult to take ARVs, which can sometimes increase a patient's appetite.
Sufficient food can help reduce some side-effects of ARVs and promote adherence
to drug regimens.
Zainabu Akol, director of
HIV/AIDS programmes in the Ministry of Health, said health workers in government
medical centres were warning patients of the dangers of interrupting their ARV
regimens.
"We frankly told them
that it's a choice of life or death," she said, adding that some patients
had heeded the advice and gone back on their drugs.
The government has spent
an estimated US$10 million on food for the Teso sub-region, with some specially
designated for people living with HIV, but local leaders say much more is
needed; local media have reported that more than 40 people in the region have
died of hunger since May.
Food gap
"The food being given
to our people is just a drop in the ocean," said Patrick Amuriat, chairman
of Teso Parliamentary Group. "What can one cup of beans and two of posho
[maize flour] do? It's just for one meal."
"We are now giving
special attention to people on ARVs; we are discussing with the Ministry of
Health to package a special arrangement to help these vulnerable people,"
said Minister Ecweru. "They need to be supported with supplementary food to
balance their diet."
A total of 17 districts in
northwestern, northeastern and eastern
so/kr/mw
The Joint UN Programme on
HIV/AIDS estimated that as of 2006 10,000 children were infected with HIV in
Only 46 percent of HIV
patients in Burkina Faso who required treatment as of June 2009 – 23,000
people – are taking ARV drugs, according to the government's national HIV and
sexually transmitted diseases council.
"We know the numbers
[requiring treatment] are higher because of children who are born to
HIV-positive mothers," said the council's director of health services,
Joseph André Bidiga. "We do not offer prevention of mother-to-child
transmission [PMTCT] services in all our health centres." He said 10
percent of the country's health facilities do not offer this service.
Multiple studies have
shown that ARV treatment combined with abstaining from breastfeeding can cut the
risk of mother-to-child HIV transmission to less than 5 percent. But in 2007
only 33 percent of HIV-positive pregnant women worldwide took ARVs, according to
World Health Organization (WHO).
WHO estimates that more
than 400,000 children worldwide were newly infected in 2007, mostly through
their mothers.
Fleeing HIV tests
The HIV council's Bidiga
told IRIN parental refusal to test children masks child HIV infections. By law
children under 18 require parental permission for HIV tests in
Some parents cannot fathom
their babies could be infected, said paediatrician Alice Zoungrana with Charles
de Gaulle paediatrics hospital in the capital
She added that while 75
percent of families grant permission for their children to be tested at the
hospital, authorization is given only reluctantly. "It takes time because
[families] refuse and accept to test only when their children fall ill a second
time. It is during the second hospitalization that they accept."
It is not uncommon to see
parents leaving the hospital with their children in the middle of the night to
avoid the test, Zoungrana told IRIN. "These adults have not been tested
themselves and do not want to know their children's status."
A nurse who works east of
She said both she and her
eight-year-old son now take ARVs.
National HIV council
health director Bidiga told IRIN adults are the gatekeepers to HIV testing.
"We target adults for [HIV] awareness and outreach, but we are not reaching
the numbers we would like. For adults who are not tested, their children are
worse off because it is the adults who bring the children in for testing."
Message blocked
Paediatrician Zoungrana
said messages about HIV are not getting through. "We have to revisit
messages we are sending out to the population so they accept that HIV infections
are possible in both adults and infants."
Women are less resistant
than men to having their children tested, said Jacques Sanogo, director of the
NGO "Espoir" – hope in French – in
A 45-year-old widow,
infected with HIV by her late husband, told IRIN she was able to get tested only
after his death in 2001. "Both he and his family refused that I and my
children get tested after I accidentally discovered his ARVs in the house."
In 2002 she learned she was infected with HIV while her three children were not.
To overcome reticence
about HIV tests, community health workers visit families to talk about
preventing mother-to-child transmission and the importance of HIV testing, NGO
director Sanogo told IRIN.
Paediatrician Zoungrana
said the confidentiality of house visits by trusted community members boosts
acceptance of the message. "These community approaches work best because
they are closest to the population and messages get across better."
An estimated 2.7 percent
of
By KIMBERLY HEFLING,
Associated Press Writer Kimberly Hefling, Associated Press Writer Mon Aug 17,
4:12 am ET
Under the new policy,
veterans must verbally consent to the test. They can also decline it.
Previously, veterans had
to sign a consent form. The new policy follows recommendations from the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC says all patients should be offered
HIV testing even if they are not considered at risk.
The hope is that by
dropping the written consent, more veterans will get tested and get medical
treatment earlier.
About 22,000 veterans with
HIV get care at VA facilities.
HIV is the virus that
causes AIDS, which is a disease that weakens the immune system.