News (Updated May 31, 2009)

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Botswana circumcision drive will prevent HIV infections

Thu May 28, 2:57 pm ET

GABORONE (AFP) – The process of circumcising nearly half a million males in Botswana by 2012 will prevent almost 70,000 new HIV infections by 2025, a report published on Thursday said.

"Scaling up safe male circumcision has the potential to reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS in Botswana significantly," said a report published in the International AIDS Society journal 2009.

Researchers estimated that the process could cost the state about 47 million dollars (just under 34 million euros).

The report boosted government's newly launched campaign to circumcise 460,000 men, over the five years, in a bid to curb the spread of the disease.

The health ministry said the initiative was prompted by a series of studies which found that circumcised men were two to three times less likely to contract HIV.

Government is currently running television and radio campaigns to encourage men to visit clinics for safe circumcision procedures.

According to a UNAIDS report, HIV prevalence among pregnant women in Botswana was last measured at 43 percent in 2003.

The rapid spread of HIV and AIDS once threatened the survival of the approximately two million people of the land-locked southern African country, until the introduction of antiretroviral drugs in 2003.

Africa needs new AIDS battle plan, 30 years on: experts

Tue May 26, 1:18 pm ET

NAIROBI (AFP) – A new battle plan for fighting AIDS is needed in sub-Saharan Africa , the world's hardest-hit region, where most people with the possible deadly virus are unaware of their condition, experts said Tuesday.

If after 30 years of the pandemic "90 percent of people living with AIDS do not know their status... 70 percent of people who need treatment are not getting it, then there is something we are not doing right," Wasai Jacob Nanjakululu, an HIV/AIDS expert for the British charity Oxfam, told AFP.

Grassroots movements from 32 mostly African countries have gathered for an AIDS conference in Nairobi , which opens Wednesday, aimed at exploring radical new approaches to stopping the spread of the disease.

"We are far from winning the struggle against AIDS," said Leonard Okello, an ActionAid International expert in HIV/AIDS.

He said the three-day Nairobi conference would take an honest look at the shortcomings of recent policies to combat the disease and seek new methods.

Millions of dollars -- mostly Western-sourced -- have been poured into anti-AIDS campaigns, but experts say these are not being spent effectively.

"There are a lot of resources in HIV/AIDS programmes but not much of that reaches the community. What is it that we should radically change?", said Okello.

The head of Kenya 's National AIDS Control Council Miriam Were said Africa was in denial for too long after the disease hit.

"We were too slow, even when we had evidence staring at us, we buried our heads in the sand," she said.

In the face of increasing donor fatigue and other issues from the global financial crisis to climate change and emerging epidemics like swine flu, fears are that the AIDS pandemic risks slipping off the international agenda.

"We need innovative health financing," said Okello.

Prevalence rates have dropped in parts of east Africa to around six percent but some countries have failed to stem the tide.

For example, infection rates among pregnant women in Swaziland , Botswana , Lesotho and South Africa top 30 percent.

Texan gets 45 years for spreading HIV through sex

Fri May 29, 3:33 pm ET

McKINNEY , Texas – A jury sentenced a suburban Dallas man to 45 years in prison Friday for knowingly infecting six women with the AIDS virus.

Philippe Padieu, described by his own lawyer as a "modern-day Casanova," shook his head and looked down when the decision was read. Jurors sentenced him to 45 years on five counts and 25 years on the sixth, to be served concurrently. Padieu had faced up to 99 years.

The Collin County jury convicted 53-year-old Padieu (pah-DOO') on Wednesday on six counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Since HIV is the virus that causes AIDS, prosecutors contended Padieu's bodily fluids were a deadly weapon.

Padieu is a former martial arts instructor who continued to have unprotected sex after he tested positive for HIV in 2005.

Assistant District Attorney Lisa King in Collin County told jurors earlier Friday that Padieu deserved a life sentence.

But defense attorney Bennie House said Padieu may have made mistakes as a "modern-day Casanova," but did not intentionally spread the virus. He said a 20-year sentence would be fair.

Jurors heard testimony was Thursday in the punishment phase, including from women who described the harm that the HIV diagnosis had done them.

Padieu himself also took the stand, saying he was a victim of overzealous prosecutors. He said the women who accused him had all had multiple partners.

Basic healthcare crucial to beating HIV

27 May 2009 08:38:25 GMT

Source: IRIN

Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.

NAIROBI , 27 May 2009- Providing HIV prevention, care and treatment services at well-equipped local clinics could be the key to success in fighting the pandemic in the developing world, a new report by the international anti-poverty NGO, ActionAid, has said.

"We need to target and mobilise people at the most basic level of healthcare," said Miriam Were, chair of the Kenya National AIDS Control Council, at the launch of the report, Primary Concern: why primary healthcare is key to tackling HIV and AIDS, in Nairobi , Kenya .

"HIV care is much broader than just ARVs [antiretrovirals]. People living with HIV need comprehensive healthcare; health centres should have the capacity to deal with opportunistic infections."

Handling easily treatable illnesses such as tuberculosis [TB}, diarrhoea and malaria at primary healthcare level would leave tertiary institutions free to deal with more serious infections.

ActionAid's report notes the example of Cuba , where huge investment in primary healthcare has seen the relatively poor country achieve health indicators that rival the United States and other countries in the developed world.

Investing in health workers and health systems

Speakers at the launch called for more training of primary healthcare workers. "What we are doing now is training lay people for a couple of weeks and then calling them expert counsellors, while we don't bother to train the primary healthcare nurses," said Leonard Okello, head of ActionAid's global HIV team. "We should be equipping health professionals with the skills to integrate HIV management into their other work."

He recently visited a clinic in western Kenya , where an international NGO had installed a condom dispenser but the nurse had never been trained to advise people on correct condom use.

"The machine sat there idle because the NGO project had trained its own people and was using the government facility, but not its staff - we need much better integration if we are to have any impact," Okello said.

The activists pressed governments, particularly in Africa , to broaden access to basic healthcare by building more health centres and improving those that already existed.   Linda Mafu, Africa regional coordinator of the World AIDS Campaign, a global coalition of national, regional and international civil society groups, said: "Health centres need to be spread out and properly equipped, so they have the capacity to deal not only with HIV, but with other diseases that affect the population. That way, people don't need to walk such long distances and queue for hours."

Okello described an initiative in Uganda to reduce transport costs. "HIV-positive people visit the health centre once every three months, unless there is an emergency, and nominate one person to bring their drugs to the village once a month," he said. "These sorts of innovations can only come from the community, because they know their situations."

The report envisions a long-term future with an efficient public health sector providing HIV services, but said there would still be a need for private sector and NGO involvement in HIV service delivery for the foreseeable future.

"Many people, including those most vulnerable to HIV infection, such as sex workers, currently choose to opt out of the public health system," the report said. "Delaying HIV programmes until stronger health systems are in place will lead to high numbers of AIDS-related deaths."

The report's launch comes ahead of the Global Citizens Summit for Social Mobilisation to End AIDS, a meeting of civil society, international development organisations, community organisations and networks of people living with HIV, to be held in Nairobi to discuss people-centred approaches to tackling the pandemic.

Sex slaves' crusader battles pimps, credit crisis

Reuters - Tuesday, May 26

By Candida Ng

SINGAPORE , May 26 - Somaly Mam has been held at gunpoint, her daughter has been kidnapped and her house burned down. Now, the Cambodian former sex worker turned activist is battling the global financial crisis.

One of the most pressing concerns Mam, who crusades against forced prostitution, is facing is scarce funding for the shelter she helped start for women and girls who are abused and coerced into the sex trade in Cambodia and neighbouring countries.

The current credit crunch also has had a effect on the number of women and children turning to prostitution to survive and the ability of Mam to care for her more than 200 charges in shelters.

"Since we opened the shelter, I always face this problem. Like the last five months, no rice, we cannot feed the children," Mam, of Agir pour les Femmes En Situation Precaire , told Reuters.

AFESIP, a largely Spanish-funded grass-roots group, requires about $1.5 million annually to fund its efforts in Cambodia , Thailand , Vietnam and Laos , Mam said. She also travels around the world to raise money for the Somaly Mam Foundation that puts a spotlight on forced prostitution.

Earlier this month, Cambodia said it expects an increase in prostitution and human trafficking as the unemployment rate climbs during the economic downturn.

The poor Southeast Asian nation has been trying hard in recent years to rid itself of its reputation as a haven for perverts and paedophiles, but with limited success.

Mam, in Singapore to raise funds for the group, said it was culturally acceptable to keep a girl for a week and rape her to improve one's health and luck in Cambodia , or to cure HIV. Some of the victims she has seen are only a few months old.

The U.N. estimates that out of the two million women and children trafficked every year, 30 percent are in Asia .

At the AFESIP shelters, the women and girls, some as young as four, receive medical and psychological treatment. They are also taught English, French and vocational skills such as weaving and hairdressing so they can fit back into society.

One batch is heading to a university in the United States this year.

"The children in the shelter, they keep me going. They are my everything, my light, my love - they are my heroes," said Mam, who traced her dramatic journey from sex slave to crusader against prostitution in a memoir, "The Road of Lost Innocence".

The Cambodian activist also faces threats, occasionally veiled but always frightening, from pimps and organised crime syndicates on a daily basis in her struggle to eradicate sexual slavery and human trafficking.

"If they want to kill, they kill," Mam said. "Organised crime, they are all very organised. But the people who are against organised crime, no one is well organised. So now they have to stop talking and start working."

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