The
patients, who are haemophiliacs, say they contracted the deadly virus from blood
products sold in News (Updated
October 25, 2009)
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AFP October 20, 2009
Benjamin Yeh
The
patients, who are haemophiliacs, say they contracted the deadly virus from blood
products sold in
The Illinois Federal Court
recently ruled that the
"We have filed
notices of appeal," said Baum, of Los Angeles-based law firm Baum, Hedlund,
Aristei and Goldman, which has represented 41 Taiwanese haemophiliacs and their
relatives since 2003.
At the centre of the
dispute is a blood product called Koate, used in the early 1980s to clot the
blood of the haemophilia patients in the event of injury. Koate was made by
Cutter, which was bought by Bayer in the 1970s.
Taiwanese health
authorities banned the product in 1985 after it was found that the product had
not been heat-treated and could be tainted with HIV.
By that time, thousands of
people had been affected worldwide, among them at least 53 in
"I was three years
old when I contracted HIV," said one of the patients, now 27. "My mom
told me I took the drug only three times."
Thirty-six out of the 53
local patients had since died, the patient said.
Cutter and most of local
haemophiliac patients reached an agreement in 1999, with each patient given up
to two million
The money was provided on
the basis that it was humanitarian aid since Cutter had done nothing wrong.
However, the issue
developed a twist in 2003 when The New York Times reported that Cutter had
continued to market the blood products in
"The company
deliberately lied to the Taiwanese patients while reaching the agreement with
them," said K. C. Huang, a legal expert at
"Documents showed it
knowingly dumped the tainted product in
Bayer
However, a spokesperson
for the company recently told the British newspaper The Guardian that it had
behaved ethically.
"Bayer is committed
to the highest ethical standards, to promoting our medications responsibly and
to providing life-saving therapies for the global haemophilia community,"
the spokesperson said, according to the paper.
AFP October 22, 2009
The
Catholic Church said Thursday it will launch a campaign in
The effort seeks "to
make the population aware of the risks of AIDS and, if a positive diagnosis is
found, to start treatment as soon as possible," said Luiz Carlos Lunardi, a
spokesman on the church's efforts on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.
The national campaign will
be based on a test program already underway in five Brazilian cities, and will
include testing for syphilis, the Brazilian National Confederation of Bishops
said.
The confederation and
This show of unity in the
country with the largest Catholic population in the world comes after several
clashes between the government and the church over the use of condoms, which
have been shown to be effective in curbing the spread of HIV.
"The churches pray,
and we work to reduce the number of cases of illness," Health Minister Jose
Gomes Temporao said recently.
The Brazilian government
intends to hand out 1.2 billion condoms this year as part of its policy for
family planning and the reduction of sexually transmitted diseases.
AFP October 22, 2009
African
leaders were urged Thursday to increase efforts to end HIV infections among
children and women, in the world's worst affected continent. Skip related
content
Speaking at the launch of
the Campaign to End Pediatric HIV-AIDS, activist Graca Machel said that only two
countries in
"You tell me next
time we meet how much is being spent in wars and defence...but how much is being
spent in health, how much is being spent in agriculture to produce food for our
kids," Machel told delegates.
Sub-saharan
"We need the
international community to commit, to meet their obligations, but we have to
show commitment ourselves no matter how small our budgets might be," said
Machel, who is married to
"We will not get
there when African leaders do not get moved, they do not get moved by the
hundreds of thousands of people who are dying on this continent when we know
that this can be prevented," she said.
20 Oct 2009 Source: IRIN
DURBAN,
20 October 2009) - Just over three years ago, a group of HIV-infected inmates at
Westville Correctional Centre, near the South African port city of Durban, won a
High Court battle that forced the government to provide them with
life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) treatment.
Judge Thumba Pillay
ordered the national Department of Correctional Services to provide the
medicines to the 15 prisoners, as well as to any other inmate in need of them.
He also ordered the
department to adopt a comprehensive HIV/AIDS plan for the jail to ensure that
inmates would receive not only ARVs, but adequate nutrition, regular and ongoing
counselling, and access to health facilities. The government appealed the
verdict but it was upheld, allowing thousands of prisoners across
Yet many HIV-positive
inmates at Westville say that while most of those who qualify for treatment are
getting it, the prison authorities take little interest in their health and are
not complying fully with the court order.
"Prisoners now have
access to ARVs, but the support services are still not there," said Frank
Ntombela, chairman of the Westville HIV/AIDS Support Group, which was
instrumental in taking the department to court.
"Good nutrition,
which is one of the requirements for people taking these drugs, is unavailable.
We get the regular staple food, consisting mainly of rice and soya-bean stew,
which is often not good enough," and the prison authorities did not allow
inmates' families to provide them with healthier food.
Ntombela's section of the
prison houses more than half the total prison population of 7,800, but has only
four doctors and four nursing sisters, who only see patients on Tuesdays.
"Sometimes there are
more than 50 people who want to see the medical staff, but they force us to
choose only seven prisoners who are going to be seen for that week - the others
would only get a chance next time, unless they are in an emergency," said
Ntombela.
Another member of the
support group who did not wish to be named, told IRIN/PlusNews that the ARVs
were helping HIV-infected prisoners. "There was a time between 2005 and
2006 when an average of 140 prisoners died of AIDS a year - we saw corpses
leaving the prison hospital every week."
However, because of
overcrowding many HIV-positive prisoners still contracted tuberculosis (TB),
including drug-resistant strains of the disease. The support group member
estimated that about 60 HIV-positive inmates now died at the prison every year,
with very few granted medical parole.
"Many people end up
dying lonely deaths here, yet there is a legal provision which allows terminally
ill prisoners to be paroled in order to die dignified deaths with their
families."
After their court victory
the support group was allocated an office for meetings and treatment and
awareness programmes, but prison authorities recently closed down the office
after gang violence claimed the lives of two inmates.
"I think they used
the gang wars to get to us, because they always resented the fact that we had
won the court battle," said the support group member. "As a result,
most of our programmes came to a halt."
The number of Westville
inmates living with HIV is unknown but the prison is located in
Pastor Leon Assenderpe of
the Family Support Group, a faith-based organisation that runs AIDS awareness
and care programmes in prisons throughout the country, described the HIV/AIDS
situation at Westville as "dire".
"I know that the
government is trying to implement a treatment plan but they are overwhelmed
because of the number of prisoners needing treatment," he said.
Nana Mpungose, the
Westville coordinator of Treatment Action Campaign, the national AIDS lobby
group that helped the inmates bring their case to court, said her organisation
was concerned about the number of complaints from HIV-positive prisoners at
Westville and other facilities.
"We are also
concerned that the department is not fully compliant with the court order,"
she said. "When we ask for permission to meet with prison authorities, or
to speak to prisoners, we are denied that opportunity."
The Department of
Correctional Services could not be reached for comment.
19 Oct 2009
Source: Reuters
* Financial disaster could hit funding agencies
* May disrupt treatment
and prevention alike
* 1,000 experts attending
AIDS conference in
By Tan Ee Lyn
PARIS, Oct 19 (Reuters) -
The global financial crisis and a loss of interest in the AIDS epidemic may
tranlsate into less money in coming years for research, treatment and prevention
of the virus, HIV experts said on Monday.
They are especially
concerned because a trial in
"I'm very concerned
that AIDS is slipping off the agenda in many countries of the world due to a
combination of financial and economic crises," said Dr. Peter Piot of the
Institute for Global Health at Imperial College London and a former head of the
United Nations AIDS agency UNAIDS.
"The money that was
spent to save banks, insurance companies and so on is going to have an impact in
the social sector and in R&D (research and development)," Piot told a
news conference at the start of a scientific AIDS conference.
An estimated 33 million
people around the world are infected with HIV and more than half of the 9.5
million people who need AIDS drugs cannot get them, the U.N. reported in
September. Every day, 7,000 people become newly infected with HIV.
"How much money will
there be to enroll additional new patients? How much money will there be for new
prevention activities?" Piot said.
Michel Kazatchkine of the
Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was worried about
treatments, too.
"The financial crisis
is clearly affecting the capacity of donors to fund international programs on
AIDS and let's not forget that it is also affecting the developing countries
that are struggling to keep up with their investments in health," he said.
On Tuesday, scientists
will release details of a study released in part last month that showed vaccine
made using two older experimental vaccines, lowered the HIV infection rate by 31
percent after three years among 16,000 Thai volunteers.
The $105 million trial was
sponsored and paid for by the
"We are not going to
see all the results of the Thai trial tomorrow ... we hope this is going to lead
to something more important, from 31 percent to a higher figure (of
protection)," said Alan Bernstein of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, a
international coalition of researchers, funders, policy makers and advocates
working on AIDS vaccines.