By
DESIREE HUNTER, Associated Press Writer Desiree Hunter, Associated Press Writer
Tue Jul 14, 3:17 am ET News (Updated
July 18, 2009)
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The Global Fund to Fight
AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has granted
The grant will support
antiretroviral (ARV) treatments for those afflicted by AIDS as well as
organisations fighting the pandemic, it said.
Around 9,100 of 26,232 HIV-AIDS patients are on ARV treatments, according to the national programme to fight HIV.
By
DESIREE HUNTER, Associated Press Writer Desiree Hunter, Associated Press Writer
Tue Jul 14, 3:17 am ET
BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. –
Battered and flooded by Hurricane Katrina, this coastal Alabama fishing village
was in wreckage four years ago when Dr. Regina Benjamin began assessing her
patients' needs. Trouble was, her little health clinic had been flooded and they
couldn't come to see her.
So she went to them.
She could be seen
"going door-to-door in all that mud and sewer, just a mess from her head to
her toes with boots on," Stan Wright, one of her patients, said Monday,
hours after Benjamin was nominated by President Barack Obama to be
"It'd be way before
we'd open the roads up for traffic and I was concerned she was going to run into
a big washout hole or something, but she'd put on her rain coat and boots and
get her little doctor's bag and say, 'I'm going to go check on my
patients'," said Wright, the town's mayor.
People across the bayou
voiced pride that Obama had reached into a rural, economically struggling area
for a physician to become the nation's top doctor.
"I'm shocked. It's
good news. Nothing that good ever happens in the bayou," said Jason Ngam (
After Katrina ruined the
nonprofit clinic — as another hurricane had done several years before —
Benjamin laid out medical charts to dry in the post-storm sun and pointed out
the need for electronic records that would be invulnerable to hurricanes.
Rebuilt by volunteers, the
clinic burned down just as it was about to reopen after Katrina. Awarded a
$500,000 MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" last fall, Benjamin
promised to use the money to help finish the job.
Today, the temporary
clinic is a small brick building next to City Hall with a wooden ramp leading to
its door. Behind it stands another building three times its size that will be
the new clinic, which is to be completed when more money comes in.
On Monday, the 52-year-old
Benjamin pledged to take her fight from the rural, impoverished outpost to the
top tier of American medicine so that "no one falls through the
cracks."
Her focus has long been on
preventable disease and she will continue in that line. It's a cause she knows
personally and three times over. Her father died with diabetes and high blood
pressure, her mother died of lung cancer after years of smoking and she lost her
only brother to HIV.
"I cannot change my
family's past. I can be a voice in the movement to improve our nation's health
care and our nation's health," Benjamin said. "I want to be sure that
no one falls through the cracks as we improve our health care system."
Speaking from the White
House Rose Garden, Obama noted the obstacles Benjamin has overcome and said she
"represents what's best about health care in
The diverse patient mix of
Bayou La Batre — white, black and, increasingly, immigrants from
Waiting patients were
treated to a nearly constant chorus of rings from the practice's two telephone
lines as people called to offer congratulations and support.
If confirmed by the
Senate, Benjamin would assume a job as the people's health advocate, a bully
pulpit position that can be tremendously effective when paired with an effective
personality.
Benjamin won't have any
problem combining the powerful position with her personality to produce results
for the country, said Elorise Bradley, who has been a patient of Benjamin's for
the past three years.
"She has a
personality that I've never really seen in a person that is a doctor. She's just
sweet and she's funny sometimes but very, very stern," she said.
"Whatever she says, she means it. She's gotten on me a couple of times
about medication when I don't do it right or take it on time — she'll get
you."
Benjamin, a Daphne native,
became the first black woman and the first doctor under age 40 elected to the
American Medical Association's board of trustees, and in 2002 became the first
black woman to head a state medical society.
She served as a National
Health Service Corps scholar with
But despite all her
accomplishments, she hasn't lost her down-to-earth ways, said Ruth Marchand, a
resident of nearby
Her son Al went to fix the
clinic's air conditioner once and went in to see a woman mopping the floor where
the cooling unit had fallen to the ground.
"He told the lady he
was there to see the doctor and she said 'I'm the doctor,'" Marchand said,
adding that her son had told the story as an example of the doctor's humility.
"That impressed Al to think that she wasn't too good to mop the
floor."
Published online 8 July
2009 | Nature 460, 162 (2009) | doi:10.1038/460162a
Focus to shift from US
priorities to those of countries receiving aid.
Erika Check Hayden
The new head of the
The Senate confirmed
physician Eric Goosby as
“Goosby has got an
enormous challenge ahead of him.”
Doctors and advocates hope
that Goosby will expand PEPFAR's success in delivering AIDS treatment and
services while ditching less favoured parts of the programme, such as its focus
on prevention by the ABC strategy — abstain, be faithful, use condoms.
"He is incredibly
well-grounded in the prevention and treatment issues facing the developing
world," says Christine Lubinski, vice-president for global health at the
Infectious Diseases Society of America in
In May, advocates called
President Barack Obama's global health request of $63 billion over six years
"meager", saying it broke his campaign pledge to provide $1 billion a
year in new spending for PEPFAR. The plan spent $18.8 billion between 2003 and
2008, making it the largest aid programme for one disease.
The recession has forced
some aid recipients to scale back. In February,
"The sustainability
issue is of high concern for us," Goosby acknowledges. He hopes to shift
PEPFAR's focus away from US non-governmental organizations and towards helping
aid-recipient governments set their priorities.
His other main priority is
prevention. PEPFAR has been criticized for focusing on ABC because it fails to
help many groups at risk in developing nations, such as married women. Goosby
says PEPFAR's prevention efforts must be more sustained and aggressive, should
target high-risk groups and should broaden their focus — by, for instance,
making condoms and reproductive-health services more widely available.
These priorities are
encouraging to doctors and advocates such as Paul Volberding, vice-chair of
medicine at the
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On Thursday July 16, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) --
Aspiring barbers, masseuses, and home health care aides cannot be denied
professional licenses because they have AIDS or HIV, federal authorities said
Thursday.
The Justice Department is
advising state authorities that it is a violation of the Americans with
Disabilities Act to stop someone with the HIV virus from getting such licenses
or not admitting them to occupational training schools.
For instance, some states
require cosmetologists be free from contagious, communicable or infections
diseases. The government says that type of regulation is outdated and was not
intended to bar people with HIV.
The original goal of such
a rule was to prevent the spread of tuberculosis and other diseases, not prevent
people with the HIV virus from working in certain fields. Because HIV is not
spread through casual contact, barring people with the virus from such
professions is discriminatory, officials said.
"People with HIV or
AIDS should not be denied access to their chosen profession because of outdated
laws or unfounded stereotypes and fears," said Loretta King, the acting
head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.
The Supreme Court has
found people with AIDS or HIV are covered under the law barring discrimination
against people with disabilities.
By GREGORY KATZ,
Associated Press Writer Gregory Katz, Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 14,
2009
The new pamphlet, called
"Pleasure," has sparked some opposition from those who believe it
encourages promiscuity among teens in a country that already has high rates of
teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
The National Health
Service in the city of
Some professionals have
hailed the new approach as a welcome antidote to traditional sex education,
which they say can be long on biological facts but short on information about
the complexity of human relationships.
The booklet suggests ways
in which teachers can encourage sexual awareness and responsibility while
teaching young people that sex is something that is meant to be enjoyed.
Steve Slack, who helped
produce the leaflet as Director of the Center for HIV & Sexual Health in
"Far from promoting
teenage sex, it is designed to encourage young people to delay losing their
virginity until they are sure they will enjoy the experience," he said.
Slack said some of the
ideas in the booklet came from the
But the pamphlet is
condemned by some educators who believe it will lead to more casual sex among
teens.
"Some of it is good
sense, but I think it's wrong is to suggest that 16-year-olds should wantonly
enter into having sexual intercourse for pleasure," said Anthony Seldon,
headmaster of
He said teens should be
taught about the value of a long-term commitment, not simply about the pleasures
of sexual intercourse.
Ruth Smith, news editor of
Children & Young People Now magazine, said one goal of the new booklet is to
help young people become more comfortable with their sexuality and to let them
know they can speak out if they are abused or forced into a situation they don't
like.
"Research shows young
people feel pressured to have sex before they're ready," she
said."This booklet is intended to give them the skills to discuss it. It's
not a license to go out and have sex, it's saying if you do, do it, wait until
you're ready and enjoy it. It makes them more confident and more able to say
no."
She said the instruction
guide will not be given to students but is intended to suggest ways in which
teachers can start a conversation about sex.
"It's trying to find
what works with young people," she said.
By DAVID CRARY, AP
National Writer David Crary, Ap National Writer Mon Jul 13, 3:53 am ET
NEW
YORK
In the
In
U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy,
the first
"I take it as a
personal affront to our warriors," said the Pennsylvania Democrat. "To
say that other countries' soldiers are professional enough to handle this and
American soldiers aren't is really a slap in the face."
Those seeking to preserve
the U.S. ban question whether the allies' experiences have been as smooth as
advertised and depict
"We are the military
leaders in the world — everybody wants to be like us," said Brian Jones,
a retired sergeant major who served in the Army Rangers. "Why in the world
would we try to adjust our military model to be like them?"
With such polarized views
as a backdrop, Associated Press reporters took an in-depth look at how the
militaries of
13 Jul 2009 16:41:04 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.
A rights group, Just
Detention International (JDI), alleges that overcrowding, staff shortages and a
culture of violence in correctional facilities are fuelling sexual abuse and
rape - crimes against which there is little or no protection.
JDI Programme Director
Cynthia Totten said a recent study at
In some cases, forced or
coerced sex in prison may be part of being initiated into one of
In other cases it may be
about manipulation, like being tricked into accumulating a debt in the form of
drugs, food or protection that will have to be repaid with sex, she told IRIN/PlusNews.
"I met a 15-year-old
boy in prison who said he would look after me ... he invited me to sleep with
him [in the same bunk] for protection, and in the middle of the night he
sodomised me," one inmate told Totten. "I was angry and demoralized
... this wasn't supposed to happen to me."
As of March 2008, most of
Big court cases, little
change
Despite a ground-breaking
ruling in 2006 that guaranteed access to treatment for prisoners, Totten said
there had been little change, and the quality of HIV-related health services
varied from prison to prison.
"All inmates are
supposed to have access to condoms, but it's so problematic in prisons that once
the dispenser runs out of condoms it could be months or weeks before it's
refilled," she said. "And where condoms are distributed, there's no
lubricant, so you find inmates using substitutes for lubricant that could
comprise the condoms' integrity."
Data on HIV prevalence
among inmates are hard to come by, but a 2006 survey by the Department of
Correctional Services in its Westville prison, outside the east-coast