Hundreds
of people in News (Updated
February 14, 2010)
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By Chris Hogg
BBC News,
Hundreds
of people in
The Chinese authorities
have been accused of covering up respiratory illnesses like Sars in the past.
This time doctors are
blaming a breakdown in trust between the medical profession and patients, who
fear they are being lied to when their diagnostic tests come back negative.
One man convinced he has
the condition insisted on meeting in an empty motel room. He tries to avoid
public places to reduce the chances of transmission.
He wears a face mask - he
suspects his virus is spread by close contact, through sweat or saliva. He
thinks he caught it after he had sex with a female prostitute.
But he is not HIV positive
- seven HIV tests have come back negative.
"I've been to many
hospitals, I've had many tests. None of these has proved I'm ill," he
explains.
"They've examined my
organs, tested me for sexual diseases. I'm unwell, but the doctors can't explain
why."
There are dozens of
Chinese internet chat rooms filled with people who believe they have the same
mystery illness.
"I joined the chat
room because I was sure I had been infected with this virus," said another
patient, who refused to meet face-to-face because, he said, he did not want to
pass it to us.
He started to feel ill
several months ago, also after a visit to a prostitute, where he says he took
precautions to avoid catching HIV.
"Twenty-four hours
later I had a strong desire to vomit. I had headaches, I was dizzy, I could feel
my internal organs were swelling up. I was in intense pain. This lasted
months."
He thought he was HIV
positive but was tested several times and there was no sign of HIV antibodies.
The man is unhappy with
the response from the medical establishment in
"Most of the doctors
didn't have the patience to listen to my story," he complains, adding that
he is sure the virus is spreading throughout the country.
Both men are certain they
are ill, but at the moment doctors do not think they are dealing with an unknown
virus.
“ A real HIV sufferer
may take 15 minutes to deal with - a patient with the phobia can take half a day
of arguing ”
Dr Cai Weiping
They suspect extreme guilt
or anxiety about an act the men are ashamed of - sex with a prostitute - is
affecting their immune systems, making them feel ill.
Scientists at the Pasteur
Institute in
In early December, they
began a study of five patients. So far they have ruled out HIV. The work is
still continuing.
Last month,
Dr Cai Weiping is a senior
Chinese HIV researcher based at the People's Number 8 hospital in the southern
He is concerned that
growing numbers of patients with what he describes as "HIV phobia" are
using up scarce resources.
"They come to have
tests again and again, wasting money.
"A real HIV sufferer
may take 15 minutes to deal with. A patient with the phobia can take at least an
hour, or as much as half a day of arguing before they go away."
Some of the patients claim
they have infected family members, friends or colleagues. Dr Cai is doubtful.
"What their relatives
tell us about their own symptoms doesn't match what we have heard from the
patients."
He believes the problem is
psychological rather than physical.
"They think we are
concealing an epidemic," he explains.
"In the past we were
secretive about the spread of diseases. People didn't believe the numbers of
infections we announced.
"Today that's
impossible because
Although incidences of
"HIV phobia" have been reported in other countries, the doctor
believes conditions unique to
“ I haven't been home
for a month because I don't want to infect my family ”
Anonymous
Huge changes in the
country's medical system in recent years have not worked well, a fact the
government acknowledges.
They have left many
patients suspicious of the motivations of the medical profession.
"Patients think
doctors just see them as machines to make money out of, instead of being driven
by a desire to cure them or to save life," says Dr Cai.
The internet has allowed
large numbers of people who are frightened but have little expertise to share
their fears and in the process heighten them.
But even if the doctor is
right and the young man in the motel room is suffering simply from delusion, it
is severe enough to leave him trapped behind his mask.
"I feel that I will
die soon," he says.
"I haven't been home
for a month because I don't want to infect my family. My doctors don't
understand me. They say it's caused by fear, but my symptoms are real."
He is so scared he might
spread what is wrong with him to others, he has started to withdraw from
society.
Physical or mental, the
effect of this condition is devastating for him.
Story from BBC NEWS:
Saturday 13th February,
2010
The number of people newly
infected with HIV or who have developed AIDS in
The health ministry’s AIDS Trend Committee found that of the total, there were
1,008 new HIV infections and 420 AIDS patients, while 94% of the cases involved
males. By route of transmission, 62% were infected as a result of same-sex
contact and 24% through male-female sexual contact.
The number of cases involving people in their 30s grew 4% from the previous year
to 581, making it the only age bracket to record an increase.
People who did not know that they had been infected with HIV until they
contracted AIDS accounted for 29% of the total, slightly up from 2008. The
number of such cases increased in all age groups except for people in their 20s.
Feb 12, 2010
BERLIN
(AFP) – German prosecutors said Friday they have charged a member of
all-female pop group No Angels with causing bodily harm for failing to inform
sexual partners that she was HIV positive.
Nadja Benaissa, 27, had
sex on five occasions between 2000 and 2004 with three people and did not tell
them she was infected, even though she had known since 1999, according to the
charge sheet.
"She was well aware
that any unprotected sexual contact can lead to the virus being passed on,"
prosecutors in the town of
One of the three had since
been confirmed as being infected with the HIV virus, which causes AIDS,
prosecutors added.
No Angels shot to fame in
2000 thanks to a television talent show and had a string of hits in central
Mon Feb 8, 2010
KAMPALA
President George W. Bush?s
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), launched in 2003, focused largely on
treating patients in urgent need of medicine, but the new US administration?s
programme has shifted away from emergency treatment.
"George W. Bush is a
hero in this country," said Peter Mugyenyi, who heads
But the
"We had drugs under
PEPFAR. We didn?t have to turn patients away," he told AFP.
While PEPFAR expanded
access to medicine, new HIV infections rose.
So, when PEPFAR was up for
renewal the new administration of President Barack Obama demanded greater focus
on preventing new infections.
"We have all lost
momentum on the prevention front and we?re paying for it now in the form of
rising prevalence," PEPFAR?s Kampala-based spokeswoman Lynne McDermott told
AFP in an email.
The difficult economic
climate meant spending more on prevention necessitated cutbacks on treatment in
a country where the infection rate is 6.4 percent in a population of 31 million.
Patients who are already
enrolled in a PEPFAR programme will continue receiving free drugs, but most
clinics have been told to stop acquiring new patients.
Mugyenyi accuses the
"The number one thing
is availability of treatment. Any other programme, whatever name they call it,
will fail."
Douglas Mugabi, a thin,
softly spoken farmer who lives just outside
Last year, his wife?s
condition also worsened.
"When I came in and
we found out there was no longer a free programme I became cold," the
48-year-old said. "My wife is worried because the drugs are expensive, but
according to our means, we couldn?t support a life-long treatment."
Mugyenyi said many
patients have similar stories.
"PEPFAR promised them
that if they need treatment they would get it," he claimed. "So the
McDermott said the
She noted that PEPFAR
continues to provide two thirds of all HIV/AIDS money in
Other resources are not
readily available in
In a November report
Medicins Sans Frontiere detailed freezes on ART spending across
The report accused PEPFAR
of "reneging on promises made last year," but also apportioned part of
the blame to the Global Fund, the public-private partnership which disburses
extra funds to treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Eric Goemaere, an HIV
specialist with MSF who has worked in several southern African nations described
the notion of spending more on prevention to slow the epidemic as a "fake
argument".
He said any prevention
strategy relies on people getting tested.
"Why were people
getting tests? It is because treatment was available.
"If you look at the
facts, it does not make any medical sense to cut back on treatment," he
insisted.
One concern is that people
like Mugabi might begin sharing their free drugs with a sick friend or family
member.
When patients don?t take
their drugs as proscribed they are more likely to develop a drug resistant
strain of HIV. So pill sharing can be catastrophic.
Mugyenyi told AFP he is
"panicking".
"We are heading to
carnage. Carnage which had been put to a stop," he said. "There is no
prevention programme that can succeed without treatment."