News (Updated January 10, 2010)

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China to launch AIDS radio programme: state media

(AFP) – 10-1-2010

BEIJING — China 's top state-run radio network will launch a programme about AIDS featuring an HIV-positive host in the latest sign of a new official openness towards the disease, state media said Sunday.

The weekly programme, "Positive Talks", will air each Saturday beginning January 16 on China National Radio, Xinhua news agency reported.

It will deal with "publicising knowledge on HIV/AIDS and prevention and control of the disease", Xinhua said, quoting the radio station's chief editor Yang Wenyan.

Yang expected the program to give more "attention, care, and support" to China 's legions of HIV-infected people, Xinhua said.

No information on the programme could be found on China National Radio's website and AFP could not immediately reach network officials involved with it.

The government has long been accused of stifling discussion of the nation's HIV/AIDS problem, while homosexuality has for decades been a taboo subject in China .

But a number of signs have emerged that the government is gradually becoming more comfortable addressing such issues openly.

In 2007, China allowed the first televised ad campaign promoting the use of condoms to stem HIV.

In November, the health ministry and United Nations launched an ad campaign against HIV discrimination featuring basketball star Yao Ming. Last month China 's first government-approved gay bar opened in the southwestern city of Dali .

Until 2001, China 's communist rulers classified homosexuality as a mental illness.

But AIDS experts say authorities are being forced to deal more openly with such issues in a bid to stem the disease.

China 's health ministry estimated that at the end of 2009, 740,000 people were living with HIV in the country but experts say the true figure is much higher than the official tally, which refers only to confirmed cases.

The United Nations has estimated between 30 and 50 million people may be at risk from the disease in China .

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved

HIV travel ban finally lifted

HIV/AIDS / 'I have my travel rights back:' Rooney

Shauna Lewis / Vancouver / Thursday, January 07, 2010

 The United States finally opened its borders to HIV-positive visitors Jan 4, ending a 23-year ban.

The ban, first implemented in 1987 then codified into law by Congress in 1993, initially prevented HIV-positive from entering the US at all, and later unless granted a waiver by the Department of Homeland Security.

Martin Rooney marked the day by making a trip across the border to Washington state.

Rooney was denied entry to the US in 2007 because he lacked the necessary medical waiver then required for entry.

"I still remember the fear that was instilled in me when I was pulled over and refused entry [in 2007]," Rooney told members of his Facebook group. "I was interrogated, treated like a terrorist... photographed, fingerprinted and run through the FBI most wanted list all because I was supposed to know that I had to carry a medical waiver as a person who was HIV-positive to enter the US, even if only for a shopping trip expected to last no longer than three hours."

Calling the ban "a decision rooted in fear rather than fact," US president Barack Obama officially lifted it last October and gave the Department of Health and Homeland Security 60 days to enact new regulations.

Congress had authorized the White House to lift the ban in 2008 and former US president George W Bush had endorsed the proposal as part of a broader plan to combat the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, but the Department of Health and Homeland Security continued to classify HIV as a contagious disease.

In lifting the ban last October and ordering the Department to change its regulations, Obama said his administration was just "finishing the job."

"Twenty-two years ago, in a decision rooted in fear rather than fact, the United States instituted a travel ban on entry into the country for people living with HIV/AIDS," Obama said right before he signed the bill on Oct 30, 2009.

"Now, we talk about reducing the stigma of this disease - yet we've treated a visitor living with it as a threat. We lead the world when it comes to helping stem the AIDS pandemic - yet we are one of only a dozen countries that still bar people from HIV from entering our own country," he said.

"If we want to be the global leader in combating HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it. And that's why on Monday [Nov 2] my administration will publish a final rule that eliminates the travel ban effective just after the New Year. Congress and President Bush began this process last year, and they ought to be commended for it. We are finishing the job."

"It is absolutely amazing," says Rooney. "I have my travel rights back."

"As of Jan 4, HIV is not a factor for inadmissibility into the US ," confirms Joanne Ferreira, a spokesperson for US Customs and Border Protection.

Rooney wasted no time crossing the border on Jan 4. While he endured some interrogation, it was nothing like what he had experienced prior to the ban's elimination, he says. "[The experience] was very friendly and very comfortable."

With the travel ban now lifted, Rooney expects there will still be some minor setbacks, adding it may take some time to eliminate HIV-positive people "from the books" and overhaul certain "bureaucratic red tape."

And while HIV-positive Canadians can now enter the US , Rooney wonders if the same welcome will be extended to international travellers.

Rooney says he has spoken to HIV-positive people in the UK and mainland Europe who say they're still being told by their embassies that a medical waiver is required for travel to the US . Others, says Rooney, say they're still required to declare their HIV status on an online visa application prior to being granted entrance into the US .

Ferreira says she is looking into whether the ban's elimination will eradicate previous lists of HIV-positive travellers denied entry to the US .

Uganda lawmaker refuses to withdraw anti-gay bill

By GODFREY OLUKYA, Associated Press Writer  Jan 8, 2010

KAMPALA , Uganda – A Ugandan lawmaker on Friday refused to withdraw proposed legislation that would impose the death penalty for some gays and lesbians despite international condemnation and presidential opposition to a measure that could scare off foreign investors.

Lawmaker David Bahati said he will not heed a call late Thursday from the government to drop the proposed bill, as he feels such a measure is necessary in the conservative East African country.

On Thursday, Minister of State for Investment Aston Kajara said the government would ask Bahati to scrap the bill because they fear backlash from foreign investors. The bill, which Bahati proposed in September, has provoked criticism from gay-rights groups and protests in London , New York and Washington .

"I stand by the bill," Bahati said. "I will not withdraw it. We have our children in schools to protect against being recruited into (homosexuality). The process of legislating a law to protect our children against homosexuality and defending our family values must go on."

That leaves the decision to the country's parliament, which will discuss the legislation in late February or early March.

Although President Yoweri Museveni has told colleagues he believes the bill is too harsh and has encouraged his ruling National Resistance Movement Party to overturn the death sentence provision, Information Minister Kabakumba Matsiko said the parliament will act independently of the presidency.

"The bill did not come from the executive," she said. "It is a private members bill."

Earlier this week, several lawmakers and officials from the ruling party said they will push to remove the death penalty statute, and have proposed instead that gays receive counseling to convert them to heterosexuality.

The proposed legislation would toughen Uganda 's already strict laws against homosexuality, which are bolstered by Uganda 's conservative society, which generally frowns on homosexuality.

Lawmakers outlawed gay marriage in 2005. The proposed legislation is being touted as an update to Uganda's old statutes against homosexuality, which date from the 1950s and do not address homosexuality by name, only what the law terms as "unnatural offenses" and "gross indecency."

The draft of the new bill says anyone convicted of a homosexual act — which includes touching someone of the same sex with the intent of committing a homosexual act — could face life imprisonment. Current legislation imposes seven years' imprisonment. Under the new law, the death sentence could apply to sexually active gays living with HIV or in cases of same-sex rape. The new law also expands its scope to include Ugandans living abroad, who can be extradited and punished.

Kajara said government officials worried the bill would scare off investors.

"Ever since the bill was tabled, there have been a lot of outcries not only here but from all over the world," he said. "There has been negative publicity on Uganda which is not good for investment. As government, we shall talk to the private member who brought it to parliament and request him to withdraw it."

The measure was proposed in Uganda following a visit by leaders of U.S. conservative Christian ministries that promote therapy for gays to become heterosexual. However, at least one of those leaders has denounced the bill, as have some other conservative and liberal Christians in the United States .

On the African continent, South Africa is the only country that allows gay marriage. However, some South African groups have rejected homosexuality as "un-African" and gangs carry out so-called "corrective" rapes on lesbians. A 19-year-old lesbian athlete was gang-raped, tortured and murdered in 2008.

The Catholic church in Uganda has said it supports the bill but not the death penalty provision. But a group of non-traditional churches has accused Museveni of siding with gays and maintains that the Bible supports killing gays. Anglican Archbishop of York John Sentamu, who is one of the global fellowship's most senior priests, has said he condemns the proposed law in his native country.

U.S. AIDS chief sees new goals in global battle

Jan 6 2010

By Andrew Quinn

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is retooling its global multibillion-dollar fight against HIV/AIDS to transform healthcare in some of the world's poorest countries, the U.S. AIDS chief said on Tuesday.

Eric Goosby, who President Barack Obama named last year to take over the Bush administration's signature foreign aid initiative, said U.S. AIDS relief efforts must change to face a broader health crisis stretching decades into the future.

"We've created a very good start at what was an emergency response. We now need to move that emergency response into a sustained response," Goosby said in an interview.

"It's a harder lift, it's not as flashy, it's not as rapid in our ability to deploy and put in place. But it is more durable."

Former President George W. Bush launched the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003, pledging an initial $15 billion to fight AIDS around the world.

In 2008, the Democratic-controlled Congress authorized an additional $48 billion to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and PEPFAR now operates in some 87 countries around the world, most of them in Africa but also including China and Russia .

Goosby, who has launched a new five-year strategy for PEPFAR, said it was time to address underlying healthcare problems in AIDS-hit countries -- a huge expansion of program goals -- even though the immediate crisis was far from over.

"We are still responding to an emergency in no uncertain terms. It is still killing millions of people," Goosby said.

The AIDS virus infects 33 million people globally and about a million in the United States , but more people are living longer thanks to HIV drugs -- many of them supplied through PEPFAR programs, according to a recent U.N. report.

Still, more than half the people who need life-saving drugs are not getting them, the World Health Organization and Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS say.

BOLSTERING GOVERNMENT RESPONSE

Despite treatment successes, Goosby said in many target countries medical systems cannot cope with the long-term burden of AIDS and other diseases, requiring new strategies to bolster healthcare programs now often run by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

"They are there, they are connected, but they are as ephemeral as our funding line from year to year," Goosby said of some of the existing programs.

The next step, Goosby said, will be to emphasize national health ministries and provincial health departments, using U.S. funds to equip and train local health workers to take up more of the healthcare burden.

Services such as anti-retroviral treatment, which often are administered by NGO-run centers or provincial hospitals, must be spread throughout national medical systems stretching down to village-level clinics, he said.

"There is now a very small amount of money going from the U.S. government to ministries of health, and that will undoubtedly increase once that transparency and accountability is in place and ensured," he said.

Goosby said this would mean PEPFAR would act more as a technical advisor rather than a purveyor of drugs -- although there are plans to get anti-retroviral drugs to 1.6 million more people over the next five years on top of the 2.4 million already receiving treatment thanks to the program.

Some critics have voiced fears that the changes will undercut one of the most successful public health initiatives ever launched, and one to which the United States has already committed more than $25 billion.

Altogether, PEPFAR is credited with helping to cut AIDS deaths by 10 percent in targeted African countries and saving more than a million lives, largely through supplying the anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs that can slow but not cure the disease.

Goosby said that overall the Obama administration's commitment to global health projects was strong, although he conceded that tight economic times meant "we'll be arguing to address the unmet need every year in our budget discussions."

The fiscal year 2010 budget for PEPFAR includes $5.5 billion going directly to target countries for AIDS relief, up $61 million from 2009, and $1.05 billion for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, another major AIDS funding agency, up $50 million from the year before.

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