Sixty-five
millions condoms are awaiting distribution in News (Updated
June 6, 2010)
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Fifa's sponsor-only
restrictions on venues will prevent fans gaining access to condoms, warn
campaigners
David Smith,
guardian.co.uk, Friday 4
June 2010 17.35 BST
Sixty-five
millions condoms are awaiting distribution in
Aids groups in
The Aids Consortium and
other groups also criticised a block on the distribution of safe sex information
at stadiums and fan parks, even though alcohol can be advertised.
This has prompted calls
for a health initiative to prevent the virus spreading as hundreds of thousands
of football fans pour into the country for the World Cup, which starts next
Friday.
The South African
government says there are more than 71m condoms currently in circulation, with a
further 65m available. In March it was announced that
"To date Fifa has not
permitted any civil society organisation to distribute HIV- or health-related
information and Fifa has not provided any written confirmation that condoms may
be distributed at stadia and within the fan-fests," the groups said in a
statement. "This is despite the fact that commercial sponsors selling
alcohol will have dedicated spaces available."
The statement – from
bodies including the Aids Consortium, Community Media Trust, Southern African
HIV Clinicians Society, Section 27 and Treatment Action Campaign – added that
Fifa had a "moral obligation" to work with local organisations
"to protect both citizens and visitors alike from HIV infection, TB and the
H1N1 virus".
It said they had requested
without success an urgent meeting with Fifa and the local organisers to discuss
their concerns. Fifa said it was not aware of any such requests, and that a
meeting was under way to address the issues.
In April, South Africa
launched the world's biggest HIV testing and treatment programme, aimed at
providing drugs to 80% of HIV-positive people and testing 15 million people by
the end of June next year. The president, Jacob Zuma, earned praise for taking
an HIV test.
"The World Cup is an
opportunity to combine sport with messages about HIV prevention and healthy
living that can be heard by millions of people," the groups' statement
concluded. "It would be a tragedy to miss it."
Lisa Schlein | Natal06
June 2010
Tuberculosis
is the leading cause of death in
Sister Flora Nsubane shows
a group of visitors around the
"This is a 32-bedded
ward…It is always full because it is the only TB ward that we have," said
Nsubane.
Patients who are sick with
more virulent strains of MDR-TB and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis or
XDR-TB, stay in separate wards.
The children's ward is
spotlessly clean but largely empty because most of the children are at a school
run for them by the hospital. A couple of toddlers are quietly playing on the
floor.
A baby girl in a highchair
fixes her big dark eyes on Sister Suminthra Sukmandam, the nurse who is feeding
her.
"The baby is having a
soft diet, which is prepared from the kitchen. It is pureed butter nut, pureed
chicken and also mashed potato," she said.
Sister Sukmandam says the
baby is four months old and was admitted to the hospital two weeks ago.
"She's got multi-drug resistant TB and she has been the same. Her appetite
is improving," she added.
Sister
Flora says the survival rate for children with MDR-TB is about 80 percent
because they are kept in the hospital up to a year where their treatment is
closely supervised. She says adults are admitted for six months and once their
sputum is negative they are sent home.
"Then they continue
with out patient treatment. And, at home, we have discovered that family members
are not good support teams. Why? If the patient says I am tired of taking eight
tablets a day and maybe the family member says no, it is O.K., you can take it
tomorrow," she said. "And then that increases resistance and they
take long to be cured. "
Tuberculosis is an
infectious bacterial disease, which affects the lungs. It is associated with
poverty and spreads widely among people living in overcrowded, dirty places. It
is treatable with a six-month course of antibiotics. MDR-TB strains are
increasing because people do not always take the drugs properly. MDR-TB and the
more severe form of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis do not respond to
the standard six-month treatment with first-line anti-TB drugs. It can take two
or more years to treat these diseases with drugs that are less effective and
more expensive than the drugs used to treat ordinary TB.
Thirty-six-year old
Samkelisiwe is a single mother of a 17-year old boy. She says she took treatment
for ordinary TB last year. On April 26 she was admitted to the hospital and
found to have XDR-TB
Samkelisiwe says that in
September, 2009, she went to the clinic because of severe weight loss. She says
she was coughing up sputum, which was diagnosed as TB. She says she did not
respond to the TB treatment and later learned she had XDR.
People living with HIV are
at great risk of developing tuberculosis. WHO reports TB has tripled in the past
15 years in countries, such as
Sister Flora says at one
time, TB and HIV were treated in isolation. But now, she says, all patients
admitted to King George's hospital are treated for both HIV and drug resistance
at the same time.
"So, if the patient
comes here for TB, the following day we do counseling for HIV and 27…we
initiate treatment," she said.
The World Health
Organization reports MDR-TB threatens to become the dominant strain of TB over
the next few decades. It says significant investment into research and
development of new drugs and possible vaccines is needed. Yet, relatively little
money is allocated for TB control and research. The Global Fund to Fight
HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is one of the few international agencies that
funds multi-drug resistant TB. Currently, it provides money for treatment for
30,000 people with MDR-TB though there are nearly half a million people infected
and in need of treatment.
Jun
1 2010
By Kate Kelland
LONDON (Reuters) - Poor
living and working conditions for miners of gold, diamonds and other precious
metals have contributed significantly to tuberculosis (TB) epidemics across
Africa, scientists said on Tuesday.
Researchers from
Men traveling from afar to
work in mines, such as from
But their wives, children
and friends are also at high risk of catching the disease when miners travel
back and forth to work, often many times a year.
"Improving living and
healthcare conditions for miners may be necessary not only for the miners, but
for controlling tuberculosis epidemics throughout sub-Saharan Africa," said
Dr David Stuckler from the Department of Sociology at
Tuberculosis killed 1.8
million people worldwide in 2008, or nearly 5,000 people a day.
The disease can be cured
with antibiotics, but they must be taken daily for months to be effective, and
scarce health funds in some countries mean fewer drugs are available.
TB has been on the rise in
sub-Saharan
These rises are largely
the result of a growing epidemic of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that
causes AIDS. But Stuckler and colleagues said data shows that HIV is only one of
several factors involved in TB's spread in the region.
HIV increases the risk of
TB because it weakens the body's immune system.
Miners are also known to
spread tuberculosis to their families and communities, the researchers said,
since nearly half of workers in large mining countries like
The scientists took data
on mining between 2001 and 2005 and compared them with TB incidence and death
rates for 44 countries in sub-Saharan
They found evidence that
mining had a significant impact on the spread of TB, and that the risk appeared
to be worst in countries with high levels of HIV.
The risks were associated
with the living conditions around mines, they said, and with mining for gold,
which is believed to expose miners to more potentially harmful silica dust than
any other mineral.
The study also found that
when countries reduced their mining activity, TB rates fell more quickly, or
rose less, than in neighboring nations where mining rates were stable or
increased.
(Editing by Mark Heinrich)
HONG KONG, June 1 (Xinhua)
-- Hong Kong reported 101 cases of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infections
in the first quarter of 2010, the Center for Health Protection of the
The new cases found has
brought the cumulative total of reported HIV infections in
Of the 101 HIV cases,
which comprised 75 males and 26 females, 20 acquired the infection via
heterosexual contact, 41 via homosexual or bisexual contact, four through drug
injection, and one through mother-to-child transmission.
The routes of transmission
of the remaining 35 cases were undetermined due to inadequate information, the
center's consultant Dr Wong Ka-hing said at a press briefing on Tuesday.
Nineteen new cases of
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) were reported in the first quarter,
taking the number of confirmed AIDS cases reported in the city to 1,125 since
1985. Forty-two percent of the new AIDS cases were related to heterosexual
contact and 42 percent to homosexual or bisexual contact.
In this quarter, the most
common AIDS-defining illness was pneumocystis pneumonia, a kind of chest
infection.