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March 28, 2010)
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24 Mar 2010
Source: IRIN
About half of all Kenyan
TB patients are co-infected with HIV, so HIV testing has become routine in TB
clinics, with 83 percent of TB patients also screened for HIV.
"We have encouraged
health facilities to not only test TB patients for HIV but also to reach out to
their partners to bring them along for counselling and testing for HIV
together," Joseph Sitienei, the head of leprosy, TB and lung disease at the
Ministry of Health, told IRIN/PlusNews. "The uptake of TB screening across
the country has been impressive; it provides the best avenue to encourage
partners to test together for HIV."
According to the latest
Kenya AIDS Indicator Survey[http://www.aidskenya.org/public_site/webroot/cache/article/file/Official_KAIS_Report_20091.pdf],
10 percent of married couples have at least one HIV-infected person, but just 22
percent of couples know the HIV status of their sexual partners. An estimated 44
percent of new HIV infections in
In many African countries
where multiple concurrent partnerships are blamed for high HIV incidence,
couples counselling is now being recommended. Experts suggest reaching couples
through partner testing in home- and facility-based treatment and care
programmes, the integration of partner testing into provider-initiated testing
and counselling and prevention of mother-to-child transmission programmes, as
well as door-to-door testing and bio-medical interventions such as medical male
circumcision.
"[Couples counselling
and testing] does not only help them know their status but it provides an
opportunity to identify discordant couples and then helping them to know better
how to manage themselves," said Andrew Suleh, medical superintendent of
Mbagathi District Hospital, one of the model sites for TB diagnosis/screening
and couples counselling and testing in the capital, Nairobi. "Safe sex and
reducing risky sexual behaviour is heavily emphasized... those who test positive
are made to appreciate the need for positive living."
Currently, there are 1,200
TB diagnostic sites in the country, 80 percent of which also offer counselling
and testing for HIV;
"[Couples counselling
and testing] also provides an opportunity to screen partners for TB together
because TB is very infectious - it wouldn't be rare to find a situation where
both partners are infected," Sitienei said.
He noted that couples
testing was also helping to debunk myths about HIV and TB co-infection within
the population, and to de-stigmatise the two conditions.
"Because of the
correlation between TB and HIV infection, many people believe that a TB
infection is a sure sign of HIV infection," he said. "Efforts are
being put in place to debunk this kind of myth; one can have TB and not be
infected with HIV just like one can be HIV infected and not be infected with
TB."
Mar 23, 2010
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
U.S. Medicare program will pay for the use of facial filling treatments in
certain HIV patients with sunken cheeks and other similar problems who are also
depressed, the government said on Tuesday.
The move impacts dermal
fillers such as BioForm Medical's Radiesse and Sanofi-Aventis SA's Sculptra.
Merz GmbH & Co acquired BioForm last month.
The U.S. Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services said its review of current data found use of the
products helped benefit HIV patients with facial lipodystrophy syndrome (LDS)
who also experienced depression. Other HIV patients with the fat-wasting
syndrome will not be covered.
CMS oversees healthcare
coverage for 45 million elderly and disabled Americans. While HIV is "quite
rare" in Medicare patients, who are 65 and older, patients who are disabled
could qualify for the coverage, the agency said.
22 Mar 2010
Source: SciDev.Net
M. Sreelata
[
The pool, to be based in
In a patent pool,
patent-holding drug companies volunteer to forgo their patent rights in selected
countries, which allows local companies to make medicines generically at
mutually-agreed licence fees.
UNITAID which procures
cheap drugs for HIV, malaria and tuberculosis
has start-up funding of US$4 million for a year and officials expect that
developing countries will save more than US$1 billion a year by having access to
cheaper HIV drugs.
The February meeting took
into account concerns raised by humanitarian groups, including the international
medical charity Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF)
and Indian public health organisations, in December 2009 that middle income
countries, especially
UNITAID allayed the fears,
saying that both low and middle income countries would benefit.
Ellen 't Hoen, senior
advisor at the UNITAID patent pool, told SciDev.Net that the February meeting
also outlined the next legal and administrative steps needed to set up and
operate the pool.
The board agreed to put in
place technology transfer mechanisms, capacity building and local manufacturing
in developing countries.
The board also said it
would try to ensure it worked in a way that was consistent with other
multilateral mechanisms that provide access to medicines - such as the World
Trade Organization declaration on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights agreement and public health; the World Intellectual Property
Organization development agenda, and the WHO strategy on public health
innovation and intellectual property.