News (Updated August
28, 2011)
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By GILLIAN WONG,
Associated Press – 23 August, 2011
BEIJING (AP) — A
high-profile global health fund that has come under pressure to clean up
corruption has ended its dispute with China and will resume hundreds of millions
of dollars in funding for programs to fight AIDS and other diseases, thereby
removing a source of embarrassment for Beijing.
The Global Fund to Fight
AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria froze disbursements of its AIDS grant to
The Geneva-based Global
Fund said Tuesday it is lifting the freeze on funding to
"During these
discussions, the parties agreed to resume funding flows to ensure that the
Chinese AIDS program would not be impeded by the ongoing efforts to strengthen
fiduciary controls and to ensure sufficient civil society engagement in The
Global Fund-supported programs," Global Fund spokesman Jon Liden emailed in
response to an Associated Press query.
"
The Global Fund froze
payments of a $283 million AIDS grant in November after finding that Chinese
government agencies had breached an agreement by channeling too small a share of
the funds to grass-roots groups. Then in May, it stopped payments of all other
grants in
Earlier this year, the $22
billion Global Fund faced a backlash among major donors over reports of
corruption. It has said it will make public more detailed information about
money it has lost to fraud and mismanagement.
Resolving the
The dispute comes amid a
larger debate among international aid donors and groups about whether
Critics have said that by
competing with poorer developing countries for Global Fund grants,
The Global Fund did not
provide details about what the Chinese government has done to meet the demands
of the fund before the decision to lift the freeze was made.
But in the months since
the freeze,
The government has also
agreed to allocate 25 percent of the Global Fund budget to community
organizations, and to set up a separate entity to manage all funding that is
allocated to civil society groups, according to a public tender notice issued
late last month by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, or
China CDC, the Global Fund's main recipient in China.
The China CDC's moves were
welcomed by the leader of a network of more than 130 groups working to help
people with HIV across in
"To community groups,
this is a really good thing, because it has pushed the government to change its
attitude toward us," said Wang Long, who heads the China National Network
of AIDS Community-Based Organizations. "It has made the government value
the contribution of civil society groups."
Follow Gillian Wong on
Twitter at http://twitter.com/gillianwong
Copyright © 2011 The
Associated Press.
26 Aug 2011
By Thin Lei Win
BANGKOK
(AlertNet) – The decline in new HIV infections across Asia Pacific is “very
fragile” as most states rely on shrinking donor funds and prevention
programmes fail to reach those most in need, the head of the U.N. agency for
HIV/AIDS said in an interview.
“This is a moment of
truth in Asia,” Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, told AlertNet
ahead of the 10th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific in
Busan, South
According to a report
launched at the meeting , an estimated 4.9 million people in
“This report is coming
at a moment at a time when we are seeing a decline in new infections, but at the
same time we are seeing a potential risk because that progress is very
fragile,” Sidibe said.
Despite a 20 percent
decrease in new infections since 2001, and a three-fold increase in access to
lifesaving antiretroviral therapy (ART) since 2006, more than three out of five
people who need treatment still cannot access it, the report said.
Asia Pacific could provide
universal access to ART, Sidibe said. “It’s just (a case of) prioritisation
and certainly, political will,” he added.
FUNDING SHORTFALL
One problem is that
funding for HIV/AIDS responses in the region - both from domestic and
international sources – remains inadequate. Apart from
In 2009, an estimated $1.1
billion was spent in 30 countries across the region, approximately a third of
the funding needed to achieve universal access to HIV services, according to the
Commission on AIDS in
Funding cutbacks led to a
decline in international support for AIDS programmes globally for the first time
in 2010. That threatens the sustainability of ART, which is almost entirely
funded by donors in many countries, Sidibe told AlertNet from Busan.
Governments need to start
looking at paying for their own programmes, he said. Middle-income countries
that spend less than 0.5 percent of gross national income on HIV/AIDS could help
close the funding gap, he added.
“It is possible, it’s
a matter of redefining where our priorities are,” the U.N. official said.
“If we don’t invest today we will continue to pay forever.”
SEX WORKERS’ CLIENTS
MISSED OUT
Another obstacle is that
existing HIV programmes do not target the groups who need them most, and tend to
be aimed rather at the general population.
As a result, they have
minimal impact on reducing the rising number of HIV infections in the
highest-risk groups - people who inject drugs, men who have sex with men and
transgender people, and people who buy and sell sex - despite consuming the bulk
of resources, Sidibe said.
Most HIV prevention
programmes do not reach the male clients of sex workers, according to the
report. They number an estimated 75 million across Asia Pacific, and are “the
largest single population to transmit HIV to their regular intimate partners”.
Sidibe also pointed to the
As a result, HIV
prevalence among people who inject drugs in the city of
“The major challenge is
the tendency to feel that those people are living in isolation, but they are
interacting with the rest of the population and then the risk is their partners
also become infected,” Sidibe said.
“This shows that… if
we don’t pay attention to specific communities where prevalence can grow
quickly, we could miss the boat in dealing with this epidemic.”
(AFP) – 26 August, 2011
"
"The number of deaths
due to HIV-related causes is beginning to show a decline due to the
intensification of anti-retroviral treatment."
He said government
statistics place
Among pregnant women, the
infection rate stands at just below 30 percent, Motlanthe said. But he added
that transmission of the infection from expecting mothers to their babies has
fallen from 10 percent to 3.5 percent in the last three years.
Motlanthe said the
government is still struggling to reduce the number of new infections.
"The rate of new
infections continues to outpace our prevention efforts, and thus prevention
programmes will be prioritised in the new national strategic plan which is being
developed for the term 2012 to 2016," he said.
Motlanthe's response came
several weeks after the end of a massive testing campaign that reached nearly 14
million people, two million of whom tested positive.
It also came on the heels
of an announcement by the government that it will provide potentially
life-saving anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs to all HIV patients whose CD4 count, a
measure of white blood cells, falls below 350 cells per microlitre.
Previously the drugs were
only handed out when the count hit 200 cells per microlitre, but studies have
found earlier treatment can save people's lives.
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All
rights reserved.
23 Aug 2011
NAIROBI, 23 August 2011 -
Every morning, Julia Aukot walks 17km to eastern Kenya's Isiolo town in search
of work so she can feed her six children and ailing husband; the journey is
punishing, but as her family's sole breadwinner, she has no choice.
"Here in the village,
there is [absolutely] nothing you can do to make money to buy food. So every
morning at six, I go to Isiolo town to do menial jobs for people and... buy food
for my children and my husband," the 39-year-old told IRIN/PlusNews.
When she cannot find work,
Aukot begs on Isiolo's streets - which she finds deeply humiliating - or visits
a nearby slaughter house to scrape what little meat is left on the carcasses.
"After they have
taken the good meat from the slaughtered animals, I follow them with a knife and
cut meat from the remaining skins," she added. "When I gather enough,
I take it home and we eat; my children and husband have now gotten used to
eating the meat without any ugali [maize meal, a Kenyan staple]. I can't afford
maize flour."
A 90kg bag of maize, which
in April 2011 cost about KSh2,500 (US$27.10), now costs as much as KSh4,800
($52).
Aukot's husband used to
help out, but the poor diet the family has subsisted on recently has left him
very weak. He is on antiretroviral medication, and insufficient food increases
the side-effects [ http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0010340
] of the drugs, leaving him unable to contribute to the family income.
"He is sick, it's not
his fault; if he doesn't eat, the medicine can't help him," said Aukot.
"I can't sit back and watch him just waste away... he is so weak - for me,
there is no difference between him and the children."
Partly because of a
prolonged dry spell, some 3.6 million Kenyans need emergency food assistance.
While Aukot and her family qualify for aid, poor roads mean the food does not
reach her village. Most villagers walk to Isiolo town to access food aid, but
the weakest often do not have the energy to walk that far.
"We have food meant
for the hungry people but some areas are just too hard to reach," an aid
worker in Isiolo told IRIN/PlusNews. "By the time the food [aid] gets to
them, many have already gone without anything to eat for days."
Lillian Naseo, a community
social worker in Isiolo, asks local well-wishers to donate food, which she then
shares with people living with HIV and those infected with tuberculosis.
Too weak to walk
"They can't walk to
look for food, not just for themselves but also their families, so I beg for
them... I walk into restaurants and when they give me leftovers, I take them to
these people," she said. "But this is not enough because I don't know
all those living with HIV in Isiolo District."
According to local health
officials, Isiolo's HIV prevalence rate is more than 4 percent.
Junnius Mutegi, the
district nutrition officer for Garba Tulla District, in upper
On a dusty street corner
in Garba Tulla, Hawa*, 41 and HIV-positive, begs passers-by for money and food.
She is too weak to work and without a strong support network, she says her
options are to beg or die.
"I need to eat but I
can't work and I rely on relief food, but it doesn't come every day, so I moved
to town to beg," she told IRIN/PlusNews. "In the village you can't
beg, because everybody is just like me... they need food just like me."
According to Mutegi, the
situation calls for new ways to ensure the most vulnerable have access to food
assistance.
"I think the
situation now calls for some innovativeness, so that even if the roads are bad,
we can use camels or donkeys to ensure food reaches those who need it in good
time," he said. "People living with HIV and taking antiretrovirals
seriously need food... Otherwise we are faced with a situation where people will
start to default on their drugs, and it is bad if we get there."
*not her real name
ko/kr/am/mw
By Ammu Kannampilly (AFP)
– 24 August, 2011
This anomaly was
highlighted last month by the country's Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad in a
now notorious speech at an AIDS conference that will be remembered for other
reasons.
Azad went on to call
homosexuality "a disease which has come from other countries" and
"unnatural", in comments widely condemned by gay rights activists and
AIDS workers.
At the Pahal Foundation in
the northern state of Haryana, which provides free HIV tests, condoms and
counselling services to gay and transgender people, project manager Maksoom Ali
says he faces a constant battle against ignorance. Most gay men, fearing
homophobia, are forced to hide their sexual activity, and others have no idea
about the dangers of unprotected intercourse, he said.
"Many people think
that men having sex with men cannot get HIV and that's one reason why
(homosexual and transgender) people have a lot of unsafe sex," Ali told AFP.
The country's National
AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) estimates that 7.3 percent of
The UN AIDS agency
estimated that around a third of men who have sex with men in
Many of the people who use
Pahal's services are low-paid factory workers, labourers, or sex workers like
25-year-old Sanam who first came to the centre three years ago.
Sanam, a transgender whose
original name was Sushil Kumar Pandey, told AFP she knew nothing about sexually
transmitted diseases when she entered the sex trade.
"I never used to take
it seriously, we used to do it without condoms," she said.
She learnt about HIV/AIDS
only after visiting the Pahal premises.
"They first conducted
a blood test on me, then they told me about HIV, what it is, how it spreads.
Because of that I always use condoms," she said.
Although the Indian
government has committed funds to HIV-fighting organisations that work with the
gay and transgender community, many NGOs say that financing falls short.
The Pahal Foundation says
it treats 50 percent more people than it has budgeted for.
Gay rights activist and
UNAIDS technical officer for sexual minorities, Ashok Row Kavi, said that
authorities lack a true awareness of the problem in the gay community.
"We don't have a
proper denominator for the number of MSM (men having sex with men), and that
number is much higher than what we are willing to accept," he told AFP.
"It's very worrying
because hardly four percent of the (government) money for fighting HIV is coming
to MSM groups," he added.
Attitudes to homosexuality
are slowly changing in
Two years ago, a landmark
Delhi High Court ruling decriminalised homosexuality, which was illegal under a
150-year-old British colonial law that banned "carnal intercourse against
the order of nature".
Conviction carried a fine
and maximum 10-year jail sentence.
But many gay and
transgender sex workers who spoke to AFP said they continue to face verbal and
physical abuse on a regular basis.
Rupali, a 24-year-old
transgender sex worker whose original name was Lalit Sharma, said she feared for
her safety nearly every day.
"There are people who
turn up drunk, local goons, we have to convince them that there is such a
frightening disease going around, there can be a problem like this, so use a
condom," she told AFP.
But sometimes, she said,
customers used force to pressure her and other sex workers to have unprotected
sex.
Most of all she feared the
police. "They force us to have sex, they take our money and then they beat
us up," she said.
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All
rights reserved.
Health
professionals took part in
The number of people in
Devon and
The figures for 2009 show
2,804 people living with the disease and accessing NHS care in the South West -
315 more than the previous year.
It is one of the fastest
growing conditions in the
Health specialists want to
encourage more routine testing.
Al Green, project lead for
Healthy Gay Cornwall from the Primary Care Trust, said it was important to
reduce people's fear of accessing sexual health service as early detection was
"crucial".
"Late detection, as
we are seeing, means not only that other people are at risk of contracting the
infection, it also means that when people are diagnosed they are incredibly
ill," he said.
"HIV can affect any
one regardless of race, gender and sexual orientation.
"Sexual health check
ups should be as routine as getting an eye test or a dental check up."
Health professionals were
in
By PPI
Published: August 26, 2011
Researchers believe
that HIV has spread from the usual ‘at-risk’ groups in
An
international team of researchers, including scientists from
The researchers are
concerned that the transmission of the virus into the general population may
serve as an indication that the virus could be spreading into populations within
neighbouring
“Are the strains in
The team explained that
the technique used to understand how this particular virus spreads could also
help healthcare professionals understand and intervene in other deadly disease
outbreaks wherever they occur.
Salemi analysed the DNA
sequences from blood taken from three HIV-positive groups – intravenous drug
users, men who have intercourse with men, and women who have become infected by
their spouses. Understandably, the spread is exacerbated when two of these
groups intersect. Scientists say that, by examining the evolutionary make-up of
HIV strains, one of the strongest factors of the disease’s spread is through
men who have intercourse with male intravenous drug users.
The study was led by
scientists from AKU and DUHS, both in
Molecular studies are also
essential to complement information derived from in-person interviews that may
not necessarily be accurate, or true. “These questions are very sensitive and
most of the behaviour we deal with, even in countries outside the
McFarland is the author of
a PLoS One paper that also appeared this summer. That research was led by
scientists from the
Despite certain social and
legal limitations that may make conducting similar studies in some parts of the
world difficult, McFarland believes that the trust and confidentiality
established between physicians and their patients has proven crucial in
acquiring demographic information needed to conduct international such studies.
“Despite the legal
consequences, doctor patient-relationships do seem to be respected,” he said.
Published in The Express
Tribune, August 26th, 2011.