Hiv In Se Asia And Thailand

[kyselak]

HIV rates sharply rising among Asia's gay, bisexual

population

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) _ New data suggested that HIV rates

among gays and bisexuals _ defined in Asia as men who have

sex with men or MSM _ are rising. The majority of new HIV

infections across the Asia-Pacific region have in recent

years been among sex workers and drug addicts. But HIV

rates among MSM in the Thai capital Bangkok increased from

17 percent in 2003 to 28 percent last year, according to a

study by the Thai government and the U.S. Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC. Similar trends were

found elsewhere in Asia, where 2005 surveys from the

U.N.-funded surveillance network Monitoring the AIDS

Pandemic, or MAP, found 18.8 percent of MSM were

HIV-positive in Mumbai, India and 12.8 percent of MSM were

HIV-positive in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. «This new data is an

alert to Asia-Pacific nations to take serious these issues

among MSM,» said Jeanine Bardon, regional director of

U.S.-based Family Health International. «This suggest the

epidemic has been there for sometime. You don't get 28

percent over night. It's a big alert for people to

respond.»

130243 mar 06GMT

[sor_mui]

condoms were made for a reason.

[britmaveric]

Not really news....

[kyselak]

Asia-Pacific AIDS meeting to focus on children's plight

by Frank Zeller

HANOI, March 21, 2006 (AFP) - AIDS threatens to kill or orphan

hundreds of thousands of children in the East Asia and Pacific

region unless steps are taken now to protect them, said organisers

of a conference starting Wednesday.

"HIV/AIDS is taking a harsh and far-reaching toll on children,"

said a briefing paper issued ahead of the three-day meeting that

will bring about 250 UN and other health experts from 20 countries

to Vietnam's capital.

"Increasing numbers of children in the region are becoming

infected and dying, living with chronically ill parents and being

orphaned, suffering stigma and discrimination," the paper said.

To tackle the problem, the Hanoi meeting will bring together

experts from UNICEF, UNAIDS, the World Health Organisation, the US

Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, governments and

non-governmental groups.

Fourteen Asian children affected by HIV/AIDS, from countries as

diverse as Indonesia, Mongolia and Papua New Guinea, will also

attend the event titled 'Scaling Up the Response to Children'.

"Children have not been in the picture in terms of HIV strategy

planning in the region," said Elaine Ireland, HIV/AIDS policy

officer with the British group Save the Children. "We hope this will

change."

AIDS, after devastating much of sub-Saharan Africa, is now

spreading faster in Asia than anywhere else in the world, with

130,000 AIDS deaths and 350,000 new HIV infections last year, the

United Nations has said.

About 2.5 million people in East Asia and the Pacific live with

HIV/AIDS.

"Some countries, including Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and Papua

New Guinea, face generalized epidemics with hundreds of thousands of

children already affected," said the briefing paper jointly prepared

by conference organisers.

"In China, Vietnam and Indonesia, the epidemic is rapidly

spreading and beginning to extend beyond marginalized groups,

including sex workers and injecting drug users, into the general

population."

Children are especially vulnerable because of poverty, violence,

trafficking and the breakdown of families in a rapidly urbanising

region, yet "children are notably absent from the response agenda,"

said the paper.

If governments don't act -- through education, prevention and

better care and treatment -- the paper warned, East Asia and the

Pacific can expect 2.7 million new HIV infections among adults and

children by 2010.

It called for progress in halting mother-to-child transmissions,

improving care and treatment, making anti-retroviral drugs more

widely available, and educating societies that often treat sufferers

as outcasts and criminals.

"Religious and cultural taboos prevent parents and educators

from addressing HIV/AIDS-related topics such as safe sex, condom use

and harm reduction with children and adolescents," warned the

report.

Last year, according to conservative United Nations estimates

based on testing pregnant women, 31,000 children under the age of 15

were living with HIV/AIDS across the region, about a third of whom

had been infected in 2005.

About 450,000 children have lost one or both parents, and as

many again are living with chronically ill parents. "That number

will certainly go up unless we act now," said UNICEF spokeswoman

Shantha Bloemen.

Yet many young people in Asia remain ignorant of the threat.

Recent surveys found that 83 per cent of young Filipinos

believed they were immune to HIV, and half of 2,500 Chinese girls

questioned could not name a single way to protect themselves against

the virus, the report said.

If AIDS escalates in high-population Asia, even a proportionally

small increase could mean millions of new cases, said the report,

warning that "the potential for further expansion of the epidemic is

staggering."

fz/th

AFP 210255 GMT MAR 06

[kyselak]

INTERVIEW-Asia must educate young on HIV, stop discrimination=

By Peter Apps

COLOMBO, March 22 (Reuters) - Asia must break down taboos

about sex and stop discrimination if it is to halt the world's

fastest growing HIV rates, an expert warns, with half of all

new cases in the continent aged between 14 and 24.

Professor Myung-Hwan Cho, President of the AIDS Society of

Asia and the Pacific, said Asia's 8.3 million HIV cases were

dwarfed by Africa's 23 million, but that the disease was

spreading faster in Asia than anywhere else in the world.

"In Asia, preventing the disease is particularly difficult

for cultural reasons," he told Reuters late on Tuesday at the

launch of a major international conference on AIDS in Asia and

the Pacific to be held in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo next

year.

"Talking about sex is taboo. Educating people to use

condoms is difficult," he said. "But we need to educate young

people. Fifty percent of all people infected in Asia last year

were aged between 14 and 24."

Most seriously affected were Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam,

Cambodia and India, he said, with some five million of India's

one billion population now believed to be HIV positive. China

officially had some 800,000 with HIV, he said, although the

real figure could be much higher.

"The Chinese government do not want to speak out," said the

Korean scientist, whose group includes a range of AIDS bodies

and professional associations. "But there are many intravenous

drug users. In south China in particular, the HIV rate is very

high."

Reducing the stigma attached to HIV was crucial in

encouraging people to come forward and talk about the disease,

he said. In many parts of the region, admitting HIV positive

status can leave a whole family as social pariahs.

"Refusal of employment, refusal of healthcare and refusing

of education for children," he said. "I appeal to attorney

generals and human rights commissions to push for legislation

to make this illegal."

Sri Lanka, which currently has one of the lowest HIV rates

in Asia, also had to be aware of the risks if it was to avoid

following India, he said. Sri Lanka has currently identified

743 HIV cases out of a population of 20 million, but officials

believe the real number is nearer 5,000.

But although Asia would find it difficult to stem the

spread of AIDS in the next decade, Myung-Hwan Cho said he

believed the continent would avoid the adult infection rates of

20-40 percent seen in some parts of southern Africa such as

Swaziland and Lesotho.

"It's hard to say if will reach that point of 20-30

percent," he said. "I hope we will not. The situation here is

difficult. The economies are better than in Africa and there is

less political turmoil."

REUTERS

220306 Mrz 06

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[kyselak]

Female HIV infections on the rise in Malaysia; housewives

make up large number

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) _ The number of women infected

with HIV/AIDS in Malaysia is on the rise, with housewives

outnumbering sex workers 4 to 1, the Malaysian AIDS Council

said Wednesday. There were 1,756 housewives stricken with

the disease from 1986 to 2004, while there were 435 sex

workers who had contracted HIV/AIDS in the same reporting

period, the council said in new data released Wednesday.

There were no female HIV/AIDS cases reported in Malaysia

until 1988 when two women came down with the disease, the

council said. More than 67,000 people have been diagnosed

with the disease here since 1986, when the first case was

discovered. But the United Nations said last year, official

figures were below its estimate of more than 80,000.

220252 mar 06GMT

[kyselak]

China AIDS chief knows nothing of missing activist

BEIJING, March 22 (Reuters) - China's top AIDS official said

on Wednesday that he had no idea where a missing Chinese activist

was, but said the government had a very good relationship with

private groups involved in fighting the disease.

Hu Jia, 32, went missing after going on a hunger strike with

several others to protest what they said was the government's

hiring of thugs to beat up a civil rights campaigner in the

southern province of Guangdong in February.

Hu has also been critical of the government's AIDS policy and

its efforts to help AIDS victims and their families.

His wife and friends have been trying to locate him since he

vanished over a month ago, but police and state security have

refused to confirm of deny if they are holding him.

"There are 1.3 billion people in China, and you ask me where

one person is? How am I supposed to know?" Vice Health Minister

Wang Longde, who is also China's top AIDS official, told

reporters on the sidelines of a World Health Organisation

meeting.

"We have very good cooperation with private groups in the

fight against AIDS. We believe that in this fight you cannot just

rely on the government," the vice minister said, before outlining

a series of official measures taken to battle the disease.

He declined to answer any more questions on Hu.

Hu's case has attracted the attention of the lead U.N. agency

against AIDS, UNAIDS, and rights group Amnesty International.

"We are very much aware of this person," Henk Bekedam, the

WHO's chief representative in China, told reporters. "We have

spoken to the government and are following it up. We have not

received any specific details about his whereabouts."

China recorded its first outbreak of AIDS in 1989. During the

1990s, many people -- notably in the central province of Henan --

contracted the virus through contaminated blood transfusions.

Last year, there were about 25,000 deaths from AIDS across

China. In January, Beijing lowered by about 30 percent its

estimate of the number of people living with HIV/AIDS, yet warned

against complacency, saying that the figure was still rising with

people unaware of the danger.

REUTERS

220741 Mrz 06

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[kyselak]

Drug access won't slow HIV rates in poor countries

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Widespread access to

antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV infection will probably

have little impact on the spread of the virus in developing

countries, new research suggests. In fact, in the current

estimates, providing unlimited ART to AIDS patients actually

increased the number of infected individuals.

As reported in the journal PLoS Medicine, Dr. Rebecca F.

Baggaley, and colleagues from Imperial College London,

constructed a mathematical model of HIV spread in developing

countries that incorporated ART use and stratified infection by

stages. In addition, the impact of ART was assessed in the

context of various scenarios, such as the provision of

laboratories to measure CD4+ cell counts and viral load, two

tests that gauge the progression of HIV infection.

The researchers assumed that ART consisted of a standard

three-drug regimen, with no "salvage" therapy available for

those who experienced treatment failure. They also assumed that

all sexual intercourse was heterosexual and that risk-taking

behavior changed among some HIV-infected patients upon

initiating ART.

Based on these and other parameters, the analysis showed

that regardless of availability, the use of ART for AIDS

patients had little impact on averting infections.

By contrast, the widespread coverage of ART for

HIV-infected patients who have not progressed to AIDS did seem

to avert HIV infections, but the absolute magnitude of this

effect was small, the report indicates.

For all HIV-infected patients, increasing ART availability

was associated with increases in drug resistance, the authors

report.

"Our analysis found that ART cannot be seen as a direct

transmission prevention measure, regardless of the degree of

coverage," the researchers write. "Counseling of patients to

promote safe sexual practices is essential and must aim to

effect long-term change."

SOURCE: PLoS Medicine, April 2006.

[kyselak]

New HIV infections plunge by a third in southern India: Lancet

PARIS, March 30, 2006 (AFP) - The number of new HIV infections

in southern India fell by a third over four years, according to a

study published online by The Lancet on Thursday that, if confirmed,

is one of the best pieces of news in the quarter-century history of

AIDS.

The remarkable success in India's worst-hit region counters

predictions that the country would join southern Africa as a sitting

duck for AIDS, says the research, which attributes the fall to

safe-sex practices.

Epidemiologists looked at the prevalence of the AIDS virus among

294,000 women and 59,000 men aged 15-34 who attended antenatal or

sexual-transmitted disease (STD) clinics in four states in southern

India and 14 states in the north of the country.

In the southern states, HIV-1 was found among 1.7 percent of

women aged 15-24 who attended antenatal clinics in 2001, and among

1.1 percent in 2004 -- a relative decline of 35 percent. Among men

aged 20-29 who went to STD clinics, the relative decline over this

period was 36 percent.

In contrast, there was no significant reduction in HIV rates

among men or women in northern India.

India's National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) has estimated

that about 5.1 million people, or less than one percent of the adult

population aged between 15-49 were infected with the AIDS virus in

2004.

"There have been many predictions, mostly based on guesswork,

that India's AIDS problem will explode as it did in southern Africa,

but we now have direct evidence of something positive," said the

study's co-author, Prabhat Jha, a professor of public health

sciences at the University of Toronto, Canada.

"The good news is that HIV in young adults appears to be

declining in the south mostly likely or perhaps only due to males

using sex workers less or using condoms more often when they do.

"The not-so-good news is that trends in the north remain

uncertain or poorly studied."

The authors believe that their figures are accurate and provide

a good snapshot of India's AIDS problems. They are confident that

other causes, such as changes in HIV testing or deaths from AIDS,

are not behind the sharp decline.

They guard strongly against complacency, though.

"HIV remains a huge problem in India and we have to remain

vigilant," said lead author Rajesh Kumar, a professor at the

Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in

Chandigarh.

"We're not saying the epidemic is under control yet -- we are

saying that prevention efforts with high-risk groups thus far seem

to be having an effect."

Around 40.3 million around the world have HIV or AIDS, but the

cause and shape of the epidemic varies widely from country to

country.

In India's case, an estimated 85 percent of new infections come

from heterosexual intercourse, especially unprotected sex with

prostitutes.

The typical scenario is that a husband gets infected this way

and transmits the virus to his wife, who may then hand it on to

their baby if she is pregnant.

The four southern states in the study are Andhra Pradesh,

Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. They account for 30 percent

of India's population, but 75 percent of the country's HIV total.

India has been working alongside the World Bank and foreign

agencies to beef up condom use in the sex industry.

That campaign was cited by the Indian government last year for

explaining what it said was a 95-percent fall in new infections in

2004 compared with the previous year. That assertion stirred cries

of disbelief among many veteran AIDS campaigners.

India has the world's highest number of HIV infections after

South Africa, which according to the South African health ministry

has 6.5 million.

AFP 291135 GMT MAR 06

[kyselak]

US healthcare group to provide free live-saving drug for

HIV/AIDS patients in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) _ A U.S. AIDS care group said

Friday it is working with the Cambodian government to

provide free anti-retroviral treatment to HIV/AIDS patients

in the impoverished kingdom. Up to 3,000 patients will

benefit from the program during the next five years, AIDS

Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest AIDS organization

in the United States, said in a statement. The group, based

in Los Angeles, also operates free AIDS treatment clinics

in the US, Africa, Central America and Asia. It said he has

entered an agreement with Cambodia's Health Ministry to

form «a new partnership to provide lifesaving

anti-retroviral therapy (ART) to people living with

HIV/AIDS in Cambodia.» Officials from both sides

inaugurated a new treatment clinic in Kampong Thom

province, in central Cambodia, Thursday, and another one

will be unveiled in the capital Phnom Penh Saturday, the

statement said.

310941 mar 06GMT

[kyselak]

100,000 people to be provided free AIDS drugs in two months

New Delhi, Apr 5 (PTI) The Indian Government, in

pursuance of its policy of providing cost free Aids treatment,

would distribute drugs to 100,000 people in the next two

months through 48 new additional centres across the country.

"In another two months, an additional 48 centres will be

opened and treatment extended to cover almost 100,000

patients," Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said here Tuesday

addressing at "Asia Stakeholders Consultation on Confronting

HIV as well as tuberculosis and malaria".

The AIDS treatment was introduced in the national

programme two years ago. Currently over 26,000 people were

being provided free treatment in over 52 centres, he said.

With most of the HIV infected belonging to very poor

families, effective treatment could go a long way in saving

the afflicted families from destitution, he said.

The Minister said that according to a recent analysis,

HIV prevalence had come down by 35 per cent among young adults

in two most affected states - Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

This was a result of government's focus on condom

promotion and behaviour changes among the high risk groups and

other bridge population, he said adding the experience in

these two states would be replicated in other parts of the

country as well.

Considering that youth were particularly vulnerable to

the infection, programmes on educating them on the issue were

underway in over 400 districts.

The Minister said that commitment of bilateral agencies

and donors to Asia on the front of HIV, TB and malaria was not

commensurate with the scale of problem.

[kyselak]

India reports rise in HIV infections to 5.2 mln

NEW DELHI, April 7 (Reuters) - India reported a rise in HIV

infections in 2005, a top health official said on Friday, with

more than 5.2 million people now thought to be living with the

virus, the second largest number in any country after South

Africa.

That was an increase of 72,000 from 2004, with high risk

groups like prostitutes and homosexuals the biggest cause for

concern, officials said.

Federal health secretary P.K. Hota said that with the

increase, especially among high-risk groups, the government

should push for legalising homosexuality and liberalising laws

dealing with prostitution.

"We'll pursue those provisions of law that criminalise this

behaviour, push people underground and dehumanise them further.

We have to give them a voice and stop the dehumanisation," Hota

told Reuters after an AIDS seminar.

But UNAIDS, the United Nations anti-AIDS agency, said

pushing for changes in homosexuality and anti-prostitution laws

could be difficult in conservative India where sex is not

discussed openly by most people.

"The big problem is that politicians don't think there is

much to gain by embracing the homosexual vote," Denis Broun,

India's coordinator for UNAIDS, said.

The continued rise in infections overshadowed a rare glint

of good news last month in an Indo-Canadian study published in

the medical journal Lancet.

It reported a drop of more than a third in the prevalance

of the HIV virus among 15 to 24-year-olds in the southern

states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra

Pradesh.

These states, which are home to 75 percent of people living

with HIV in India, have been the focus of the country's

anti-AIDS efforts -- apparently with some success.

But northern states like Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh,

and Punjab, as well as eastern Orissa, are in danger of being

lulled into complacency by their comparatively lower rates of

infection, Broun said.

"A very low prevalance which is not tackled early can

become a higher prevalance," he said. "At some point you wake

up and say 'Oh dear I've got a problem on my hands which I

should have tackled some years ago.'"

REUTERS

071657 Apr 06

ENDOFMSG