Posts Tagged ‘HIV/Aids’
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
Rowan Callick; 24/2/10
The global Fund, founded by Bill and Melinda Gates, which provides the drugs keeping 7000 Papua New Guinean AIDS sufferers alive, has rejected the latest PNG request for funding. Michel Kazatchkine, the fund’s executive director, said yesterday that during a visit to Australia this week he had been pressed strongly to review the decision. But he said the fund, which supplies about half the antiretroviral drugs used in the developing world, can approve fewer than half the AIDS submissions it receives. The fund was established eight years ago to combat tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS. Since then, it has raised $24.5 billion, 95 per cent from governments and the rest from business, including $111 million a year from the Gates Foundation established by the Microsoft founder. PNG has spent about $67m of the $111m it has secured from the fund, and the remainder will enable the AIDS sufferers registered by August 31 last year to continue to receive life-saving drugs for another two years.
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Tags: HIV/Aids, PNG
Posted in HIV-AIDS, Human Rights, PNG / West Papua, United Nations | No Comments »
Friday, January 29th, 2010
Natasha Bita; 29/1/10
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has attacked as “discriminatory” Australia’s policy of screening asylum-seekers for HIV. The regional office of the UN agency wants Australia to scrap its health requirement for refugees. “The present operation of the health requirement is discriminatory in effect and endangers a number of human rights norms,” it says in a submission to a parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s treatment of disabled migrants. “To that extent, Australia presently falls short of its international obligations.” The UNHCR says Australia’s health rules effectively bar any refugee found to have HIV or AIDS, unless the Immigration Minister grants a waiver. “Although the waiver is theoretically available, UNHCR’s experience in practice suggests that it is very rarely granted,” it says.
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Tags: Australia, HIV/Aids, Migrants & Refugees
Posted in Australia, HIV-AIDS, Health & Children, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant, United Nations | No Comments »
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Natasha Bita; 28/1/10
Chronically ill foreign workers and their families, including those with HIV-AIDS, will be allowed to settle in Australia for the first time as the Immigration Department loosens its stringent health rules to alleviate the skills shortage. The department is widening a loophole that lets it waive the health requirement for some sick dependants of Australian citizens. Taxpayers will spend nearly $60 million on healthcare for 288 migrants granted special clearance last financial year to live in Australia, despite failing health exams. These included 59 cases of HIV infection, 10 of cancer and 26 of intellectual impairment. Most of the waivers were granted to the foreign partners of Australian citizens.
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Tags: Australia, health, HIV/Aids, Workers
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, HIV-AIDS, Health & Children, Human Rights, Workers | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
James Bone; 6/1/10
The US has lifted a 23-year ban on visitors infected with the HIV virus that had put it in the company of such countries as Saudi Arabia, Libya and Sudan. The ban was imposed in 1987 amid fears that HIV/Aids could be spread by sharing lavatories or even coughing. It prompted health scientists to boycott the US when holding conferences on the disease because of the 1989 detention of an HIV-positive Dutchman. Hans Paul Verhoef was imprisoned on landing at Minneapolis-St Paul international airport for not declaring he was HIV-positive when immigration officials found the antiretroviral drug AZT in his luggage.President Barack Obama, who completed a repeal process begun by George W. Bush, called the policy “a decision rooted in fear rather than fact”.
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Tags: HIV/Aids, Human Rights, USA
Posted in HIV-AIDS, Health & Children, USA | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
2/12/09
Jacob Zuma, the South African president, has said his government will roll out life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs to “significantly more people” infected with Aids from next year. In a speech marking World Aids Day on Tuesday, Zuma compared the fight against Aids to the decades-long struggle against the apartheid government.Zuma said: “At another moment in our history, in another context, the liberation movement observed that the time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices: submit or fight.”That time has now come in our struggle to overcome Aids. Let us declare now, as we declared then, that we shall not submit.” South Africa has the largest population of HIV-infected people in the world, and the previous government was heavily criticised for its passive efforts to fight the virus.
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Tags: HIV/Aids, South Africa
Posted in Africa, HIV-AIDS, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
Julia Nedew; 1/12/09
Australians living with HIV have called on the Federal Government to start reforming laws and policies that promote discrimination against sufferers. President of the National Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS, Robert Mitchell, said about half the estimated 17,000 Australians with the virus still reported discrimination in recent years. ”People have experienced different levels of treatment from health professionals, whether that be people not wanting to see them or using unnecessary precautions around them,” he said.
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Tags: Australia, HIV/Aids
Posted in Australia, HIV-AIDS, Human Rights | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
Ruth Hawley-Lowry; 1/12/09
Ruth Hawley-Lowry is a pastor in Michigan and serves as a hospice chaplain.
December 1 is World AIDS Day. December 1 is also the day that Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on a bus in Montgomery. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the confluence of those dates this past month. This pondering began when I listened on NPR as people detailed the events in Leipzig, Germany before the Berlin Wall fell. People gathered at Nikolai Church, welcomed by Pastor Christian Fuhrer. People invited others to Monday night prayers for peace. More and more people came as word got out. The pamphlets of invitation simply said, “All Are Welcome.”Isn’t that what any of us want to hear? “All Are Welcome.” Not for what I can offer or buy or give, but simply, “All Are Welcome.” Of course, during this time of Advent in the Christian calendar, we remember the baby Jesus and the shepherds (who certainly weren’t on a high rung in their society) who were welcomed by the angels of God.
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Tags: Christmas, HIV/Aids, Human Rights, USA
Posted in Christianity, HIV-AIDS, Human Rights, USA | No Comments »
Thursday, November 26th, 2009
26/11/09
An estimated 33.4 million people around the world are infected with the Aids virus, but many are living longer due to the availability of HIV drugs, a UN report has said. The report by the World Health Organisation and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids (UNaids) was issued in Shanghai on Tuesday. While the figure represents an increase from 33 million in 2007, the report suggested that was likely caused by more infected people getting access to HIV drugs. “The number of Aids-related deaths has declined by over 10 per cent over the past five years as more people gained access to life-saving treatment,” it said. In sub-Saharan Africa, the region worst hit by Aids, there were 400,000 fewer infections in 2008, down 15 per cent compared to 2001. New HIV infections declined by nearly 25 per cent in East Asia and 10 per cent in south and southeast Asia within the same time frame.
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Tags: Global, HIV/Aids, UN
Posted in HIV-AIDS, Human Rights, United Nations | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
Sean Parnell; 17/11/09
An immigration crackdown on Papua New Guinean nationals illegally crossing the Torres Strait to seek medical treatment has already seen hundreds of people turned back at the border. With such treatment not considered a traditional activity under the free-movement provisions of the Torres Strait Treaty, the federal government has come under increasing pressure to prevent sick, injured and often contagious PNG nationals entering Australia. Officials from Australia and PNG have been working to improve health services in PNG, to lessen the need for people to cross the border, and plan to relax immigration controls to allow medical professionals and other officials to travel more freely in the region.
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Tags: Australia, Drugs, health, HIV/Aids, PNG
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, HIV-AIDS, Health & Children, Human Rights, PNG / West Papua | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Sean Parnell; 10/11/09
The Papua New Guinea government is examining a package of health measures that Australia helped to develop, in a desperate bid to address the serious risk of drug-resistant tuberculosis and HIV crossing the Torres Strait. As thousands of PNG nationals cross each year to access Queensland Health services, breaching the free movement provisions of the Torres Strait Treaty that cover only traditional activities, local islanders and Australian governments are becoming increasingly concerned about the potential public health impacts. The Australian reported yesterday how community leaders, including Torres Strait Regional Authority chairman John Kris, had accused the federal government of turning a blind eye to their health, safety, security and resourcing concerns, as the political debate instead focused attention on boat arrivals in the Indian Ocean.
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Tags: Australia, health, HIV/Aids, PNG
Posted in Australia, HIV-AIDS, Health & Children, PNG / West Papua | No Comments »
Monday, November 9th, 2009
Julie Medew; 9/11/09
Infectious disease experts are calling for urgent changes to the way HIV is tackled in Australia as the virus continues to spread at alarming rates. A draft strategy written by a group of specialists for the Federal Government said Australia was entering a challenging new period with resurgent epidemics among gay men and emerging epidemics among people travelling between high-risk countries and within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. It said there was a need to reinvigorate prevention messages and to re-invest in a long-term response over the next four years because public interest in the issue had waned.”Strong leadership on HIV from government at all levels is now required,” the strategy said.
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Tags: Australia, HIV/Aids
Posted in Australia, HIV-AIDS, Health & Children | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
César Baldelomar; 3/11/09
11-03-2009; César J. Baldelomar is a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School. He is also the executive director of Pax Romana Center for International Study of Catholic Social Teaching. You can visit César at his Web site (www.cesarjb.org) and read his blogs at www.holisticthoughts.com.
President Obama and his administration were busy this past Friday. The president signed into legislation The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act, which according to CNN.com, “authorizes a 5 percent annual increase in federal support over the next four years. Funding under the law is scheduled to rise from more than $2.5 billion in fiscal year 2010 to nearly $3 billion in fiscal year 2013.” On the same day, he announced that in 2010 he will eliminate a 22-year-old regulation that bars individuals with HIV/AIDS from entering the United States. Obama’s decisions with regard to HIV/AIDS, which we should commend on all levels, are a far cry from earlier administrations that refused to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the United States and across the world.
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Tags: HIV/Aids, USA
Posted in HIV-AIDS, Health & Children, Human Rights, USA | No Comments »
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
22/10/09
More than 30 million needles are handed out through exchange programs across Australia in a year, and yet half of all injections are still done in a non-sterile way. The programs, which aim to cut rates of transmissible disease among intravenous drug users, cost a total $243 million to run over the past decade, a new report shows. The research, by the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, also found the reduced incidence of needle sharing during the 10 years prevented 32,000 new HIV infections and almost 100,000 new cases of hepatitis C. This reduction in disease accounted for a saving in downstream taxpayer-funded health outlays of almost $1.3 billion.
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Tags: Australia, Drugs, Hep C, HIV/Aids
Posted in Australia, Drugs, HIV-AIDS, Human Rights | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
Adam Cresswell; 6/10/09
Australia’s fight to contain HIV, hepatitis C and other serious infections has been hobbled by a lack of leadership, and poor communication from the agencies nominally in charge. An official independent review of the national strategies set up to combat HIV, hepatitisC and sexually transmitted infections has pointed the finger at a high-ranking federal committee, which it concludes failed to set goals or attempt to measure what impact its initiatives were having. The review, the final reports of which have been obtained by The Australian following a Freedom of Information request, also uncovered concerns that the committee failed to engage with relevant organisations, did not listen to their advice and did not even deal effectively with recommendations from its own subcommittees. Neither the committee nor the federal Health Department “exhibited the leadership expected in promoting the strategies and encouraging a national response” from 2005 to 2008, it found.
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Tags: Australia, HIV/Aids
Posted in Australia, HIV-AIDS, Health & Children | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
Mark Henderson; 6/10/09
A critical camouflage mechanism that allows HIV to hide from the body’s defences and foil immunisations has been rebuilt in the laboratory in research that could transform the prospects for an effective AIDS vaccine. The advance by British scientists should allow them to turn one of the virus’s great strengths into its achilles heel, promising a first vaccine that offers strong protection against HIV. It offers a way of overcoming HIV’s remarkable capacity to shapeshift so that it becomes unrecognisable to the human immune system, which has so far thwarted efforts to create a workable vaccine. By making synthetic versions of the virus’s “camouflage jacket” and injecting them into patients, scientists believe that it should be possible to teach the immune system to recognise and neutralise HIV. Candidate vaccines based on the new approach are already being evaluated in animal studies and the first human trials could potentially begin in two years.
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Tags: Global, HIV/Aids
Posted in HIV-AIDS | No Comments »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
1/10/09
New HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa are growing twice as quickly as anti-retroviral drugs are rolled out, despite a 39 percent hike in treatment access, UNAIDS. The number of people receiving AIDS treatments in the region, where two-thirds of the world’s HIV positive people live – rose from 2.1 million in 2007 to 2.9 million last year. Although the region showed the world’s greatest progress in expanding AIDS treatment, new infections still outpace the numbers of people on the life-saving drugs, according to new figures from the World Health Organisation, UNAIDS and the UN Children’s Fund. “The number of new infections in the region is outpacing the number of people getting treatment by a ratio of two to one,” regional UNAIDS director Mark Stirling told a press briefing in Johannesburg.
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Tags: Africa, HIV/Aids, UN
Posted in Africa, HIV-AIDS, United Nations | No Comments »
