Mission & Justice

5/9/08

Restrictions placed on HIV positive people under the proposed Pacific Island guest worker visa programme has been described by an association for people with AIDS as “unjustified, discriminatory and racist”. The Australian-based National Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS (NAPWA) said the visa programme should be opened to all people regardless of their HIV status. “This is a programme that is meant to benefit Australia and its neighbours. “People with HIV have as much to offer as their HIV negative counterparts. “Banning them from participation would be unjustified, discriminatory and racist,” NAPWA president Robert Mitchell said in a press statement. Recent media reports have said that applicants for the pilot programme, due to start next year for PNG, would be screened for HIV and other diseases before they were granted visas to work in Australia. Foreign Affairs and Immigration Minister Sam Abal, earlier this week, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Papua New Guineans testing positive to HIV would not be selected to participate in the scheme.

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Scarelett Epstein; 1/9/08

Truly, as the Bible says, a man is not a prophet in his own land and, I must say, that goes for women too! Much as I have raged and pleaded across the years for culture to be given its rightful focus in the battle against HIV/AIDS, it has been a voice that has been all but drowned out, lost in the hurricane of other opinion, consigned to the waste paper basket, or thrown out the window. ut, with some delight, I can tell you readers of The National that the vital role and consideration of culture has finally been recognised and been given its place in the sun; it’s been studied and embraced in the global spotlight of the 17th International AIDS Conference that’s just been held in Mexico City, a forum that has gripped the attention of some 24,000 people who gathered there, as well as the eyes and the ears of the world beyond.

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Alison Anis; 20/8/08

An international AIDS conference has been told that Papua New Guinea had failed to cure HIV/AIDS and will need to focus more on prevention, care and treatment exercises. Former parliamentarian Dr Banare Bun said there was no denying that PNG had the highest recorded cases of HIV/AIDS and the fastest infection rate in the South Pacific. He was speaking after arriving from the 17th international AIDS conference in Mexico last week. The PNG 46-member delegation, led by parliamentary HIV/AIDS committee chairman, Jamie Maxtone-Graham, comprises representatives from various HIV/AIDS organisations and Government agencies, development partners, faith-based and civil society organisations. Among them was outspoken Autonomous Bougainville Government speaker Francesca Semoso.

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Wendy Zukerman reports; August 16, 2008

Circumcision is one of the oldest medical practices in the world. From indigenous Australians, ancient Egyptians, to devout Jews and Muslims — boys have undergone it for thousands of years. And until the 1970s it was also common in developed countries. In the 1970s paediatricians in Australia, the US and the UK changed their attitude to circumcision. Routine circumcision for all newborn boys changed from a recommended procedure in hospitals nationwide to an “unnecessary” practice in which the risks outweighed the benefits. Almost 40 years on, this official stance is largely unchanged. As a result it is estimated that between 80 and 90 per cent of boys in Australia are currently not being circumcised. But now, after scientific research showing increased benefits associated with circumcisions, there are signs of a re-think in the scientific community.

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Frank Nyakairu; 13/8/08

Ugandan authorities have launched a mass circumcision drive with the hope it will reduce HIV/AIDS rates in the east African country. Some studies indicate circumcision could be 70 per cent effective in protecting men against infection by the disease during heterosexual intercourse, when used in conjunction with condoms and other safe-sex practices. Government officials in Kampala have decided to take advantage of a month-long traditional “circumcision season” practiced by some tribes to drive the message home. “Socially, it is uniting, and now it has also been proven medically, that is gratifying and it is part and parcel of now the strategy for fighting AIDS,” Kibale Wambi, chairman of Sironko district in eastern Uganda, said.

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12/8/08

Mexico City: It’s the third morning of the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City and Francesca Semoso, Deputy-Speaker of Parliament for Bougainville, is sitting on a mat at the Pacific Meeting House, yet her passion and desire to make a difference in the midst of discrimination and human rights abuses are such she can barely stay still. ‘”It is my right to be gay, or lesbian, or to enjoy same sex marriage, everywhere in the Pacific,’ she declared. “Similarly, we need to educate our youth to be responsible and practise safe sex, rather than tell them “no” and shun them,’’ she says. “Being judgmental, and curtailing discussions about sex and sexual health, is simply not helpful.’’

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David Brown; 9/8/08

Some long-term survivors of HIV infection produce rare and extremely potent antibodies that keep the disease from progressing to AIDS and might point to a way to protect healthy people from the virus. Researchers reported on the discovery on Thursday in the closing hours of the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City. The antibodies — against a particular part of a much-studied HIV protein called gp120 — might prove useful as a tool for blocking infection during sexual intercourse. If researchers could find a way to prompt the immune system to make its own supply of the antibodies before encountering the virus, they would have a vaccine.

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Ceci Connolly, 8/8/08

Twenty-five years after AIDS was branded the “gay plague”, the virus is again exacting a disproportionate toll on men who have sex with men, not only in the US but in countries where the epidemic is just emerging. Globally, men who engage in homosexual sex are 19 times more likely to contract HIV than the rest of the population, according to data released at the International AIDS Conference. In Mexico, men who have sex with men are 109 times more likely to develop HIV, while in the US 53% of new infections in 2006 were in gay and bisexual men. Homophobia, biology and misplaced confidence that AIDS has become a treatable chronic illness are contributing to a disturbing — and deadly — sense of deja vu among scientists and activists who say much of the world seems to have forgotten the early lessons of the epidemic.

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Lawrence Altman; 7/8/08

While the world awaits findings from new AIDS prevention trials, millions of people are becoming infected because governments are overlooking studies showing that behaviour modification works, AIDS experts have warned. Measures cited by the experts included promoting safer sex through delayed intercourse and the use of condoms, decreasing drug abuse, providing access to needle exchange programs and promoting male circumcision. But none of these alone offers a simple solution to preventing infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, the experts have said at the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.

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Adam Cresswell; 6/8/08

Straight couples are much more likely to transmit HIV during sex than most people realise, with new research showing the true risk may be hundreds of times higher than official guidelines suggest. Doctors and patients are told that on average only one heterosexual transmission of the AIDS virus would be expected for every 1000 sexual contacts, assuming one partner was HIV-positive and the other negative. But US researchers have told a world meeting of HIV experts in Mexico that the true figure could be as high as one transmission for every 10 instances of vaginal sex.

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