Archive for the ‘News’ Category
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High Court notice to NACO for suppressing report on faulty HIV kits
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Wednesday came down heavily on the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) for suppressing a World Bank report on faulty HIV kits being used in India.
The court issued a notice to NACO asking it to explain by Oct 22 as to why it suppressed the World Bank findings that poor quality HIV kits were being used in India.
Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice S. Murlidhar asked NACO why it had made false claims that the US Centre for Disease Control had verified that the HIV kits used during the second national AIDS control project (NACP-II) in Indian hospitals and blood banks were of standard quality.
The court was hearing a public interest petition filed by Kunal Shah, seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigation into the use of defective HIV kits.
newKerala.com -
Death too is a lonely affair for HIV+ in Goa
PANAJI: The discovery of the body of 45-year-old Vasco resident, Ajay, at the bus stop near Goa Medical College and Hospital on August 21, 2008 has emphasized the discrimination HIV positive persons face in Goa.
Agassaim police, who shifted the body to the GMC morgue said that Ajay, who had made the bus stop his home since the second week of August, was probably abandoned by his relatives.
Ajay's is not an isolated case. "Once family members know of a relative's HIV status they abandon them. Very often relatives don't even claim the body after death," said GMC dean Dr V N Jindal.
"We continue to live with stigma and face discrimination from an indifferent society and unsympathetic relatives. Many of us live without dignity and die stigmatised," says Jafar Inamdar, president of Positive Lives Foundation.
Preetu Nair, for The Times of India -
Man suffering from AIDS commits suicide
A 30-year-old man afflicted with AIDS committed suicide by hanging himself in his home in Seema Puri in northeast Delhi, police said Thursday.
According to the police, 'The body of the man was discovered hanging by his parents Thursday morning. A suicide note was recovered from the room in which he had written that nobody should be held responsible for his death and he was ending his life by his own will.'
'The family members revealed that the deceased was under depression after his wife left him a year and a half ago when his infection was detected,' a police official said.
'His wife had also complained to police over some matter due to which he was upset. The victim's body has been sent to Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital for post mortem examination,' the police added.
India eNews -
Widespread rape does not appear to directly increase overall HIV prevalence in conflict-affected countries
A new mathematical model indicates that widespread rape does not directly increase HIV prevalence at the population level, according to a study presented at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico this week.
For seven countries, the model predicts that in an "extreme" situation where 15% of a country's female population were raped, where assailants had eight times the national HIV prevalence and where the HIV transmission rate was four times the usual rate for heterosexual intercourse, absolute HIV population prevalence would only increase by 0.023%.
The findings seem to contradict perceptions that rape on a broad scale, particularly when used as a weapon of war, leads to an increase in HIV transmission. I spoke with Paul Spiegel, Chief of Public Health and HIV at UNHCR and one of the authors.
Spiegel expressed concern that the results will be misinterpreted or misused to deny that rape and HIV are connected, or to direct funding away from addressing the important human rights problem of sexual violence.
Sharon Jackson, for HealthDev.net
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Let’s talk it over (About deletion of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code)
All that Sonu (13, name changed) wanted was to spend some time with his mother, a sex worker. One day, while his mother was away, a man entered and closed the door behind, started fondling his private parts and sodomised Sonu - causing him injury, pain and life-time trauma. Sonu ran away from his home and landed up in a crowded, shabby and terribly mis-managed institution. Sonu was one of the 18,200 respondents in a survey by the National Study on Child Abuse team. Among the various forms of child abuse -physical, emotional, economic, drugs and girl child neglect, the most startling findings were about sexual abuse.
Among 12,447 children and 2,511 young adult respondents, over 50 per cent disclosed having experienced different types of sexual abuse ranging from fondling and forcible kissing, violation of privacy, pornography, sexual exposure and exploitation, to sodomy, rape and child prostitution. For male victims of child abuse the only legal remedy available in India is Section 377 of the Indian Penal Court (IPC) that provides against unnatural offences i.e. voluntarily having carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal. The National Study on Child Abuse forms a basis for legislations and policy formulation to protect children and must be considered.
Amod K. Kanth, for Hindustan Times -
Techie forges HIV+ve report to escape knot
CHENNAI: His parents found him a suitable girl, but he was already in love with another. As the wedding date was fixed, he found an unusual way to prevent the marriage by producing a fake medical report which said he was HIV positive. What he didn't expect was that he would end up behind the bars for cheating the girl.
Ashok Nagar all women police on Friday arrested Satish, a 28-year-old MBA graduate working in a software company in TIDEL park, and slapped cases under Sections 420 (cheating) and 4 (1) of Prevention of Women Harassment Act.
Initial inquiries revealed that right from his college days, Satish has been in love with a girl, who is now working in the US. He kept the affair a secret and agreed to marry the girl form Jafferkhanpet his parents found for him. The couple got engaged and their marriage was fixed for the first week of September. Satish, a resident of Mugalivakkam near Porur, apparently had a change of mind and decided to call off the marriage.
He visited the girl's parents last week and broke down, telling them that he was HIV positive. He gave them a lab report 'confirming' his status. Not entirely convinced, the girl's family later called up the lab, which denied having issued such a report to Satish. They said the logo on the report was a fake one.
A. Selvaraj, for The Times of India -
250,000 Americans Don’t Know They’re HIV-Positive
Some 250,000 Americans are HIV positive but unaware of it, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study released Thursday, and most of them are not in high-risk groups.
"In the past, people associated HIV with drug use and men who have sex with men," said Bernard Branson, associate director for Laboratory Diagnostics in CDC's division of HIV/AIDS prevention. "But the epidemic is changing, and there is an increased proportion of cases that have been reported in heterosexual transmissions and among women," he said.
Branson said that efforts to test people who are in high-risk groups for HIV had been successful. To reach the remaining 25 percent of Americans who are HIV positive but don't suspect it, however, efforts have to be broadened, and quickly, according to Branson.
An HIV-positive person who doesn't know it is three and a half times more likely to transmit the infection than someone who does, he said.
change.org
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HIV carrier wants to return to Pak jail
Karachi: An Indian fisherman was sent back to India by Pakistan authorities, because he was found to be HIV-positive. He was repatriated within two days of his test results. During his stay in India, however, his family tried to immolate him, forcing him to demand of the authorities to send him back to prison in Pakistan.
A few months ago, 17-year-old Narendra, alias Bhagan, was arrested along with five other Indian fishermen for fishing illegally in Pakistani waters.
The boy was sent to jail by the Civil and Judicial Magistrate, West, under FIR 25/2008 of the Docks police station under the Fisheries Act and during a random blood screening of the inmates carried out by the HIV/AIDS Control Programme, he was found to be HIV-positive on March 27.
His case was prepared and, through the Sindh home department, sent to the federal interior ministry for the withdrawal of the criminal case and his deportation back home and also for approaching the foreign ministry to take up the matter with the Indian High Commission (IHC).
Salis bin Perwaiz, for The News -
HIV POSITIVE Experience
This is my experience wearing my HIV-positive t-shirt. I decided to wear it as a went through U.S. Customs and Border Control when I was on my way back to the U.S. en route to the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, Mexico. As an artifact left over from the early days of the HIV epidemic (and in line with certain factions of right wingers in the U.S. today), the United States has a complete ban on the entry of HIV-positive persons who are not U.S. citizens and has a policy of deporting any foreigners who are found to be living with HIV or who test positive while in the U.S. Because of this, I wanted to see the reaction of the immigration officials to me wearing my t-shirt as I entered the U.S. through JFK airport (particularly because I am a U.S. citizen and can't be denied entry to my own country regardless of my HIV status).
© 2008 Wake Up Pune.
Articles are copyright of their respective authors.
'Paragrams' by WPSHOWER
