Archive for the ‘News’ Category
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Buladi campaign comes a cropper
TAMLUK, July 8: The litany of woes related to HIV/AIDS continues unabated in the rural fringes of West Bengal. Though, the state health department often claims that its AIDS awareness mascot, Buladi has been a success, but her campaign seems to have fallen flat even in the urban areas of Midnapore East district with the victims of the deadly disease being socially ostracised.
This was proven recently, when a 27-year old woman and her family were ostracised by their neighbours at their village near Kolaghat after she tested HIV positive
This comes at a time when one of the themes of Global AIDS Week of Action (GAWA) in India for this year includes the lack of progress on the HIV Bill 2006. In this regard, the Bengal Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (BNP+), a state-level network run by and for people living with HIV/AIDS in West Bengal has teamed up with Human Right Law Networks (HRLN) to hasten ratifying the HIV Bill by taking public opinions through seminars and meeting across the state.
According to the family members, the victim, mother of a seven-year-old daughter, was diagnosed to have been infected three months ago and underwent treatment for about 75 days at the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital. She returned home to her parents house near the Kolaghat Thermal Power station on 30 June and was socially ostracised by the neighbours.
Statesman News Service -
Infected with HIV, young man fights for justice
Ludhiana, July 8
A Haryana-based youth, who was infected with the deadly HIV virus either by a local nursing home or a public laboratory, is not only fighting the fatal disease but also police inaction in bringing the guilty to book.
Gulshan Kumar (22), who is also suffering from renal failure, tested HIV positive in June, 2005, after he underwent a surgery for kidney stones in a local hospital and received blood from a public laboratory in April, 2005.
He claims he was infected with HIV either after getting blood from the hospital or from the laboratory. He has moved from pillar to post to get an inquiry conducted into the case so that the deadly virus is not transmitted to anybody else just due to carelessness of health institutes.
Kanchan Vasdev, for Tribune News Service -
Hybrid HIV strain found in N-E
Pune, July 6: In a significant finding, scientists at the Pune-based National AIDS Research Institute (NARI) have, for the first time, found a novel 'recombinant' strain of the HIV virus in the North East region of the country. Not only does it resemble the strain from Thailand, but scientists have expressed caution that surveillance measures need to be taken for checking the emerging strains across the country.
Presently the sub type C strain of the HIV virus is prevalent in the country. The HIV epidemic in the country has been primarily driven by sexual transmission and this finding now complicates the attempts towards defining intervention strategies, particularly in developing anti-AIDS vaccines.
Scientists at NARI have documented in the journal AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, published in the January and February 2008 issues, novel instances of B/C recombination in HIV-1 circulating in India where the origin of two subtypes, clade C and clade B differed and resembled a form that had established a foothold in Thailand.
Anuradha Mascarenhas, for The Indian Express -
Empower them
There is a lot of information on HIV now. What is there to be afraid of, asks Geeta Rao.
Geeta Rao Gupta, global authority on Women and AIDS and President of the Washington-based International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW), was in Delhi recently. Challenging stigma associated with HIV and integrating HIV programmes with other devel opment programmes are critical for an effective response, she says in an interview.
Women and AIDS has been a major area of research for ICRW in recent years. What has your research shown?
The HIV epidemic affects men and women differently. While policies look at mens realities, they are not looking at womens realities to the extent they should. Women are dependent and, therefore, more vulnerable whether it is negotiating condom use or having sex for money.
It is important that economic empowerment programmes go together with HIV treatment and care programmes.
Sumita Thapar, for The Hindu -
Village Health Workers – Get rapid HIV Testing Kits across India
Village health workers across India will soon be equipped to conduct pre and post test Counseling and HIV/AIDS tests through rapid HIV test kits, which need just a prick on a persons fingertip and the results are known in 20 minutes. Currently India have around 2.5 million People Living with HIV/AIDS and there are nearly 4,500 ICTC centres.
Ajay Khera, Joint Director , National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) shared that we have recently adopted the Whole Blood Fingerprick Testing Technology (WBFTT) and have piloted the project in a few districts. We hope it will be rolled out across the country by early 2009.
NACO is National agency under the Health and Family Welfare Ministry, GOI to control and treat HIV/AIDS. It spreads awareness among people about HIV/AIDS though information and education campaigns and also providing care and support to the People Living With HIV.
Dr. Avnish Jolly, for The India Post -
Tolerance key to winning battle against AIDS
NEW DELHI: Calling for an attitudinal change towards those living with HIV/AIDS, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday said strategies for tackling the scourge required more inclusive and less judgmental social approaches to questions of public health and personal hygiene.
"If we have to win this fight against HIV/AIDS, we have to create a more tolerant social environment. One need not condone socially unacceptable or medically inadvisable sexual practices in seeking a more tolerant approach to the problem. It is in the interests of the entire society that everyone afflicted with AIDS wins the battle against it. They deserve and have the right to live lives of dignity," he said releasing here a report, "Redefining AIDS in Asia: Crafting an Effective Response" brought out by the Independent Commission on AIDS in Asia.
Dr. Singh said the situation in India was not as alarming as it was portrayed some years ago. While it was claimed that the country might have up to five million persons affected with HIV, more recent estimates suggested that the number could be between two and three million, mainly in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.
Special Correspondent, for The Hindu
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Zinc fingers bring HIV therapy a step closer
New York (PTI): A potential therapy for HIV could soon become a reality, if scientists are to be believed. In their ground-breaking study, a team at Pennsylvania University made laboratory rodents HIV resistant by sabotaging a gene in blood cells that the deadly virus normally infects, the 'Nature Biotechnology' journal reported.
In fact, they altered the gene which makes CCR5 by using a harmless virus to sneak a molecule -- a zinc-finger nuclease -- into the cells. With the help of zinc fingers, they found they could help reduce the viral load of immune deficient rodents injected with engineered T-cells.
"By inducing mutations in the CCR5 gene using zinc finger proteins, we've reduced the expression of CCR5 surface proteins on T-cells, which is necessary for the AIDS virus to enter these immune system cells. "This approach stops the AIDS virus from entering the T-cells because it now has an introduced error into the CCR5 gene," Elena Perez, one of the study authors, was quoted by the journal as saying.
The Hindu News Update Service
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AIDS to push 6 m Asian households below poverty by 2015
Unprotected, paid sex major drivers of HIV epidemic in Asia
New Delhi, July 2
Men who buy sex from women are the single most powerful driving forces in Asias HIV epidemics. They constitute the largest infected population group in the continent.
Startling new findings of the Commission on AIDS in Asia, constituted in June 2006 to assess the developmental consequences of the AIDS epidemic in the region, suggest that a high proportion of Asian men are buying sex. After every sex worker in Asia, there are 10 male clients.
Most of these are from "mainstream" society and capable of creating a critical mass of infection, as they are either married or will get married, infecting low-risk women. Already, although three out of four adults living with HIV in Asia are men, the number of infected women is rising. It has gone up from 19 per cent in 2000 to 24 per cent in 2007.
Aditi Tandon, for Tribune News Service -
Film to enlighten students on AIDS
Chandigarh, July 4
In the backdrop of an alarming increase in HIV/AIDS cases among the youth, the administration has devised a novel way to answer the queries of inquisitive schoolchildren on the issue.
Named as "Teesra Mahayudh", this 45-minute film will be shown in all government schools of the city. The CDs of this movie have been dispatched to all schools.
"If the Third World War is to be fought, it has to be against AIDS, not humanity," thats the way filmmaker V.K. Kaushik strives to attract the attention towards AIDS awareness.
It is a significant move for schoolchildren, especially those who come for evening classes of Alternate Innovative Education (AIE) centres and belong to most susceptible colonies and slum areas where the menace is shockingly high.
DPI (S) S.K. Setia believes that movies are the best medium to make the youth aware. He opined, "I have seen this film and it hits the subject matter. I have directed to send the CDs of this film to principals of all government schools and it will be shown to children," he said.
G. S. Paul, for Tribune News Service
© 2008 Wake Up Pune.
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