NEW DELHI: There's some cheer for HIV patients who have become resistant to the first-line anti-retroviral therapy (ART) - the only known treatment that suppresses the HIV virus.

The National AIDS Control Board (NACB), headed by health secretary Naresh Dayal, in its meeting on June 11, decided to roll out life-saving second-line ART drugs free to HIV patients in Delhi, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad from September.

The hospitals identified to provide the treatment include Maulana Azad Medical College (Delhi), Gandhi Hospital (Hyderabad), School of Tropical Medicine (Kolkata) and B J Medical College (Ahmedabad).

NACB also cleared four states - Manipur, Karnataka, Chandigarh and Uttar Pradesh - where second-line drugs will be rolled out from December. Experts from these eight ART centres are being taken by the WHO to Thailand to study operational issues relating to second-line therapy.

The National AIDS Control Organisation targets to put 3,000 such first-line ART-resistant HIV patients on second-line treatment by the end of 2008. India rolled out second-line therapy for the first time early this year. The announcement was made by health minister A Ramadoss on World AIDS Day on December 1.

Indian prisons are now facing new trouble in the form of HIV because of rampant drug abuse and unsafe sexual practices amongst prisoners.

Authorities are worried that this might spiral into a crisis as in India prisoners are rarely monitored.

They are not under any HIV prevention program and once released from jail, they often go on to pass the disease to their spouses.

Tihar jail, is one of the country's most guarded and high profile prisons but even here drugs manage to find their way in.

Sunil Kumar, law officer and PRO at Tihar Prison said, ''Very rarely, but with the connivance of guards or from relatives of prisoners ... drugs do come in.''

A prisoner said that he had seen many people share one needle to do drugs.

For a city of 14 million people, a gathering of a couple of hundred may seem minuscule. But for Delhi's gay community, the turnout at their first-ever Queer Pride this Sunday was beyond belief.

Over 500 marchers carrying rainbow-colored flags and "Queer Dilliwalla" banners marched to bhangra beats, breaking into Bollywood-style pelvic thrusts and bust-heaving from time to time. Starting from Barakhamba Road in the heart of the city's business district - at which point the media seemed to outnumber the marchers - they walked 2 km to Jantar Mantar, an 18th century astronomical observatory that has become the unlikely hub of sundry protests in India's capital.

Along the way, they were joined by NGO workers and advocates of all causes, droves of tourists and resident expatriates, and a handful of curious onlookers, all shouting "British Law Quit India!" They were evoking the famous slogan from India's freedom struggle, but referring here to Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which was introduced by the British to criminalize sexual acts "against the order of nature." Perhaps even more unexpectedly, few marchers wore masks - which the organizers had provided for those who haven't come out - and there were no protests from religious or socially conservative groups. "This is amazing," said Ranjit Monga, a public relations executive, "No one would've believed 10 years ago a gay parade was possible in Delhi."

 NEW DELHI: Pharmaceutical drug abuse is increasing in South Asia, particularly India a trend the UN says will increase the risk of diseases like HIV/AIDS and also pose a serious challenge to countries already fighting the use of narcotics.

"Many youngsters as young as 18-20 years start using pharmaceutical drugs. Injecting drugs inside the body is very common in India," said Ashita Mittal, senior programme officer in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (South Asia).

"Injecting pharmaceutical drugs is escalating in the region. A survey by us has found that injectable drug users (IDUs) are prone to diseases like HIV/AIDS. Pharmaceutical drug abuse is a double deviation and a dual epidemic," Mittal said.

Chandigarh:P Kousalya, President, Positive Womens Network, India shared that we opposed the patent application on syrup nevirapine hemihydrate to ensure that it remains available for our children and to make sure that the government doesnt say it is too expensive to provide and stressed that   Nevirapine is an important anti-retroviral drug, invented in 1989, and was not patentable in India and accessing appropriate paediatric formulations of AIDS drugs have been a particular problem around the world, and we hope that this decision can be a step towards making them more available.

The Indian Patents Act contains some important safeguards designed to ensure that frivolous patent applications are not granted at the cost of public health. These include section 3(d) of the Patents Act, which prevents many new forms of known substances from being patented unless there is a significant improvement in efficacy, and section 3(e) of the Act, which prevents mere admixtures of substances from being patented.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) _ A new AIDS threat is rising in India's numerous call centers, where young staff are increasingly having unprotected sex with multiple partners in affairs developed during night shifts, a top AIDS expert has warned. While India has made great strides in bringing down its HIV infection rate, the promiscuity among "call center Romeos" is a great concern, Dr. Suniti Solomon, who detected the first HIV case in India in 1986, told an international medical conference Saturday. The United Nations, however, still estimates there are some 2.5 million Indians living with HIV and AIDS now.

"India has reached a plateau of the infections," Solomon told the International Congress on Infectious Diseases, which ends Sunday. Her concern now is the call centers, where many of the young staff work at night to correspond with the daytime working hours of their American and European clients. "They have all the money. They huddle together in the night.They are young, they are sexually active, so naturally they start," Solomon, who runs an AIDS center in the southern city of Chennai, told The Associated Press in a separate interview. She said at least three or four call center workers visit her clinic every week to get tested for HIV because they are worried after having unprotected sex.

It is estimated that India's call centers employ some 1.3 million people, mostly youths fresh out of school and colleges, earning a starting salary of 25,000 rupees (US$600) a month, more than a government doctor's paycheck. "You will see call center Romeos are a major high risk for HIV," Solomon said.

Chandigarh:Last weak Nelson Mandelas charitable organizations launched a global text message fundraising campaign to mark his 90th birthday. The former South African presidents HIV and AIDS charity, 46664 , has set up a premium SMS service in more than 20 countries, allowing people to text happy birthday messages to Mandela. Each sender receives a thank you text in return and a unique PIN, giving them access to thanks by a specially lunched fundraising campaign.

According to the Paper of the Institute of Audiovisual & Telecoms in Europe, " Mobile 2008: Market and Trends" published for the Mobile World Congress 2008, Barcelona: Half of the world population owns a mobile phone. Report says there were 3.18 billion mobile subscribers worldwide at the end of 2007. In 2006 and 2007, developing countries accounted for 90% of the new subscriptions worldwide. Although 70% of mobile subscribers live in developing countries where the mean penetration rate of mobile telephony rose from 13.8% in 2003 to 41.6% in 2007, Its impact on the economic and social structure is tremendous, especially in developing countries where it reduces information disparities between towns and rural areas, and improves interconnection among the people.   Surprisingly HIV and AIDS programmes have failed to make use of it. Now however, a Dutch NGO wants to have this changed.

Despite prevention campaigns, too many young people still die of AIDS every year, putting the economy and the social stability of certain developing countries at risk. Young people being quicker to adopt new technologies are naturally targeted in priority by mobile phone operators. Now a Non-Profit organization located in Amsterdam, Netherlands has embarked on a project to link technology and HIV and AIDS to improve HIV/AIDS education, especially in sub-Saharan countries.

Hyderabad: There has been a steep rise in the number of HIV/AIDS cases in one of India's holiest Hindu pilgrimage sites, the Tirupati-Tirumala hills.

Andhra Pradesh AIDS Control Society has found out that over 200 commercial sex workers operate in the area.

"We have come across this information through unofficial sources that there is commercial sex activity even in Tirumala. There are about 200-300 sex workers there," Project Director, AP AIDS Control Society, K Chandravadan said.

The discovery reveals that sex workers clandestinely operate in about 15 secluded spots in the hills.