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Indonesia to track HIV patients with chips under skin?
JAKARTA: Lawmakers in Indonesias remote province of Papua have thrown their support behind a controversial bylaw requiring some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchips -part of extreme efforts to monitor the disease.
Health workers and rights activists sharply criticized the plan on Monday. But legislator John Manangsang said by implanting small computer chips beneath the skin of "sexually aggressive" patients, authorities would be in a better position to identify, track and punish those who deliberately infect others with up to six months in jail or a $5,000 fine.
The technical and practical details still need to be hammered out, he and others said, but the proposal has received full backing from the provincial parliament and, if it gets a majority vote as expected, will officially be declared a bylaw next month.
Times of India -
A Workshop on HIV/AIDS Behavioural research
A social & Behavioural research Workshop Focusing on HIV /AIDS
January 5 - 16, 2009
TATA INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
POST BOX No. 8313,
VN. PURAV MARG DEONAR,
MUMBAI 400088
This workshop is organized by Albert Einstein College of Medicine's AIDS INTERNATIONAL TRAINING & RESEARCH PROGRAM (AITRP); cosponsored by Einstein/MMC Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and TATA INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES (TISS)
Faculty
Laurie Bauman, PhD AEECOM
Shalini Bharat, PhD TISS
Rosy chhabra, PsyD AECOM
Anil Kumar, PhD TISS
Ruth Macklin, PhD AECOM
Shubhada Maitra, PhD TISS
Bruce Rapkin, PhD AEEOM
Ellen Silver, PhD AECOM
Asha Banu Soletti, PhD TISS
Ruth Stein, MD AECOM
Sonia Suchday, PhD AECOM
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Telling our secrets
Venkatesh Routh lives with his wife and two-year-old son in Mancherial, a small city in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Three nights a week he says goodbye to his wife, who is nine months pregnant, and goes to the railway station. But instead of getting on a train he walks to the end of the brightly lit platform, past the chai-wallah selling hot sweet tea, to the point where the floodlights go no further. Here he steps into a maze of dirt paths and thorny bushes. There are no women, and the men have all come for the same reason: to have sex with other men.
"I come here in secret," says Venkatesh, standing in the dark. A train clatters past, horn blaring. "I am a kothi [effeminate homosexual]. I didn't want to get married, but my family members pressured me. Every day for three years they kept asking, 'Why don't you marry?'"
"When I started coming here for sex I'd heard the word 'Aids', but I didn't know how you get it. I didn't know how to use a condom," he says. "Now I show other people how to use them properly."
As 29-year-old Venkatesh fills up the condom box bolted to a crumbling wall among the bushes, he is taking part in what looks to be one of the most promising HIV prevention efforts in the developing world in recent years. All over Andhra Pradesh, men who have sex with other men - who may or may not think of themselves as gay or bisexual and who are often married with families - are forming community groups and helping each other to solve their own problems. Venkatesh is one of them.
One in seven men who have sex with men in Andhra Pradesh is HIV positive according to the state government. They are almost 20 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the average Indian adult (the national adult prevalence rate is 0.36%). This is because unprotected anal sex with multiple partners carries a high risk of HIV, and because discrimination drives men who have sex with men underground.
Sylvia Rowley, for guardian.co.uk -
HIV/AIDS in India: Narrow Focus, Inflated Projections & Poverty
On August 5, 2008 a young "HIV-positive" couple in Mumbai - Babu Ishwar Thevar, 39, his wife Amothi, 33 - committed suicide after killing their three children, sons Venkatesh and Mani, ages 10 and 8, and daughter Mahalaxmi, 6. They had just discovered that their youngest child too "was infected by the deadly virus."
The stigma of AIDS has taken many lives long before the disease itself claimed them, but the extent of such suicides, and the reasons behind them, have rarely come to public knowledge. AIDS has a critical link to the immune system and the factors that influence it. Society's limited understanding of this disease is causing innocent people to pay a terrible price.
At a time when we do not have a cure for AIDS, we cannot assume to know its cause. Increasingly across the world, there are voices questioning the perpetuation of a "Frankenstein that has been blown out of all proportion." They question the narrow approach to a single disease, especially the huge financing for AIDS over all else in basic health care. Though welcome and long overdue, this debate must now move further. Our approach to this disease needs to change for the sake of families like that of Babu and Amothi Thevar.
Narrow Focus
In 1993, I was one of the first health correspondents in India to serve on the staff of a leading daily English language newspaper. I had just completed a journalist fellowship at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, and came back deeply influenced by teachers such as the late Dr. Jonathan Mann, a public health expert with renowned international experience. He believed that the discovery of a new disease like AIDS was an opportunity to scrutinize fundamental issues - such as the link between disease and poverty, the need to examine the workings of the entire health system, access to preventive health information and the means to support health in all its physical, mental and social dimensions.
Based in Mumbai, I witnessed the unfolding of the "HIV/AIDS epidemic" in what was dubbed the "AIDS capital of India" and extensively reported on it over the course of a decade. At that time, the medical community shunned treatment of this disease.
Rupa Chinai
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National shut down on World Aids Day?
South Africa will come to a standstill at noon next Monday if government, the unions, business and civil society pull off the first ever workplace stoppage specifically for World Aids Day.
Former president Nelson Mandela, president Kgalema Motlanthe, his deputy Baleka Mbete, health minister Barbara Hogan, Cosatu president Zwelinzima Vavi, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and UNAIDS head,Peter Piot, are among those supporting the campaign.
The planned shutdown for 15 minutes midday on December 1, has been negotiated through National Economic Development and Labour Council and is being driven by the South African National Aids Council, SANAC.
Vavi said: "We have never before called on workers or organised business for a stoppage (on HIV) or had unity of all as expressed through SANAC."
Claire Keeton, for The Times -
Message of awareness
Six thousand infections every day. That's one person every time you breathe. Approximately 3000 - 5000 people estimated to be living with HIV and AIDS in Sri Lanka, of which only mere 1000 infections have been reported. 25 million lives snatched away from our presence since 1981 to the largest pandemic ever recorded in history.
On December 1, the world commemorates AIDS day. Save Lanka Kids, a youth based organization under the Community Concern Society, responsible for R.E.A.C.H '08 the first ever national youth conference on HIV and AIDS, will be carrying out the I AM HIV POSITIVE campaign consisting of various sub- campaigns throughout this day to advocate for the 33.2 million people living with HIV and AIDS and in remembrance of the lives lost to AIDS all over the world, to empower and instill responsibility amongst people of our society, especially the youth.
Positive about Education is one of the eight sub-campaigns, which targets about 2000 students of 50 schools all over Colombo. The I am HIV Positive t- shirt campaign is mainly about spreading awareness and creating hype around the city by distributing t- shirts with "I AM HIV POSITIVE" on them to volunteers and people of various organizations sharing similar views as us as they carry on their day to day lives wearing the t-shirt. Churches will also venerate this day with their congregations during services taking place on November 31, the day before which is a Sunday, by praying for people living with HIV and AIDS, observing 2 minutes of silence, showing a video based on HIV and AIDS or simply by wearing red AIDS ribbons.
Cinema's too will honor the day and help us reach out to a vast range of natives, by screening a slide with a message on HIV and AIDS before, after or during the intermission of all their shows on that day. There are also SMS and Facebook campaigns "SPMS (Short Positive Messaging Service) and "Positive Cause" aimed at 2000-2500 young people. "The Red Page" is where magazines with December issues will do their part by publishing a page in tribute to this cause. A "WE ARE HIV POSITIVE" march on streets from Borella to Maradana will wrap up the entire campaign.
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‘Outdated law’ major obstacle in tackling AIDS
New Delhi (IANS): An Indian law that criminalises sex between men is a "major obstacle" in efforts to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country, according to UN AIDS executive director Peter Piot.
"Section 377 (of the Indian Penal Code - IPC) is part of the colonial heritage and should have been abolished a long time back. It is a violation of human rights and a major obstacle in fighting HIV/AIDS", Piot told IANS during his recent visit to India.
The Hindu -
People know best how to solve own issues: Ban Pang Lao community shifting away from donor funding
In the Ban Pang Lao community, a shift is taking place. This shift from reliance on donor funding and NGO support towards greater self-sufficiency is promoting greater sustainability and the power of a community, through dialogue, to determine their own short- and long-term solutions to problems within.
"Most of our problems are external, or coming from outside our community," says a soft-spoken A-jarn (teacher) named Sumalee Wanarat. "The only thing we can do is manage and strengthen ourselves from the inside. Sometimes we have to shift our way of thinking within the community," she continues with a gentle smile.
Sumalee has lived in Ban Pang Lao, located in Maekaotom sub-district, Muang district, about 25 kms from Chiang Rai city, northern Thailand, for over 14 years. She is a relative newcomer to this community of approximately 1,500 members originally from the Isaan province to the northeast. The community is about 30 years old and comprised of mostly farmers who migrated to this predominantly Lanna area during a massive drought in Isaan.
The exposure to this new area and the increase in movement of the community itself brought new issues in focus, including HIV and AIDS, drug use, and a "brain drain" of the community's youth seeking work in larger city centres like Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, and Bangkok. According to a 2006 report on the global AIDS epidemic by UNAIDS and WHO, the prevalence rate of HIV and AIDS was 1.4 per cent in 2005, down from nearly 18 per cent in 1991 in the northern Thailand area.
Sumalee brought a unique perspective as a relative outsider to the community. She was able to see the problems that the community was facing from a more objective standpoint and help the community to start a model of community-based care and prevention for people living with HIV and AIDS (PLHIV/PHA) in 1994, especially focusing on the youth of the community in her education and information provision efforts.
The KC Team -
Abused boy tests HIV positive in Goa
PANAJI: Thirteen-year-old Rahul (name changed) could well be one of hundreds of children in Goa, full of dreams and hopes. But, sexual abuse by a neighbour, and testing positive for HIV has clouded the lads plans for the future.
Rahul, a shy smile upon his young face, reveals that his abuser was a smooth-talking neighbour, who lured him with bike rides, money and sweets and then abused him. If Rahul complained, he would be threatened. The illicit liaison, that included brutality, lasted from May to early September this year, when Rahul fell ill and tests revealed he was HIV positive.
That was when Rahuls father lodged a complaint on October 31 with the women and child protection unit alleging that his minor son had been sexually abused by a neighbour.
The accused was arrested and tests at the Goa Medical College and Hospital for STD showed that the accused was HIV positive.
"We are really hurt. Who could have imagined that a known person would actually abuse our child and threaten him. My sons innocence has been ruined and his life destroyed," said the boys father, who had heard of HIV/AIDS but knew no details about the virus until his son tested positive for it.
"I had heard about HIV but never cared to know much as I never thought that someone in my family could be infected," the father said.
Preetu Nair, for TNN
© 2008 Wake Up Pune.
Articles are copyright of their respective authors.
'Paragrams' by WPSHOWER
