HIV Testing Blog

Any development that accounts for more deaths of people who would otherwise be alive at the end of 2009 as they were at the start of the year should by all accounts be the overwhelming choice for the year’s top news story.
Forget about transitory political issues (though those issues impact on Swaziland’s ability to cope with the AIDS crisis), the parade of personalities (mostly the notorious individuals who garner attention through scandal or venality) and the trumpeting of programmes devoted to this and that, even the dire economic news of 2009 has had far less life and death impact on Swazis as HIV and AIDS.
How many people died of AIDS in Swaziland this year?  No one knows.  The taboo persists about the disease.  Despite the national emergency, essential data does not exist.
Testing is still voluntary, though some dissenting voices were raised against this long-standing policy which remains sound human rights policy (privacy as manifested in the desire to be ignorant of one’s medical condition is a human right) if disastrous public health policy.
The way things have worked has been called into question this year.  In South Africa, the government of Jacob Zuma reversed the Mbeki-era approach toward AIDS.
In Swaziland the biggest AIDS-related development of 2009 was the meteoric interest in male circumcision.
Critics called the upswing in the numbers of young men undergoing the procedure as safe sex avoidance, but medical practitioners who did the procedures insisted that all patients were adequately counseled that MC was one part of the HIV-avoidance package, and not in itself a 100% avoidance tool.
This was the year that the first clinic devoted to men was opened in Swaziland, the Letsemba Letfu Clinic in Matsapha.
Even before the clinic was officially opened, 1 000 young men had visited to undergo the procedure.  Each day 35 patients are circumcised by appointment, with ‘walk in’ patients handled as well.
There is no charge for the procedure.  Importantly, 92% of patients who underwent MC also took an HIV test.
Global Warming was 2009’s top environmental issue, climaxed by this month’s Copenhagen Summit, and the topic even had ramifications for HIV and AIDS.
Researchers calculated that global warming would threaten crop production in areas where there were a large number of people living with HIV and AIDS; generally poorer countries whose HIV-positive population segments would have their ARV treatments compromised if they failed to obtain enough food for proper nutrition.
Tuberculosis received the attention of an emergency regional summit in October here in Swaziland because of TB’s link to HIV and AIDS – the disease is the primary opportunistic disease affecting people living with HIV and AIDS, both here and throughout Southern Africa.
So serious has the growth of tuberculosis in Swaziland, a disease once close to being vanquished in our country until the advent of AIDS, that health officials are now calling TB and AIDS ‘a dual epidemic.’
“When you look at the history of TB in Southern Africa you see that it was considered a very serious disease in the 1950s but seemed to be under control by the 1980s.  But with the arrival of HIV and AIDS, TB rates have really gone out of control,” said Dr. Alan Whiteside, Executive Director of HEARD at the University of KwaZulu Natal told AIDS LIFELINE.
Médecins San Frontiéres Head of Mission in Swaziland Aymeric Peguillan told conference delegates, “The Kingdom of Swaziland is in the midst of an HIV/TB epidemic.  The management of the co-epidemic represents the country’s most serious health-related challenge.”
2009 was a typical year in that once again individuals announced they had discovered the AIDS ‘cure.’  And also as usual, they were not qualified researchers and sought not to share with humanity but to sell to desperate people living with AIDS their potions.
NERCHA and the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare more than once had to remind the public that, sadly, there is no AIDS cure.
However, progress was made in 2009 toward an AIDS vaccine, the Holy Grail of research into the prevention of HIV infections.  Trials in Thailand proved promising.
Much work has to be done before the vaccine is available, but for the first time such words as ‘never’ and ‘impossible’ have been dropped from medical discussion on the subject of a possible AIDS vaccine.
For Swaziland, such an AIDS preventative would be a life saver, because 2009 repeated the history of all previous years of the AIDS epidemic in one important respect: no measurable change was found in people’s sexual behaviour modification. AIDS remained a preventable disease in 2009.  That did not change.  Nor in any appreciable way did people’s sex lives change according to various surveys.
Prevention remains a person’s the best hope to avoid AIDS.  However, all efforts to inspire people on a large scale to look after themselves again fell short in 2009.
But the year was not without its accomplishments, from the stream of young men seeking male circumcision to wider debate of sexual matters once considered taboo – even though the greatest taboo unfortunately remains, the reluctance of most people to recognise the reality of HIV in themselves and their loved ones.

For the complete article, please refer to The Swazi Observer.

Minister of Health, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy signed an agreement with the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) that supports a program in various areas. The program includes a steady supply of aniretroviral medication, CD4 testing, diagnosis and monitoring and nutritional supplements among other initiatives.

Alfredo Idiarte of CHAI said his organization is committed to the program and will work towards making it more comprehensive. He also said that CHAI is looking at providing deoxyribonucleic acid Polymerase chain reaction (DNA PCR) tests for infant diagnosis. The DNA PCR test looks for direct (DNA) evidence of the virus rather than the antibodies. Currently the tests do not detect evidence of the virus in children younger than 18 months. Early detection could drastically improve treatment options.

*For the original article please refer to http://hivtestingblog.com/original-articles/.

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). HIV can be transmitted through the exchanging of bodily fluids including blood, semen, vaginal discharge, and breast milk. Means of transmission include sexual contact with an infected person, sharing of needles or syringes with an infected person, or through blood transfusions with infected blood. Low quantities of HIV has been found in the saliva and tears of some AIDS patients; however, contact with saliva or tears has never resulted in an HIV transmission.

Healthcare workers are often exposed to the virus at work; however, it is unlikely that they will contract the virus from a patient. Since December 2001, there have been only 57 documented reports of patient-to-worker HIV transmission, mainly due to precautionary guidelines that healthcare workers follow. The main risk of transmission for healthcare workers  is through accidental needle sticks or other injury with a contaminated instrument. However, even here the risk is small. “Researchers estimate that only about 0.0-1% or healthcare workers” contract HIV from an accidental needle stick.

This low statistic can be attributed to post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), which can be taken immediately after exposure to reduce the risk of transmission. PEP uses antiretroviral therapy (ART) to prevent transmission, but often comes with serious side effects including dizziness, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and more. Current antiretroviral drugs cannot cure HIV infection, nor reduce the risk of transmitting it to someone else, but they can suppress the virus to undetectable levels in some cases. It has been estimated that PEP reduces the infection rate among healthcare workers by 79%.

Post-exposure Prophylaxis should begin immediately after the exposure, seeing as how PEP is most effective when it is initiated within two t0 four hours of exposure. The specific dosage of medication depends on a couple factors including the patient’s overall health, the severity of exposure, the availability of antiretrovirals, and if the patient has any known or possible cross-resistance to any drugs. Treatment normally lasts no less than two weeks and no longer than four. Studies show that almost a quarter of those receiving PEP stop taking the medications early because of side effects. As with all forms of treatment, it is less effective if it ends early.

HIV tests should be performed after any risky sexual behavior, even if PEP was used. Immediately after HIV enters the body antibodies are produced to fight off the infection. While these antibodies cannot completely eliminate the virus, we can use their presence to see if HIV is in the blood. Most people develop detectable antibodies within two to eight weeks; however, it may take longer in some people. Most often, the enzyme immunoassay (EIA) test is used to detect HIV antibodies. If a positive result is returned it is confirmed with a follow-up test before making a diagnosis. Typically the Western blot test is used to confirm a positive HIV result. Other testing options include DNA or RNA tests, which instead of looking for antibodies actually look for genetic material of HIV. These tests can be used for early detection of HIV.

With the combination of healthcare precautions and treatment options such as PEP, we have the ability to decrease the number of patient to worker HIV transmissions drastically.

*For the complete article please refer to http://hivtestingblog.com/original-articles/

A Cincinnati man, who is thought to be homeless, has been charged with assaulting Cincinnati Police Officers. His weapon of choice… spit. 48-year-old Ronald Crawford was arrested during a fight on East McMillan Street, where he spit at officers, telling them he “had AIDS”.

While the officers believe that Crawford is HIV-positive, they aren’t at any major risk, seeing as how studies have shown that HIV/AIDS is not carried in saliva. Crawford is being charged with two counts of harassment with a bodily substance — a felony.

*To view this article in it’s entirety, please visit http://hivtestingblog.com/original-articles/

MAJOR RECOMMENDATIONS

Responsibilities of Child Healthcare Providers

As part of the initial newborn evaluation, the pediatric clinician should determine whether human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing of the mother has been completed properly and should follow up on any outstanding laboratory values.

Pediatric clinicians should obtain testing for HIV beyond the neonatal period if the child presents with signs and symptoms of HIV disease. Testing should be performed in children who have not yet been tested when risk factors for HIV infection exist in the child or one of his/her parents.

Laboratory Tests for HIV in Newborns, Children, and Adolescents

Because positive antibody results alone do not establish infection in children younger than 18 months of age, assays to detect virus (HIV deoxyribonucleic acid [DNA] polymerase chain reaction [PCR] or viral culture) should be used for diagnosis (see Figure 1 in the original guideline document).

In children older than 18 months of age, HIV infection may be diagnosed on the basis of a positive HIV antibody test (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay [ELISA]) and a confirmatory test, such as Western blot.

Because of the time period between infection and the development of detectable antibodies, children/adolescents exposed via sexual activity, sexual abuse/assault, or infected blood who have an initial negative test result should be retested at 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months after exposure.

Because a child with end-stage HIV disease may become HIV-antibody seronegative as a result of severe humoral immunodeficiency, children who are clinically suspected to be HIV-infected yet test HIV antibody negative should be tested by DNA PCR (or HIV culture).

Children older than 18 months of age with an indeterminate Western blot result should be retested as soon as possible. If the Western blot result remains indeterminate, the patient should be tested for HIV-2 or specific viral tests (e.g., DNA PCR) for HIV-1 should be performed.

Rapid testing and expedited preliminary test results prior to Western blot confirmation should generally be used only when immediate information is needed to determine the need for post-exposure prophylaxis in the labor/delivery, newborn, or other acute exposure settings, or when the person who is being tested is unlikely to return for a follow-up visit.

When preliminary diagnostic tests are used for expedited HIV testing, a preliminary positive test result must be confirmed with a Western blot as soon as possible.

Testing for HIV Antibody

See the original guideline document for discussions of screening tests, confirmatory testing of positive results, and rapid test assays.

Testing for HIV or Viral Components

Clinicians should test children younger than 18 months of age who are born to an HIV-infected mother for HIV using one of the following methods:

* HIV DNA PCR (preferred method)

* HIV culture (acceptable method)

Because infection can only be confirmed with two positive test results performed on samples collected at different times, a repeat sample should be obtained promptly for any child with a single positive test result.

In an infant younger than 18 months of age, HIV can be reasonably excluded with two negative HIV viral tests, one at 1 month of age or older, and the other at age 4 months or older.

Ideally, a DNA PCR should be obtained for HIV-exposed infants at each of the following time points:

* at birth

* at 2 weeks of age

* at 4 to 6 weeks of age

* at 6 to 12 weeks of age

* at 4 to 6 months of age

See the original guideline for discussions of HIV DNA PCR, HIV culture, plasma HIV RNA, and HIV antigen detection.

HIV Counseling and Testing

In New York State, written informed consent from the child’s biological parent or legal guardian must be obtained before HIV testing can be performed in children except in certain specific circumstances, such as expedited testing, newborn screening, and follow-up PCR testing, and when testing is urgently necessary to provide medical care for a life-threatening condition.

When HIV testing of a child is performed, the parents should be considered for testing as well.

If a child is found to be perinatally HIV infected, his/her siblings also should be tested.

If HIV infection is newly diagnosed in a woman, all of her children should be strongly considered for testing, even if they are asymptomatic.

Pre-Test Counseling

The clinician should counsel the child’s parent or guardian or the child/adolescent with capacity to consent prior to HIV testing (see Table 2 in the original guideline document).

In New York State, a minor’s right to consent for or refuse HIV testing is based on his/her capacity to understand, without regard to chronological age, what an HIV antibody test actually tests for, the implications/consequences of being HIV infected, and why he/she is at risk for HIV.

The clinician should arrange for follow-up visits at the time of testing and should note in the patient’s medical record that counseling was provided and written consent was obtained when required.

When rapid testing is obtained and will yield a preliminary result during the visit, the clinician should first ensure that the patient/parent is emotionally able to receive a positive result and that mental health services are available for patients receiving a positive result.

Obtaining Consent

See the original guideline document for a discussion New York State laws on obtaining consent for HIV testing in children and adolescents for HIV testing.

Post-test Counseling

Counseling after a Patient Receives a Positive Test Result

Positive HIV test results should be presented in person to the appropriate individual (patient, parent, or guardian). A clinician should not communicate results to a patient or family member by telephone or mail.

Clinicians must respect an adolescent’s right to confidentiality concerning HIV status.

The clinician should explain the test results and should provide general information about available treatment.

The clinician should discuss the implications of the HIV Reporting/Partner Notification law (refer to the section “HIV Reporting and Partner Notification” below).

The clinician should provide or arrange for necessary referrals for treatment and supportive services.

The clinician should discuss methods of risk reduction and advise the family to inform medical personnel of the child’s HIV status during any medical care visit.

Counseling After the Patient Receives a Negative Test Result

When telling a patient that his/her test result is negative, the clinician should educate the patient on how to reduce the risk of transmission in the future.

HIV Reporting and Partner Notification

Since June 2000, New York State has required HIV reporting and partner notification for all confirmed positive HIV tests (unless testing occurred at an anonymous site) and HIV-related tests.

During pre-test counseling, parents/children should be informed that if their HIV test result is positive, their names will be reported to the New York State Department of Health.

Parents/children should be informed during pre-test counseling that if they provide the names of sexual or needle-sharing partners, the provider is required to report these names to the State Health Department. They should also be informed that if the test results are positive, their partners will be notified that they have been exposed to HIV.

All sexually active HIV-infected adolescents should be informed about the importance and benefits of notifying partners of their possible exposure to HIV.

Adolescents who are undergoing HIV testing should be questioned regarding the potential for domestic violence if their partners were notified. If domestic violence is a concern, partner notification should be deferred until the risk of harm to the patient (or one close to the patient, e.g., child) is eliminated.

HIV Testing of Older Children and Adolescents With the Capacity to Consent

Clinicians should be knowledgeable about New York State laws pertaining to adolescent consent and confidentiality and should educate their patients about these laws (see the National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) summary of the New State Department of Health guideline Identification and Ambulatory Care of HIV-exposed and -infected Adolescents).

In New York State, older children and adolescents who are judged capable of understanding the informed consent process may give written informed consent for HIV testing.

Parents cannot be informed of their child’s HIV test results without the explicit consent of the child or adolescent who is deemed capable of providing consent.

Ideally, HIV testing of older children and adolescents should occur in a comprehensive care setting that provides social support, ancillary services, and ongoing health care.

HIV Testing in Children in Foster Care

Within 5 days of entering the foster care system, all children must be assessed for capacity to consent for HIV testing. If a child is determined not to have capacity to consent, an HIV risk assessment must also be completed within the first 5 days of entering foster care. Children already in foster care must be assessed for HIV risk factors at least 60 days prior to their next scheduled periodic medical examination. If it is determined that a child may have the capacity to consent, an assessment of capacity to consent must be made and documented by authorized foster care agency staff within 30 days of the child’s entry into foster care. An HIV risk assessment must also be completed within this timeframe.

If one or more risk factors are present, a child in foster care should be offered HIV testing, or if the child lacks capacity to consent, he/she should be tested for HIV infection.

Adolescents and older children in foster care with the capacity to consent for HIV testing have the right to either consent for their own test or refuse testing.

For the commplete article, please refer to http://www.guidelines.gov/summary/summary.aspx?doc_id=6834

French researchers have identified a new human immunodeficiency virus, the first derived from gorillas, a report said Monday.

The three previous HIV variants came from chimpanzees. The new findings indicate that gorillas, in addition to chimpanzees, are likely sources of HIV, the researchers concluded in a report published in the weekly Nature Medicine journal.

The new virus, called RBF 168, was detected in a 62-year-old woman who moved to Paris, France, from the western Africa nation of Cameroon, the report says. She tested positive for HIV in 2004, and researchers led by Jean-Christophe Plantier identified the virus as being closely related to a recently discovered simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV).

The new gorilla virus “has many of the biological properties necessary for human infection,” the report says.

“The human case described here does not seem to be an isolated incident, as before coming to Paris the subject had lived in the semiurban area of Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, and reported no contact with apes or bush meat,” the researchers said.

That would indicate that the woman contracted the virus from another human.

The significance of the latest findings is difficult to determine without more information, said Robert C. Gallo, who co-discovered HIV in 1984.

“It’s yet to be known,” Gallo said. “It could be zero. … Let’s see a more full report on this individual and let’s see wider testing.”

Even if the new variant proves lethal, it’s not likely to increase AIDS infections, said Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. There are so many HIV variations, he said, that one more is not likely to make a difference.

The new virus is difficult to detect by conventional tests because it is not closely related to the other three HIV variants.

“This demonstrates that HIV evolution is an ongoing process,” co-researcher David Robertson of the University of Manchester said in a release. “The virus can jump from species to species, from primate to primate, and that includes us; pathogens have been with us for millions of years and routinely switch host species.”

HIV can lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, which attacks the body’s immune system, giving rise to lethal infections. Patients diagnosed with HIV can take medications to delay or stop HIV from developing into AIDS. There are 33 million confirmed cases of AIDS worldwide.

The unnamed woman has no signs of AIDS and remains untreated, Nature Medicine said.

The most likely explanation for the emergence of the new virus is gorilla-to-human transmission, though researchers say they cannot rule out the possibility that the chimpanzee SIV gave rise to the new strain “either indirectly by transmission to gorillas and then to humans or directly by transmission to humans and also to gorillas.”

Researchers said they don’t know how widespread the virus is among humans.

“The human prevalence of this new lineage remains to be determined,” the report says, adding that “it could be circulating unnoticed in Cameroon or elsewhere.”

Western Central Africa bears close watching, the researchers suggest.

“In conclusion, our findings indicate that gorillas, in addition to chimpanzees, are likely sources of HIV-1,” the report states. “The discovery of this novel HIV-1 lineage highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence of new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa, the origin of all existing HIV-1 groups.”

Co-researcher Robertson noted that the new virus may not be restricted to Africa.

“It also highlights how human mobility can rapidly transfer a virus from one geographical location to another as has been dramatically evident with the recent emergence of swine flu,” he said.

For the complete article, please refer to www.cnn.com

A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been discovered in a woman from the African nation of Cameroon.
It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in Monday’s edition of the journal Nature Medicine.
The finding “highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence for new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa,” said the researchers, led by Jean-Christophe Plantier of the University of Rouen, France.
The three previously known HIV strains are related to the simian virus that occurs in chimpanzees.
The most likely explanation for the new find is gorilla-to-human transmission, Plantier’s team said. But they added they cannot rule out the possibility that the new strain started in chimpanzees and moved into gorillas and then humans, or moved directly from chimpanzees to both gorillas and humans.
The 62-year-old patient tested positive for HIV in 2004, shortly after moving to Paris from Cameroon, according to the researchers. She had lived near Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, but said she had no contact with apes or bush meat, a name often given to meat from wild animals in tropical countries.
The woman currently shows no signs of AIDS and remains untreated, though she still carries the virus, the researchers said.
How widespread this strain is remains to be determined. Researchers said it could be circulating unnoticed in Cameroon or elsewhere. The virus’ rapid replication indicates that it is adapted to human cells, the researchers reported.
Their research was supported by the French Health Watch Institute, the French National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis and Rouen University Hospital.
A separate paper, also in Nature Medicine, reports that people with genital herpes remain at increased risk of HIV infection even after the herpes sores have healed and the skin appears normal.
Researchers led by Drs. Lawrence Corey and Jia Zhu of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that long after the areas where the herpes sores existed seem to be clear, they still have immune-cell activity that can encourage HIV infection.
Herpes is marked by recurring outbreaks and has been associated with higher rates of infection with HIV. It had been thought that the breaks in the skin were the reason for higher HIV rates, but a study last year found that treatment of herpes with drugs did not reduce the HIV risk.
The researchers tested the skin of herpes patients for several weeks after their sores had healed and found that, compared with other genital skin, from twice to 37 times more immune cells remained at the locations where the sores had been.
HIV targets immune cells and in laboratory tests the virus reproduced three to five times faster in tissue from the healed sites as in tissue from other areas.
“Understanding that even treated (herpes) infections provide a cellular environment conducive to HIV infection suggests new directions for HIV prevention research,” commented Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
That study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Tietze Foundation.

For the complete article, please refer to http://news.aol.com/health/article/new-hiv-strain-discovered-in-cameroon/599611

Westchester County residents can now access local HIV/AIDS resources online thanks to the launch of a new Facebook page, Project WAVE Westchester (PWW).

PWW is a partnership of public and private agencies that provide HIV/AIDS-related services including prevention, testing, counseling, and treatment, with a special focus on communities most affected by the disease. An offshoot of the Project WAVE national effort, PWW is a collaboration of the state Department of Health, the county health department, community groups, area health centers, and hospitals.

Outside of New York City, Westchester County has the state’s second-highest AIDS case rate and third-highest HIV infection rate. The county is also home to the largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS, excluding the city.

PWW’s Facebook page contains information about upcoming HIV testing events as well as prevention videos and public service announcements that focus on the importance of testing. To visit the page, go to www.facebook.com and register for a free account. Members then enter “Project Wave” into the search function to access PWW.

“I think it’s great that Project WAVE is using this popular Web site to provide valuable information about HIV/AIDS services to Westchester residents,” said Dr. Joshua Lipsman, the county’s health commissioner. “Many people spend a lot of time on these social networking Web sites, and this is another way for the public health community to reach out to residents and help them get the services, support, and resources they need. It also enables residents to find others who share their interests and concerns.”

For the complete article please refer to http://www.cdcnpin.org/news/NewsList.asp

Making existing interventions more effective is the next step in addressing the AIDS pandemic, according to noted physician, author, and teacher Paul Farmer.

“I’m surprised at the ineffectiveness of social projects,” he told an audience of more than 400 Thursday at the Clinton Presidential Center. “They are not focused on the outcome.”

Farmer, the incoming chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard University, said the world has progressed beyond a “low point” of the AIDS epidemic in 2002 when average drug costs were more than $10,000 per patient annually. “This was the time when people were saying not a lot could be done,” Farmer said.

Since then, the cost of AIDS drugs has declined dramatically. In addition, inroads have been made in Haiti, where the proportion of the population infected with HIV has dropped from 5 percent to 2 percent.

Farmer also called for renewed efforts to address other health crises around the world, singling out tuberculosis and infant mortality. “These are overwhelming problems, but they’re problems that have solutions as well,” Farmer said.

Farmer, the subject of the biography “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” also described his time practicing medicine in Haiti and Rwanda.

“He defined service and outcomes the way I’ve tried to for years,” said Skip Rutherford, dean of the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas. “To have someone like Paul Farmer is a thrill to everyone.”

Female condoms have played a large role in women protecting themselves against HIV for many years, and at the 12th National AIDS Conference the new FC2 Female Condom was promoted as a key role in Thailand’s HIV prevention strategy.

The FC Female Condom has been on the market since 1988; however, users have voiced their complaints about the product including it’s difficulty to use, noise, and it being uncomfortable. In response to these complaints manufacturers developed the FC2 Female Condom, which is made of nitrile rubber creating a more comfortable use.

Thailand has had a longstanding battle with HIV, and although they studied the use of female condoms for use in their HIV/AIDS plan in 1990 the studies were halted last year with no results. Production of female condoms has increased by as much as 14 million in the past four years and are currently distributed in 90 million countries, but due to importation costs the FC2 has not been made accessible in Thailand.

According to Tisssadee Sawangying, a health coordinator who took part in the National AIDS Conference, “the government should work hard to increase alternative options for women to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS infection.” Having an option such as the FC2 available for women in Thailand and all over the world would greatly increase their options when it comes to protecting themselves.

*For the complete article, please visit http://hivtestingblog.com/original-articles

By 2030, an estimated 50 million people with HIV/AIDS will need newer treatments to keep them alive, according an all-party parliamentary report due out this week. To prevent millions of AIDS deaths in poor countries, pharmaceutical firms holding patents on HIV/AIDS drugs should release these drugs’ patent rights, Mike Foster, Britain’s international development minister, is expected to say.

Under the proposal, drug companies could put their HIV/AIDS drugs into a “patent pool,” and generic-drug makers would be permitted to make cheaper copies and combination pills for patients in poor nations. Unitaid, an international drug-buying entity set by up several donor countries including the United Kingdom, is trying to create the pool. However, drug firms regard patents as the means of recouping the massive costs of drug research and development.

Three million HIV/AIDS patients in poor countries now receive subsidized treatment, but that is just one-third of those in need. Drug resistance is a growing threat in both the developing and developed nations, and the newer treatments are expensive. Cheap, generic copies of these newer drugs cannot easily be made by generic-drug makers in places such as India and China, which now have tighter intellectual property-rights rules.

“The pharmaceutical industry has an opportunity to act now to help prevent future human catastrophe,” said Foster. “It is time for them to state their clear commitments to make HIV medicines affordable to those who need them most.”

“We are sitting on a treatment time bomb,” said Member of Parliament David Barrow, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on AIDS. “We cannot sleepwalk into a situation where we can only afford to treat a tiny proportion of those infected.”

For the complete article, please refer to http://www.aegis.com/todaysnews/du.asp

On Wednesday, the Palm Beach County Health Care District board unanimously approved a planned $400,000 cut to the Comprehensive AIDS Program’s case management services despite testimony from 10 patients and providers that the services are vital.

Case management helps patients to stay on complex drug regimens, navigate insurance plans, and keep important appointments, advocates told the board. “If a person stops taking their medication, not only does their own health suffer, they become more infectious to other people,” said Yolette Bonnet, CEO of the AIDS program.

Anita Byrd of West Palm Beach said: “I was addicted to street drugs, and I have been clean now for 11 years because of case management. They found me in places where people never want to come.”

The HIV/AIDS grant was among a raft of cuts the board made in its tentative 2010 spending plan. Out of a $250 million budget, the special taxing district must slash $31 million due to increased demands on its insurance programs, which will serve nearly 40,000 people this year. School nurses’ hours were cut from 40 hours a week to 33 to save $3 million.

Jonathan Satter, the board’s chair, said he felt “darned if he did, darned if he didn’t” cut services or raise taxes to preserve them. “We cannot be the sole source for every program,” he said, noting he hoped the AIDS program was seeking foundation money.

For the complete article, and for more information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, please refer to http://www.cdcnpin.org/

Merck announced on Thursday that the FDA has approved expanded use of its HIV drug, Isentress, Reuters. Isentress has been FDA-approved since 2007, but was limited “to use in patients who had drug-resistant strains or were failing on other therapies, also in combination with other HIV drugs. Now it can be used in all adult patients,” the AP/CNBC.com reports. According to AP/CNBC.com, “Isentress is an integrase inhibitor, meaning it works by blocking the enzyme integrase, one of three types of enzymes the AIDS virus uses to reproduce and infect cells”

For the full article, please refer to http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/157219.php

1) Take Responsibility For Your Health and Your Life.
2) Get A Support Network To Be With You In Good and Bad Times.
3) Find A Health Provider With Whom You Can Build A Relationship.

4) Take HIV Medications When You Need Them.
5) Maintain Good Nutrition.
6) Get Up and Do Some Exercise.
7) Learn About Benefits and Services You Might Be Eligible For.

There are many benefits and services available to people living with HIV disease but you have to know about them and their requirements in order to get them. Benefits you might be eligible for include:

8 ) Get A Life Outside HIV.
9) Stop Stressing…So Much.
10) Ask For Help When You Need It .

Today the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced its latest prevention and treatment numbers, noting in particular that Global Fund-financed programs have put 2.3 million people on treatment for HIV/AIDS, 5.4 million people have been treated for tuberculosis, and 88 million insecticide-treated nets have been distributed to prevent malaria infection. In addition, more than 500,000 HIV-positive pregnant women have been treated to prevent their babies from being born with HIV.

These latest results strengthen evidence that investments during the past five years have resulted in the most significant progress ever achieved in the global fight against these three diseases. Recent evidence suggests that global mortality from tuberculosis is now declining, AIDS mortality among adults in several high-burden countries in Africa is declining, and malaria elimination efforts have made tremendous progress, with reductions in the number of cases and malaria-related child mortality falling between 50% and 80% in a growing number of countries.

Together, AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria kill about six million people per year. With grants worth $16 billion in 140 countries around the world, the Global Fund has become the world’s leading global public health financier.

For the full article, please refer to http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156875.php

In a study looking at social and sexual mixing between ethnic groups in men who have sex with men, researchers show that social barriers faced by black gay men may have a serious impact on their health and well-being.

In the US, there is a disproportionate burden of HIV infection in Black Americans, who accounted for nearly half of all HIV/AIDS cases diagnosed in 2006 – four times the national average.

A total of 1,142 gay men took part in computer-assisted interviews. They were asked about their own ethnicity, the race of their sexual partners in the last six months, their perception of how easy it is to meet sexual partners of different ethnicities, where they meet sexual partners, their view of HIV infection risk and the predominant race of their network of friends.

Black gay men are the least preferred of sexual partners by other races. Black men are perceived to be riskier to have sex with, which can lead to men of other races avoiding Black men as sexual partners. They are also perceived as less welcome in the common social venues of gay men in San Francisco. As a result, Black men are three times more likely to have sexual partners that are also Black, than would be expected by chance alone.

The authors conclude: “The racial disparity in HIV observed for more than a decade will not disappear until the challenges posed by a legacy of racism towards Blacks in the US are addressed.”

For the complete article, please refer to http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090629114536.htm

Babies who were born with HIV/AIDS in the 1980s have defied initial expectations. No one expected them to live long.

Since the mid-1990s in developed countries, antiretroviral drugs have largely prevented mothers from transmitting HIV/AIDS to their babies.

Nearly 30 young adults and teenagers who were born with HIV/AIDS meet every week at the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida. “We don’t want to talk about HIV every day,” said Eric Koumbou, 19. “If you talk about HIV and you don’t have it and I do, sometimes it makes me angry or makes me sad.”

For the complete article, please see http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/22/hiv.children.generation/index.html?eref=ib_topstories.

International migrant workers, foreign students and political refugees are often endangered by laws that discriminate against people with AIDS, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch reported last week.
The report describes how guest workers from poor countries like the Philippines and Sri Lanka working in wealthy ones like Saudi Arabia may be given mandatory H.I.V. testing — sometimes without their knowledge — and deported, often without being able to claim back wages and sometimes after imprisonment without treatment.
For the complete article, please see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/health/23glob.html?_r=1.

The Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, reacting to a case disclosed last week, says it’s increasing database controls and urging producers to not accept paper test results from performers.

In an effort to prevent the possible spread of HIV in the adult film industry, the San Fernando Valley-based health clinic that serves the porn industry said Monday it is stepping up controls in its online database and urging producers not to accept paper copies of test results.

For the complete article, please refer to http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-me-porn-hiv16-2009jun16,0,2659497.story.

The 2009 Global TB control report reveals that one out of four TB deaths is HIV-related, twice as many as previously recognized. In 2007, there were an estimated 1.37 million new cases of tuberculosis among HIV-infected people and 456 000 deaths.

“These findings point to an urgent need to find, prevent and treat tuberculosis in people living with HIV and to test for HIV in all patients with TB in order to provide prevention, treatment and care. Countries can only do that through stronger collaborative programmes and stronger health systems that address both diseases,” said Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO.

For the complete article, see http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2009/tuberculosis_report_20090324/en/index.html.