HIV Infection: November 2006 Archives

MANILA, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO)warned here on Thursday that the HIV/AIDS situation in Asia will further worsen unless political leaders meet their promises to step up efforts to stop the virus from spreading.

"The number of people living with HIV continues to grow," WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific Shigeru Omi said in a report issued by the international health body.

"High-risk behavior, such as injecting drug use, unprotected paid sex and unprotected sex between men, is especially evident in the HIV epidemics in some regions, including Asia," he added.

The World Health Organization warned Tuesday that HIV/AIDS was on the rise in Indonesia because of a lack of firm action on the part of the government.

WHO HIV consultant for Drug Injecting Users David Jakka said the government should prioritize treatment for injecting drug users, who comprise more than half of those infected with HIV.

"The government's action, despite its cautiousness, is still ineffective and imprecise," said Jakka, who attended a workshop at the Health Ministry commemorating World AIDS Day on Dec. 1.

Some 63,500 adults in Britain now have HIV - and a third of these are receiving no treatment, a report warned yesterday.

The Health Protection Agency report warned the infection is spreading fast, particularly among the gay community.

Additional threats come from infection amongst immigrants from Africa, the HPA report said.

The HPA report says there are 43,400 people alive diagnosed with HIV infection and another 20,100 who do not know they have it.

BEIJING (AFP) - China is experiencing a surge in the number of new HIV/AIDS infections as the virus spreads from high-risk groups to the general public.

There were 183,733 people confirmed with HIV/AIDS at the end of October, the health ministry said on its website, with the state-run press reporting the number was 27.5 percent higher than at the end of 2005.

The ministry did not provide comparative figures, but Xinhua news agency said there were 39,644 extra confirmed cases of HIV/AIDS in China in the first 10 months of the year, compared with a total of 144,089 at the end of 2005.

GENEVA - The global HIV epidemic is growing, leaving an estimated 39.5 million people worldwide infected with the deadly virus, the United Nations said Tuesday.

AIDS has claimed 2.9 million lives this year and another 4.3 million people became infected with HIV, according to the U.N.'s AIDS epidemic update report, published on Tuesday. Spread of the disease was most noticeable in East Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since the first case was reported in 1981, making it one of the most destructive illnesses in history.

GENEVA (AFP) - Sub-Saharan Africa is still bearing the brunt of the
AIDS epidemic, accounting for almost two-thirds of all HIV infections and 72 percent of global AIDS deaths, the UN agency leading the battle against the disease has said.

With 24.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS, sub-Saharan Africa has 63 percent of the adults and children living with the virus worldwide, UNAIDS said in its 2006 epidemic update.

A huge and disproportionate 59 percent of sub-Saharans Africans with HIV are women, the report added Tuesday.

THE HAGUE (AFP) - The number of people dying from AIDS each year in the Netherlands has fallen considerably since the introduction of combination therapies a decade ago, but the rate of new HIV infections continues to rise, a new report warned.

The number of people diagnosed with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 2006 was 950, up 329 from 1996, the HIV Monitoring foundation's annual report stated.

Homosexual sex was the leading cause of transmission, affecting 500 people in 2006. "The HIV epidemic is not under control in the male homosexual community in the Netherlands," the foundation warned. "As well as combination therapy, prevention is essential," it added.

An Albemarle County jury Thursday was divided over whether or not a mother withheld critical HIV medication from her teenage son. From inside the regional jail that mother speaks out with her side of the story.

Her 15-year-old son testified against her during a two day trial and she said she doesn’t know why. The trial ended in a hung jury and Thursday night, we spoke with the mom from inside the regional jail where she remains until a new trail date is set.

“I know I was giving my son his medicine, my son knows I was giving him his medicine and my kids know,” said the mother, who we are not identifying because of the sensitivity of this case and to shield her son’s identity.

ATHENS (AFP) - Greece's HIV rate leapt by more than 25 percent for the second year running in 2006 with 485 new cases, the centre of illness control and prevention (KEELPNO) announced.

The figures up to October 31 demonstrate a "noticeable rise in infections contracted through male homosexual relations," KEELPNO said in a statement. The statistics showed 391 men and 94 women diagnosed with the immune disease.

The authorities announced a "national action plan," after the rise of 2005, which mainly concentrates on awareness.

Greek and international experts have for years decried the lack of information getting through to the general public, particularly through schools where no sex education is taught.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. prisons should make condoms available to inmates and test for HIV as part of a broader effort to curb the spread of AIDS among blacks, hit disproportionately hard by the incurable disease, experts urged on Thursday.

The National Minority AIDS Council advocacy group, backed by U.S. black lawmakers and medical leaders, issued a series of recommendations aimed at U.S. policymakers to slow the epidemic among blacks, 10 times more likely than whites to have AIDS.

"In 2006, AIDS in America is a black disease," said Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles.

LONDON: Migrants to England, Wales and Northern Ireland constitute 70 per cent of people afflicted with tuberculosis, HIV and malaria, according to a report by the Health Protection Agency of the country.

In its first report on the health of migrants, the agency, however, said there is little evidence to suggest the general population is at an increased risk because of this. It may be a disproportionate burden, the agency said, but it is a small fraction of people not born in the U.K.

According to government data, as many as 1,500 migrants arrived in the country everyday in 2005.

The Czech Republic reported 899 HIV/AIDS cases in 2006, nearly twice as the number in 2000, as the young generation ignore the threat of the disease and more immigrants poured into the country, a latest document released by the national reference laboratory on AIDS on Wednesday.

About 501 HIV/AIDS cases were reported in 2000, but this year the number reached 899, among whom 764 people were infected by sex, according to the laboratory.

The data also showed that the capital of Prague is the most HIV/AIDS infected area in the whole country, where the infected number amounts to 453, half of the total number.

NEW HAVEN, Conn., Nov. 14 (UPI) -- U.S. medical scientists suggest patients who are HIV positive may be at an increased risk for developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The researchers from Yale University School of Medicine investigated the prevalence of COPD among 1,014 HIV-positive and 713 HIV-negative men enrolled in the Veterans Aging Cohort 5 Site Study.

Results showed the prevalence of COPD was 10 percent in HIV-positive and 9 percent in HIV-negative patients -- as reported by clinicians, and 15 percent and 12 percent, in that order, as indicated by patient self-reporting.

Houston, TX (AHN) - A recent study compiled by scientists at Baylor College of Medicine and University of Sheffield, U.K. revealed that consuming just two cups of green tea could block the advancement of HIV infection.

The study found that a substance in green tea, a major polyphenol called epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) has the ability to block the HIV virus from attacking the immune system.

"For the study the researchers used nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to see what EGCG does to prevent HIV infection from progressing," Dr. Christina Nance, a Baylor pediatrics instructor, said.

The study published in the online edition of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

source - AHN 

TAIPEI (Reuters) - A recent explosion of HIV-AIDS cases in Taiwan is coming from China and is being spread by drug users, prompting the island to step up its prevention efforts, medical experts said on Friday.

The HIV strain among Taiwan's intravenous drug users was the same as that circulating in western China, particularly in an area near the Golden Triangle, said Chen Yi-ming, a professor at the Institute of Public Health at Yangming University in Taipei.

HIV could be reaching Taiwan via drug traffickers and users who arrive on the island via southern China and Hong Kong, Chen said. He added the same virus strain had not turned up in other Asian countries.

EAST ASIA - Every 15 seconds, a young person contracts HIV in East Asia. This shocking statistic illustrates the rapidly growing number of young people infected with the virus.

In Malaysia alone, 35 per cent of reported HIV infections occur among those below 29 years old.

A total of 70,559 HIV infections, including 10,663 AIDS cases, were reported last year.

Over 6,000 young people aged between 15 and 24 years are newly infected throughout the world each year and young people now make up 50 per cent of the world’s new HIV infections.

Hundreds of patients treated by a health care worker diagnosed with HIV and hepatitis B are being recalled.

Letters have been sent to 1,185 people treated in the West Midlands and Southampton over the last six years.

A NHS spokeswoman said it was "highly unusual" to have a health worker contract both infections.

No patient who has had contact with the worker has been diagnosed with the infections but there is a "small risk" of transmission, the spokeswoman said.

Nearly all the patients contacted were treated in the West Midlands with 24 people in the Southampton area also being notified.