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According to a Reuters report, Mozambique's Catholic archbishop Francisco Chimoio has proclaimed that some condoms imported in Europe were deliberately exposed to HIV in order to kill Africans.

Given the history of colonialism between Africa and Europe, suspicion may be understandable, but the religious leader's assertion is patently absurd, as HIV is known to be unable to live outside the body long enough to survive a manufacturing and distribution process.

Condoms are not 100 percent effective, but when used properly they offer highly successful protection against HIV infection. But ideological warfare has deterred the effort to promote condom use in Africa. Some of this is external exposed: a key example would be programs supported by the U.S.-based PEPFAR program, which specifically denies funding to programs that acknowledge the value of the lives of sex-trade workers.

Other times, the problem is homegrown, such as the South African government, whose leaders—in the midst of one of the world's largest AIDS crises—have doubted the value of HIV treatments, in favour of treatment with garlic and beetroot.

Specifically in Mozambique, 16 percent of the population of 19 million are positive for HIV, with 500 new infections reported daily. There is little hope for them in terms of treatment, according to Chimoio. "I also know some companies who are manufacturing anti-retroviral drugs already infected with the virus, also in order to finish quickly the African people," he claimed.

More entries on: HIV/AIDS

August 21, 2007

Unfriendly Skies

Posted by shawnsyms at 11:51 AM ET | Comments (4)

According to The Southern African (a Toronto-based diasporic news source), aviation workers in Botswana are in an uproar about new regulations requiring regular screening for HIV—and the potential for dismissal of people who test positive.

The director of the nation's civil aviation authority, Olefile Moakofi, claimed "there are certain medical conditions that if people are diagnosed to have, then it may impair their judgement in the respective professions that they are rendering." No details were offered as how the presence of HIV would prevent a pilot or air-traffic controller from conducting his or her job. Young pilots are to be tested annually and older pilots more frequently. Authorities will also test blood pressure and for the presence of diabetes.

The international AIDS organization AVERT says that Botswana has the second highest rate of HIV prevalence in the world—but the country has also been a leader among African nations in terms of the fight to get antiretroviral treatment into the hands of those who need it.

The International Labour Office, a UN agency, says that airlines once provided leadership on issues of HIV in the workplace, but that policies such as the one announced in Botswana are wrong: "Testing for HIV at the workplace [...] should be voluntary and confidential, and never used to screen job applicants or employees. Moetapele Motale of the Botswana Air Traffic Controllers Association said "There's suddenly a growing feeling of uneasiness amongst controllers and pilots." Indeed.

More entries on: Africa | HIV/AIDS

July 24, 2007

When the chips are down

Posted by shawnsyms at 12:14 PM ET | Comments (0)

A "detection device is needed to monitor the movements and sexual activities of people with HIV/AIDS." So says a new regulation currently under debate in the Indonesian province of Papua, according to today's Jakarta Post. The device they are considering? An implanted microchip.

A member of the working group currently considering Article 35 of new healthcare policy says the rising rates of HIV infection justify the restrictive measure. Dr John Manansang stated, "Now nearly 24 percent of the Papuan population has been infected with HIV/AIDS. It's time to try a different policy." Manansang added that only those who engage in unprotected sex or the sharing of needles would be chipped and tracked.

The heads of the National AIDS Committee as well the Papua Health Office have both pointed out their organizations have not been consulted about the legislation, and questioned how it could possibly be carried out. The Health Office's Bagus Sukaswara argued "Who will be in charge of implementing the policy? I'm sure no doctors will be willing to do so. Giving out the identity of the patients ... would be a violation of their oaths as doctors."

According to another Post report earlier this month, condoms are very hard to access in the remote province, and half of the populace has never even heard of HIV. Perhaps education and condom distribution might be a better starting point than an ineffective and misguided gross human-rights violation.

More entries on: HIV/AIDS

June 28, 2007

You fiddle, they die

Posted by shawnsyms at 11:15 AM ET | Comments (0)

Ottawa pols care more about working on their seasonal tans than getting AIDS drugs to the global poor, according to the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. Jean Chretien's outgoing humanitarian gesture, the "Pledge to Africa" (now called the Access to Medicines Regime), has amounted to nothing. The law passed three years ago with the alleged aim of getting cheaper HIV drugs in the hands of those who need them in the developing world. Since then, not a single generically manufactured pill has left our borders under the auspices of the regime.

The problem? Red tape. Generic drugmakers are forced to make short-term applications to make finite amounts of a specific drug to a particular country and have to disclose all of these details to the pharma industry, giving it (and the U.S. government and other agencies hostile to generic drug manufacture) ample opportunity to enact punitive sanctions against the country in need. And if a poor nation is not a member of the World Trade Organization, it suffers second-class status and even more bureaucratic barriers, regardless of how many people are desperately ill.

The Legal Network wrote a brief that outlined precisely what needed to be changed to fix the problem, right down to the exact wording of the Regime, and submitted it to Parliament several months ago. What happened? Nothing. According to the network's Richard Elliott, "We gave Parliament a detailed brief on how to fix the Regime. But instead of passing what amount to straightforward amendments to streamline the law and make it useful, parliamentarians have left Ottawa early to hit the barbecue circuit."

Maybe while MPs are sitting by the pool, they could do some summer reading. 28, Canadian journalist Stephanie Nolen's poignant and powerful survey of the deadly devastation wrought by HIV in Africa, might be a good place to start.

More entries on: HIV/AIDS

May 29, 2007

HIV? Thanks, officer.

Posted by shawnsyms at 09:38 AM ET | Comments (5)

Police crackdowns on drug use lead to increases in HIV transmission. This assertion is supported by "Do Not Cross," a just-released report from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.

To avoid HIV, hepatitis, abcesses and other health problems, ideally an injection drug user should use a new, clean needle each time. But when people are afraid of being thrown in jail, they avoid carrying needles on their person, re-use them often, and hide them in dirty places—bushes, garbage cans—to avoid detection. They inject as quickly as possible to reduce the risk of getting caught in the act, often injuring themselves in the process. They can be forced to store their drugs in any available bodily orifice on approach of the cops, which is harmful and dangerous. In some cases, they may switch from smoking to injecting a drug like heroin, even though this is riskier, because it can done faster and requires less of the drug itself.

When people are displaced to random neighbourhoods as part of anti-drug legal strategies, they have less access to support services and clean needles, and they may introduce others to drug use and attendent harms who would not have otherwise been exposed.

And when drug users end up in jail, they suffer from a variety of HIV-related harm and risk, including "lack of access to clean syringes or sterilizing materials in prison, lack of access to information and education on HIV/AIDS, lack of reliable access to opioid substitution therapy, lack of access to condoms, failure to prevent sexual violence and coercion, and interruption of antiretroviral treatment." The last point is an important one: HIV treatment is a form of HIV prevention, as a person on anti-HIV meds is less likely to transmit the virus to someone else.

Not all drug users are affected equally by police crackdowns. As Do Not Cross author Joanne Csete notes, "Those who have the most marginal housing, the lowest income and the least developed social networks will be most at risk." Read the whole report here.

More entries on: HIV/AIDS | Harm reduction | Prisons

March 15, 2007

Drugs into bodies, money into pockets

Posted by shawnsyms at 03:06 PM ET | Comments (0)

When Big Pharma doesn't get its way, it takes its toys and goes home. When the "toys" in question are life-saving medications, the results can be grim. People with HIV in Thailand are finding this out first hand.

Most medications are protected by 20-year patents that allow a drugmaker the exclusive right to produce them and profit from them— but exceptions can be made for urgent medical situations in poor countries. A country can issue a "compulsory license" to allow for the generic manufacture of drugs its people urgently need but cannot afford.

That's what Thailand has done in the case of Kaletra, one of the new generation of HIV meds. Prior to that, the government in the developing nation had been trying without success to get Abbott Laboratories to lower its hefty annual $2,200-per-patient pricetag.

The Thai government's move was assailed by the Wall Street Journal, who called it a "seizure of foreign drug patents." Abbott responded by pulling its wares off Thai shelves. They have rescinded a request to register a new heat-resistant version of Kaletra in Thailand, along with several other Abbott products. This effectively prevents the government from allowing anyone to make a generic copy of the drug, because they will have no legal access to the original in order to test and assure they are equivalent.

Activists argue that this demonstrates putting profits over people's lives. The heat-resistant drug formulation was desperately needed in Thailand because there is no guarantee of refrigeration at all points in the drug's supply chain.

American law professor Brook K Baker, member of the advocacy group Health GAP, was particularly scathing. In a release, he described the withholding the registration for life-saving medicines "a new variant of pharmaceutical apartheid."

Baker assailed the notion the drug companies need to protect their patents because of R&D costs. He described Abbott as "a company which has been subsidized through NIH and university research for most of its discoveries, which gets huge taxes breaks for its research and development expenditures, and which earns monopoly profits on all its sales in rich country markets that collectively comprise 90% of global pharmaceutical sales."

The battling over profits in poor countries certainly appears greedy. Médecins sans Frontières also criticized the drug company, noting that in Thailand, newer "second-line" HIV drugs like Kaletra (which many patients need to turn to when older medicines no longer work for them), can cost up to 22 times more than first-line drugs, specifically because of patent protection.

In Thailand, where AIDS has become a leading cause of death, that's money most people just don't have.

More entries on: HIV/AIDS | Pharma | Poverty

March 07, 2007

Many faces of AIDS in Africa

Posted by shawnsyms at 11:40 AM ET | Comments (1)

Researcher Cory Alan Johnson

The history of AIDS in Africa is a story intertwined with the ongoing legacy of colonialism, poverty, racial discrimination and other systemic ills. Including homophobia, according to the International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC).

People often point to the African situation as "proof" that "AIDS isn't a gay disease," because on that continent—home to 25-million HIV-positive people and the disproportionate location of 60 percent of the world's HIV infections—the bulk of the impact is upon heterosexuals, and children.

But the reality is more complex. According to IGLHRC's just-released report "Off the Map":

Studies in Senegal, Ghana, and Kenya indicate HIV seroprevalence rates significantly higher among men who have sex with men than in the general population. While African lesbians may have lower HIV seroprevalence rates than heterosexual women, same-sex practicing African women have self-reported HIV seroprevalence rates substantially higher than one might expect. The vulnerability of same-sex practicing men and women is not due to any biological predisposition, but is the result of an interlocking set of human rights violations and social inequalities that heighten HIV risk. Anti-gay discrimination is fueling the African HIV/AIDS epidemic.

IGLHRC's Cory Alan Johnson wrote the report. He says that while part of the problem is homophobia within some African cultures and governments, another big issue is the agenda of international and local "faith-based" organizations, whose religious beliefs mandate ignoring same-sex practising African people. "Our inclusive efforts are oppressed and stigmatized by the majority of faith-based organizations," he notes.

The needs and experiences of same-sex people in Africa may be drastically different from the agenda for queer rights in the West—but they need our support urgently. Education is the first step.

More entries on: HIV/AIDS | LGBT

THIS MAGAZINE. BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS POLITICAL

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THIS MAGAZINE: BECAUSE EVERTHING IS POLITICAL

September 28, 2007

Deadly misperceptions

August 21, 2007

Unfriendly Skies

July 24, 2007

When the chips are down

June 28, 2007

You fiddle, they die

May 29, 2007

HIV? Thanks, officer.

March 15, 2007

Drugs into bodies, money into pockets

March 07, 2007

Many faces of AIDS in Africa