Global Challenges

WHO Director-General Chan Discusses Effect of HIV/AIDS on Women on International Women's Day

[Mar 08, 2007]

World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan in a statement released in recognition of International Women's Day, which is scheduled for Thursday, discussed the effects of HIV/AIDS on women in sub-Saharan Africa, Xinhua News Agency reports. Chan in the statement said that in 2006, 74% of HIV-positive people in sub-Saharan Africa were young women (Xinhua News Agency, 3/7). Chan also said that women serve as the primary caregivers for their families -- a situation that is "particularly striking" in sub-Saharan Africa because the "burden of care for people living with AIDS and affected children is provided in the home." According to Chan, poverty is the "single greatest impediment" to improving women's health, and she added that WHO is "investing in strengthening the health workforce" to provide services for HIV/AIDS and other illnesses in developing countries. "Women's health is threatened because of the poor conditions in which many women work, the risks we encounter in our reproductive roles, and the discrimination and poverty that women face," Chan said, adding that she "strongly believe[s] that women hold the key to improving health, as agents of change in the family and in the community and as leaders in all areas. Given the right support, women can be a positive force in ways that can lift households and entire communities out of poverty" (Chan statement, 3/7). In addition, UNAIDS, UNIFEM and Johnson & Johnson recently announced that they are providing five countries will grants to address the links between gender-based violence and the spread of HIV, PTI/The Hindu reports. The five countries are Botswana, the Dominican Republic, India, Nigeria and Vietnam. Organizations in the countries that benefit from the grants will be expected to foster strategies aimed at raising awareness, upholding laws, providing medical assistance, training providers and reducing stigma and discrimination to benefit women. "Violence makes women more susceptible to HIV infection and the fear of violent male reactions, physical and psychological, prevents many women from trying to find out more about it, discourages them from getting tested and stops them from getting treatment," UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot said (PTI/The Hindu, 3/4).

Brazilian President Urges Increased Condom Use To Prevent Spread of HIV Among Women

In related news, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday at an event held to mark International Women's Day said Brazilians should show more respect to women by using condoms during sex to prevent the spread of HIV, Reuters reports. The event -- which also aimed to encourage women to avoid HIV and other sexually transmitted infections -- marked the launch of a Ministry of Health program aimed at reducing HIV cases among women, which have increased 44% from 1995 to 2005. The program aims to distribute 14 million no-cost female condoms and to double HIV testing among women, according to Reuters. "AIDS is growing among heterosexual women," Lula da Silva said, adding, "We are going to fight hypocrisy. We need to give out condoms and teach people how to use them. People need to be taught how to have sex. That's the only way we will have an AIDS-free country" (Reuters, 3/7). In addition, Lula da Silva said that sex education can help fight the spread of HIV, according to the AP/International Herald Tribune (Astor, AP/International Herald Tribune, 3/7).

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Health Experts Need To Ensure That XDR-TB Does Not Spread Among People With Compromised Immune Systems, Including HIV-Positive People, WHO Official Says

[Mar 08, 2007]

Health experts need to contain the spread of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, TB that is resistant to the two most potent first-line treatments and some of the available second-line drugs, so that it does not spread among people with compromised immune systems, Mario Raviglione, head of the World Health Organization's Stop TB Department, said recently, Reuters reports. According to Raviglione, XDR-TB could trigger a wave of deaths among people living with HIV/AIDS, who are more vulnerable to the disease, given the difficulty in treating the strain. "Either we intervene rapidly to stop the spread of this strain or you could foresee in the future that this strain would replace the other one," Raviglione said, adding, "That would make it practically uncontrollable." He said enhanced diagnostic tools and better health care practices, such as isolation rooms for people with XDR-TB, are crucial to curbing the spread of the disease. He also said that because it might be five years before new drugs to successfully treat XDR-TB are available, countries need to improve their laboratory capacities to rapidly detect drug-resistant TB strains. "In South Africa they are capable, that is why they discovered it," Raviglione said, adding, "But we don't know what's happening in Mozambique and Lesotho, in Swaziland, in Zimbabwe." He added that the strain could be widespread in Southern Africa (MacInnis, Reuters, 3/6).

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Mexican Defense Ministry To Re-Enlist Several HIV-Positive Soldiers

[Mar 08, 2007]

Mexican Ministry of Defense officials on Tuesday announced that they will re-enlist several HIV-positive soldiers after the country's Supreme Court ruled their expulsions unconstitutional, Reuters reports (Reuters, 3/6). The defense ministry between 2000 and 2005 discharged 164 soldiers who tested positive for HIV. Eleven military personnel filed legal challenges to their expulsions from the armed services. Mexico's Supreme Court last week ruled 8-3 that a law used to discharge HIV-positive soldiers is unconstitutional and ordered the defense ministry to re-enlist four expelled soldiers. Chief Justice Guillermo Ortiz Mayagoitia said a section of the law that provides for the expulsion of HIV-positive military personnel based on "uselessness" violates the "rules of equality" protected by the Mexican Constitution. The armed forces can discharge soldiers who have developed AIDS or who cannot complete their duties because of medical reasons, Mayagoitia's ruling said. A congressional committee has requested that the country's armed forces provide figures on the number of military personnel living with HIV/AIDS and how many have been discharged because of their status (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 3/1). The defense ministry in a statement said it will re-enlist nearly all of the 11 HIV-positive soldiers who filed claims and pay benefits to the family of one soldier who has died. "We will re-enlist any persons the court determines should be reinstated to active service," the statement said, adding that the ministry also will provide medical treatment for the HIV-positive soldiers if required to do so by the court (Reuters, 3/6). The ministry also said it "will keep watch and demand" that the HIV-positive soldiers "are treated with the respect they deserve within the (army), just like any other member of the armed forces, in compliance with the constitutional guarantees of equality, nondiscrimination and protection of the right to health." In addition, the ministry said "the policies of prevention established ... to avoid situations that put health at risk will be strengthened, and the methods that have been shown to be effective in protecting against sexually transmitted diseases will continue to be put into practice" (EFE News Service, 3/7).

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Politics and Policy

Bill Would Require Prisons To Provide HIV Counseling, Prevention Education, Condoms

[Mar 08, 2007]

A bill (HR 178) introduced in January by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) would require prisons to provide HIV counseling and prevention education efforts and to distribute "sexual barrier protection devices" to inmates in federal prisons, the Oakland Tribune reports. The legislation also would require officials to regularly survey state and county correctional facilities to determine inmate groups most affected by HIV/AIDS and to develop strategies to treat HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in prisons (Gokhman, Oakland Tribune, 3/7). Although some jurisdictions, including San Francisco, allow condoms in prisons, most states classify condoms as contraband. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, AIDS prevalence among inmates is triple that in the U.S. population as a whole. In addition, black inmates are 3.5 times as likely as white inmates and 2.5 times as likely as Latino inmates to die from AIDS-related illnesses (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 9/19/06). About 25% of HIV-positive people in the U.S. annually pass through correctional facilities, according to BJS. Lee at a press conference last week said, "People need to understand when a prisoner is infected, we are all affected" (Oakland Tribune, 3/7). The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on crime, terrorism and homeland security (HR 178 actions, 3/7).

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Media & Society

Vanity Fair To Partner With Product RED; Bono To Guest Edit July Edition

[Mar 08, 2007]

Vanity Fair magazine on Tuesday announced that it will sign on as a partner with Product RED -- a project created by Irish musician Bono and DATA co-founder Bobby Shriver that aims to raise money for the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria by donating a portion of profits from a range of branded products -- the AP/London Free Press reports (AP/London Free Press, 3/6). According to Global Fund Executive Director Richard Feachem, Product RED to date has raised more than $20 million for the Global Fund (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 3/6). Bono, who will be the first-ever guest editor of the magazine, will be in charge of Vanity Fair's Africa-themed July issue (AP/London Free Press, 3/6). "Bono will make a different issue about Africa than we would," Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter said, adding, "We plan on making this an event with more separate cover treatments than the magazine has ever had" (Carr, New York Times, 3/5). Bono said, "As guest editor, I want Africa to appear (as) an adventure, not a burden, and put faces and personalities to the statistics we read elsewhere." He added, "If Graydon, his team and I succeed, the reader will care more about the daily squandering of these noble, entrepreneurial, optimistic lives ... people who are familiar to us in every other way than circumstance" (AP/London Free Press, 3/6).

Opinion Piece

"It says everything about our current climate -- the sense of global connectedness through the gift of technology, plus the dependence of slick advertising and seriously styled celebrities -- that (Product) RED's ambition is huge yet deceptively accessible and acquisitional: Shop so the unfortunate can live," Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Karen Heller writes in an opinion piece. "Bono is correct when he says donors want to feel that whatever gesture they make, no matter how small, improves ... lives, diminishing the AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria pandemics," but it is "reductive to make blanket statements about a continent of 900 million" people, according to Heller. "Let Bono and Vanity Fair try telling better stories," Heller writes, concluding, "In the meantime, it seems prudent to forgo shopping RED for the T-shirt, the iPod, the Motorazr. Instead, give all the green directly to" the Global Fund (Heller, Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/7).

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Jenna Bush Writing Book That Aims To Get Teenagers Involved in Issues, Including HIV/AIDS

[Mar 08, 2007]

First daughter Jenna Bush is writing a nonfiction book about a 17-year-old single mother in Panama who is HIV-positive that she says aims to get "kids thinking and involved," USA Today reports. The book, titled "Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope," is based on Bush's experience interning at UNICEF. It aims to "put a face on statistics" and document the lives of children in Central and South America, USA Today reports. Bush on Monday said the book is a "call to action." She added that while "not all kids can pick up and fly to Panama," there are many issues, such as HIV-related discrimination, that young people can address. The book will be published this fall by HarperCollins, the company announced on Tuesday (Minzesheimer, USA Today, 3/6). The financial terms were not disclosed, but bidding for the book reportedly topped $300,000, the AP/ABC News reports. A portion of the author and publisher proceeds will be donated to UNICEF. "We were very moved by Jenna's passion for this project," Susan Katz, president and publisher of HarperCollins Children's Books, in a statement said, adding, "Her message in this book is about hope, involvement and inclusion, told through one teenager's story of survival and strength" (AP/ABC News, 3/6). A first printing of about 500,000 copies of the book is expected (USA Today, 3/6).

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Recent Releases

CSIS Report Examines Laws, Policies Concerning Inadmissibility of HIV-Positive Noncitizens

[Mar 08, 2007]

"Moving Beyond the U.S. Government Policy of Inadmissibility of HIV-Infected Noncitizens," CSIS Task Force on HIV/AIDS: The report examines U.S. laws and policies concerning the inadmissibility of HIV-positive applicants for immigrant and nonimmigrant visas. It also provides steps that can be taken by the Bush administration and Congress to address the issue. According to the report, new approaches to addressing the issue should differentiate between immigrants and nonimmigrants and balance public health and privacy interests (Nieburg et al., "Moving Beyond the U.S. Government Policy of Inadmissibility of HIV-Infected Noncitizens," March 2007).

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