God, AIDS, Africa & HOPE

Reflections / Gedanken

07/16/2010 • 8:47 am Comments Off on Aids fund cuts a death sentence

Aids fund cuts a death sentence

Vienna – Cutbacks in rich-world funding for Aids treatment could sentence millions of sufferers to death for lack of access to anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Thursday. “Donors have started to shift their support away from HIV/Aids, and funding is not keeping up with the need,” the medical charity warned in a report ahead of a major Aids conference in Vienna next week.

“If nothing is done, most of (those infected with HIV) will die within the next few years,” it said, in a study based on fieldwork in eight African countries. According to MSF, many donors have frozen their contribution to the fight against Aids – partly due to the financial crisis – with the United States planning to cut its support for ARV drugs in Mozambique by 15% over the next four years.

The Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria is trying to raise $20bn for the next three years. So far it has received just a few hundred million dollars, the author of the report, Mit Philips, told journalists. “It is a very frustrating feeling to see that in spite of the achievements that have been made… the international donors, for the moment, show less interest and less resolve to continue to support the fight against HIV/Aids,” she said.  “It’s as if they want to give up the fight halfway through. We want to tell them: ‘you cannot turn back now on Aids treatment, it’s too important’.” While some three million HIV patients now have access to anti-retroviral drugs in Africa, the continent worst affected by the virus, another six million were still without treatment, MSF warned. By reducing funding, donor countries would ensure that even less patients received care, or received it too late, it added in its report. Turning people away from clinics, for lack of staff or resources, would also destroy the sense of trust that took years to build with local communities and make people less willing to come forward and get tested in a region where HIV still carries a strong stigma.

MSF’s study showed that early and sustained treatment of HIV patients had born fruit in several regions, including Malawi’s Thyolo district where the overall death rate dropped by a stunning 37% between 2000 and 2007, thanks to universal access to ARVs. Where patients get treatment, “there is an overall reduction of mortality in the community, there is also less tuberculosis and we start to see, where there is a high coverage of ARV, also a reduction in the number of new cases (of HIV/Aids),” said Philips.

Source: http://www.news24.com/World/News/Aids-fund-cuts-a-death-sentence-20100715

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, HIV Prevention, HIV Treatment, Medical and Research, Politics and Society, , , , , , , , ,

07/14/2010 • 3:00 pm Comments Off on HIV figures around the world

HIV figures around the world

A major international conference on AIDS starts in Vienna on July 18, when thousands of scientists, health workers, activists, and government officials will gather to discuss the latest advances against the disease.

An estimated 33.4 million people worldwide are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, according to figures issued by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Here are some AIDS figures from around the world:

THE GLOBAL PICTURE:

* Global deaths from AIDS reached an estimated 2 million in 2008, the same number as in 2007. Since the AIDS pandemic started in the early 1980s, almost 60 million people have been infected with the virus and 25 million have died of HIV-related causes.

* In 2008, around 430,000 children were born with HIV, bringing to 2.1 million the total number of children under 15 living with HIV. Young people account for around 40 percent of all new adult (those aged 15 and over) HIV infections worldwide.

* The annual number of new HIV infections remained the same in 2008 as for 2007 at 2.7 million. This is down from 3.0 million in 2001.

* Although 33.4 million people had the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 2008, more of them are living with HIV than ever before, at least in part due to the beneficial effects of AIDS drugs known as antiretroviral therapy. There are currently 26.3 million adults over 25 living with HIV.

AFRICA & ASIA:

* Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region most heavily affected by HIV, accounting for 67 percent of all people living with the virus worldwide, 71 percent of AIDS-related deaths and 91 percent of all new infections among children.

* An estimated 1.9 million people were newly infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa in 2008, bringing to 22.4 million the number of Africans living with HIV.

* The nine countries in southern Africa continue to bear a disproportionate share of the global AIDS burden. Each of them has an adult HIV rate of more than 10 percent.

* With an adult HIV prevalence of 26 percent in 2007, Swaziland has the most severe level of infection in the world. Lesotho’s epidemic seems to have stabilised, with an adult HIV rate of 23.2 percent in 2008.

* South Africa continues to be home to the world’s largest population of people living with HIV — 5.7 million in 2007. More than 250,000 South Africans died of AIDS-related diseases in 2008 and almost 2 million children there have lost one or both parents to the epidemic.

* Asia, home to 60 percent of the world’s population, is second only to sub-Saharan Africa in terms of people living with HIV. An estimated 4.7 million people were living with HIV in Asia in 2008.

* India accounts for roughly half of Asia’s HIV cases. With the exception of Thailand, where HIV affects 1.4 percent of adults, every country in Asia has an adult HIV infection rate of less than 1 percent.

OTHER REGIONS:

* Rates of HIV in eastern Europe and Central Asia are on the rise, with severe and growing epidemics in the Ukraine and Russia. With an adult HIV prevalence of 1.6 percent in 2007, Ukraine has the highest prevalence in all of Europe. In eastern Europe 1.5 million people were living with HIV.

* In Latin America, new HIV infections totalled an estimated 170,000 in 2008 bringing to 2 million the number of people living with HIV there. An estimated 77,000 people died of AIDS-related illnesses there last year.

* There were 2.3 million people living with HIV in 2008 in North America and western and central Europe.

Sources: Reuters/UNAIDS
yahoo news: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100713/tsc-uk-aids-figures-factbox-011ccfa.html

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, HIV Prevention, HIV Treatment, Medical and Research, Politics and Society, , , , , , , , ,

07/13/2010 • 10:18 pm 1

13.07.2010 Confusing day…

It is indeed a confusing day… 9 out of 10 we got for the world cup organisation from Mr  S Blatter.  Our president promises that the lessons learned during the preparation will be brought now into action when it comes to health, education and other burning issues. At the same time thousands of non South Africans fleeing the country, threats, some death foreigners, some shops looted – but officially no xenophobia.

This is the time  most South Africans were afraid of – even during the jubilation and celebration of the Soccer World Cup 2010; they were afraid of the “days after”.  The start of these days is definitive bad news for the country – problems can only be solved when they are admitted.

Fleeing people back to Zimbabwe means also for many to stop treatment, to lose their medical support – it has more consequences than to be seen on TV. Let’s hope for a some good news in the next days…

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, Politics and Society, Reflection, Society and living environment, , , , , , ,

07/09/2010 • 3:43 pm Comments Off on PlusNews Africa: Money no protection from HIV

PlusNews Africa: Money no protection from HIV

JOHANNESBURG, 6 July 2010 (PlusNews) – A new study has challenged widely held assumptions about income level in relation to HIV, finding that neither wealth nor poverty are reliable predictors of HIV infection in Africa.
Previously, the argument that poverty drove HIV epidemics was supported by the World Bank and UNAIDS, as well as less reliable authorities like former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who told the International AIDS Conference in Durban in 2000 that the disease was a partner with “poverty, suffering, social disadvantage and inequity”.
More recent research suggests that the reality is far more complex. For example, Botswana and South Africa, described as two of the wealthiest countries on the continent, also have among the highest rates of HIV infection.
Nevertheless, the idea that poverty fuels the spread of HIV has persisted as “a very dominant narrative”, according to Justin Parkhurst of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Parkhurst analyzed and compared data on HIV and wealth from demographic and health surveys in 12 sub-Saharan African countries with generalized epidemics (national prevalence rates higher than 1 percent); his findings are published in the July issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

He noted that in lower-income countries HIV prevalence tended to rise in tandem with wealth – in Uganda and Cote d’Ivoire, for example, women in the highest income bracket had the highest HIV prevalence.
In countries with a per capita gross domestic product higher than US$2,000, the link between wealth and prevalence was less clear.
Parkhurst also found that the relationship between wealth and HIV changed over time. A survey was conducted In Tanzania in 2003, and another in 2008; in the intervening five-year period, HIV prevalence declined among women in higher income brackets and rose among those in the lower income groups. Among men, prevalence stayed the same in the poorest group but was lower in all other groups, with the biggest declines in the highest income groups.
“HIV spreads through sexual behaviours, and these are social behaviours that change over time and are responsive to outside influences,” Parkhurst told IRIN/PlusNews. He compared the way HIV affected different social groups with the way tobacco use and obesity once affected mainly the rich, but were now bigger problems among the poor.

Wealthier people were often harder hit early in an HIV epidemic, probably because of their broader social and sexual networks. “Over time, the wealthy tend to be more educated [about HIV risk] and more likely to think about their future health,” said Parkhurst.
However, these trends are by no means universal and the patterns for men and women differ. In Swaziland, for example, which has the highest HIV prevalence of all the countries Parkhurst looked at, there was little evidence of a link between household wealth and individual prevalence.
Know your epidemic
Parkhurst’s findings have implications for one-size-fits-all prevention campaigns that do not take into account the complex and changing ways in which wealth, education level and gender can affect risk-taking behaviours.

“We need to educate people [about HIV] in a way that’s relevant to their context,” he said. “It’s about letting local actors to find out what’s going to work best. If we try to work out the solution from London … it’s unlikely to work.”

Parkhurst said “bottom-up” HIV prevention initiatives targeting the specific lifestyles and risk behaviours of a community were more likely to work. This approach is already catching on, with UNAIDS urging countries to “know your epidemic” and design prevention programmes accordingly.
“Health practitioners know they have to diagnose a problem before they can treat it,” he said. “I think the international community is starting to recognize the importance of addressing structural drivers of HIV, not just broadly, but to look at the specifics for specific communities.”

Source: http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89746

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, HIV Prevention, Politics and Society, Society and living environment, , , ,

07/05/2010 • 11:50 pm Comments Off on 05.07.2010 New website

05.07.2010 New website

Creating a new website is always a bigger story.. chosing the right features, the right functionality. We are re-designing in the moment our HOPE Cape Town website and lots of work will go into every detail. Checking all the information, adding new ones, chosing the right pictures.. it is amazing what one has to consider to get it right at the end. And whether we get it right or not, that our supporters will decide – they have to like it and to find the information easily they want to know about.

So today another meeting on the new website – and an interview with the “Domradio” in Cologne – not about HIV and AIDS but about the soccer world cup and the perception of Germans in South Africa. One can feel that the world cup draws to an end, more requests came in on interviews for the coming week and the topic is always the same: What has this soccer world cup brought to the ordinary people of South Africa? We know that FIFA got their share on proceeds, that SJB could promote himself in many ways (and advertising himself as a good candidate for the Nobel Peace Price) – but what is the ordinary person thinking? What will be the legacy – and the debt for the future of South Africa? What does it mean for the fight against HIV and AIDS?

Filed under: General, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Politics and Society, Reflection, Society and living environment, , , , , ,

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