God, AIDS, Africa & HOPE

Reflections / Gedanken

07/12/2010 • 5:22 pm 1

12.07.2010: One day after the Worldcup

Minister tackles xenophobic attacks
Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa flew into the Western Cape on Monday for an assessment after a wave of xenophobic violence, a spokesman said. Earlier, police and troops were deployed in force as scores of foreigners sought refuge at police stations in Cape Town and surrounding towns.  A government spokesman said Mthethwa and Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu travelled to the Western Cape “to get first hand reports from senior law enforcement officers”. Sisulu said in a statement the army would do all it could to help the police and vowed that anybody who targeted foreigners would be “dealt with”.  “Opportunistic criminals must know that we will deal with them harshly, there is no way we will allow them to spread fear and crime. We are working very hard to find them and prosecute them.” Police spokesman Captain Frederick van Wyk said there were “sporadic incidents of looting” at shops belonging to foreigners on Sunday night. Areas where this occurred included Nyanga, Philippi East and Khayelitsha on the Cape Flats, Wellington, Paarl East, Mbekweni (a Paarl township), Franschhoek and Klapmuts. “Police responded and a heavy police contingency was deployed in conjunction with metro police and SANDF in all these areas,” Van Wyk said. Seven men, aged between 19 and 30, had been arrested in the Nyanga area. They were charged with public violence and were to appear in the Phillipi Magistrate’s Court on Monday.  “SAPS will continue to deploy in high numbers to maintain law and order in the mentioned areas. Tranquillity has been restored and no further reports of violence have been reported,” Van Wyk said.  Spokeswoman for provincial disaster management Daniella Ebenezer earlier said 70 foreigners had sought refuge overnight at the Mbekweni police station in Paarl and 22 at Wellington.  There were smaller numbers at police stations in Franschhoek, and Langa and Harare on the Cape Flats.
They had gone there “mainly because they were fearful”, but in some instances following attacks on shops. Ebenezer said there were “sporadic” attacks on shops on Saturday in the region, and “some incidents of looting” on Sunday.  No-one had been seriously injured.
She said according to reports from police, spaza shops and containers used as shops were “damaged” in Mbekweni, Paarl East, Wellington and Nyanga on Sunday. Ebenezer said the province’s community development workers had been providing information to authorities on what was happening on the ground. Mediators deployed to communities last week would continue their efforts.
“Provincial and local government are on standby to provide humanitarian support, should this be required,” she said.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=nw20100712155804315C761243

Foreigners seek refuge at police stations

A heavy police and military presence has been deployed in Western Cape townships following sporadic xenophobic violence, police said on Monday. Provincial authorities said scores of foreigners had sought refuge at police stations in the region.
Police spokesman Captain Frederick van Wyk said that on Sunday night there were “sporadic incidents of looting” at shops belonging to foreigners. Areas where this occurred included Nyanga, Philippi East and Khayelitsha on the Cape Flats, Wellington, Paarl East, Mbekweni (a Paarl township), Franschhoek and Klapmuts. “Police responded and a heavy police contingency was deployed in conjunction with Metro Police and SANDF [the defence force] in all these areas,” Van Wyk said.

Source: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=nw20100712125356596C317143

Filed under: Society and living environment, Uncategorized, , , ,

07/11/2010 • 12:29 pm Comments Off on POZ: Newly Discovered Antibody Kills Up to 91 Percent of HIV Strains

POZ: Newly Discovered Antibody Kills Up to 91 Percent of HIV Strains

U.S. government scientists have discovered three potent new antibodies, one of which can neutralize up to 91 percent of all HIV strains. These discoveries were published online July 8 in Science and were reported by The Wall Street Journal. Though the scientists acknowledge that their findings represent a hopeful step forward, they caution that it will take a lot of time and effort before they can be translated into something that will prevent or treat HIV infection.

Antibodies are a key element in the immune system that our body uses to defend itself from bacteria and viruses. Antibodies kill these microbes directly or flag the foreign invaders for destruction by other immune cells. Unfortunately, HIV’s outer surface is so easily changeable that antibodies—most of which can neutralize only a few strains—fail to keep it in check. This has made designing a vaccine, which works by provoking the body to produce antibodies, such a frustrating endeavor.

Following a string of failures in vaccine science, researchers have turned in recent years to a search for broadly neutralizing antibodies, which can kill multiple strains of HIV. Several have been identified, but none have been able to neutralize more than 40 percent of HIV strains, and all were quite difficult for the body to produce naturally.

The Wall Street Journal reports that, “The [new] antibodies were discovered in the cells of a 60-year-old African-American gay man, known in the scientific literature as Donor 45, whose body made the antibodies naturally. Researchers screened 25 million of his cells to find 12 that produced the antibodies.”

It’s not yet clear whether or how these new antibodies can be used to prevent and treat HIV. Researchers will focus on several possibilities. One approach entails giving the antibodies directly to people, specifically in cases to prevent transmission from mothers to their babies. Other approaches range from building traditional vaccines with the antibodies, to the developing gene therapies.
Whichever strategy is most promising, it will likely take some time before it is available. Gary Nabel, MD, PhD—one of the leaders of the studies and a director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland—told the Journal, “We’re going to be at this for a while” before any benefit is seen in the clinic.

Source: http://www.poz.com/rssredir/articles/HIV_neutralizing_antibody_761_18701.shtml

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

07/10/2010 • 10:37 pm Comments Off on 10.07.2010 Belhar….

10.07.2010 Belhar….

Supplying mass in Belhar – a new community and as always interested to learn about the living situation in the suburbs or Cape Town.  Otherwise some preparation work for next week as my next trip looms to attend the World AIDS Conference in Vienna, followed by a brief stay in Germany.  Otherwise a very rainy day and of course – the second last day of the Soccer World Cup with Germany coming 3rd place. Well deserved.

Filed under: HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, , , ,

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, , , ,

07/08/2010 • 3:38 pm Comments Off on POZ: HIV Stem Cell Therapy in Mice Is Successful

POZ: HIV Stem Cell Therapy in Mice Is Successful

Source: http://www.poz.com/rssredir/articles/hiv_zincfinger_sangamo_761_18693.shtml

Researchers are reporting that a new method for altering the genes of immune cells to make them resistant to HIV infection was a success in mice. The study was published online on July 2 in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
The new type of therapy, which treats stem cells with engineered zinc-finger nucleases, is designed to help the body grow new CD4 cells that don’t carry one of the key coreceptors—CCR5—that HIV requires to enter and infect a cell. In this experiment, Nathalia Holt, PhD, from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, and her colleagues compared two groups of mice that are bred to have a human immune system. The first group was given untreated stem cells. The second group received a batch of zinc-finger-treated cells.
Holt’s team found that the treated stem cells multiplied rapidly in the mice and were highly resistant to HIV infection. By comparison, the untreated cells did not spawn HIV-resistant cells, and the mice who receive the untreated cells experienced HIV-related CD4 cell losses, indicative of disease progression.
Sangamo BioSciences is developing this therapy, and small exploratory studies of zinc-finger therapy are already taking place in humans.

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, Medical and Research, , , , ,

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