RWGNYC's Blog

Churches' goal is to help AIDS victims cope: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

D'Mrtri Cato-Watson likened HIV/AIDS to a modern-day version of leprosy because of the way victims are shunned.

World Community Grid - Home

FightAIDS@Home
If you’d like to play an active part in the search for a HIV vaccine, you could put the unused capacity of your PC to good use by hooking up with the IBM initiated World Community Grid. All you’ve got to do is download the software and your home computer becomes a part of the supercomputer dedicated to Aids research.

allAfrica.com: Namibia: Envoy Urges Focus On Women, Orphans


UN Envoy Stephen Lewis visits an education project for Aids orphans in Swaziland


Tami Hultman/allAfrica.com

allAfrica.com: PanAfrica: Continent Must Step Up Prevention Efforts to Stop HIV/Aids - AU

C. Petas/WHO

Fifty-seven-year-old Congolese nurse Mani Kanza (center) helps provide for her seven children and two grandchildren in a region hard-hit by HIV/Aids.

allAfrica.com: Uganda: Integrating Traditional Medicine in the Fight Against HIV/Aids (Page 1 of 2)

Time for Russians to get serious about HIV/AIDS

Rural states fight for more federal AIDS funding

April 23, 2006 BY ERICA WERNER

WASHINGTON -- AIDS started as a big city epidemic infecting mostly gay white men, and now it's prevalent in the South and among minorities. Yet the federal law that helps the neediest patients has not kept up with that evolution.

By some measures, AIDS patients in California and the Northeast get more money per capita than those in the South, where activists are lobbying for a bigger share.

With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, Congress is trying for the first time since 2000 to amend the Ryan White CARE Act of 1990. It is named for the Indiana teen who died that year after contracting AIDS from hemophilia treatments. The House Energy and Commerce Committee plans a hearing Thursday.

Calif., New York could lose most



"We haven't seen the money shifting with the epidemic. I don't believe a person should be punished because of where they live geographically, and that's what's happening," said Kathie Hiers, head of AIDS Alabama, a nonprofit that provides services to HIV/AIDS patients.

But Phil Curtis of AIDS Project Los Angeles says dollar disparities between cities and rural areas have been exaggerated.

The federal law sends about $2 billion a year to local and state programs. These services reach more than 500,000 people per year, making it the largest federal program for people with HIV. The law gives money to states as well as to 51 "eligible metropolitan areas" with concentrations of AIDS patients.

A study by congressional investigators last year found that states with eligible metropolitan areas get the most money because some patients are double-counted -- once to calculate the eligible metropolitan area and again in statewide totals.

There are more than 1 million people in the United States with HIV/AIDS. New York and California are home to the most AIDS patients. Depending on how the law is changed, these states stand to lose about $20 million each; Southern states could gain millions.

AP

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law on Monday, which changes the reporting data of HIV/AIDS patients in the state Californiato be reported from codes that were previously being used to the names of the individuals. Adopting the name system will secure over US$50 million per year for HIV/AIDS management from the federal government, which found the code-based system inefficient in producing a clear picture of the epidemic. Read the whole article at Earthtimes.org.

Interesting article that combines several of the presentations, the material we learned in class and "MY" topic... who could ask for more?

Saturday, April 15, 2006; Page A14 Washington Post
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization have been working with countries and experts to generate data to strengthen the AIDS response. But because most people do not know their HIV status, numbers cannot be obtained directly. Contrary to an April 10 editorial, there is no single source of data.
Only by analyzing various surveys can a realistic picture of the epidemic in any given country be obtained. But each source of data has strengths and weaknesses.
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization have been working with countries and experts to generate data to strengthen the AIDS response. But because most people do not know their HIV status, numbers cannot be obtained directly. Contrary to an April 10 editorial, there is no single source of data.
Only by analyzing various surveys can a realistic picture of the epidemic in any given country be obtained. But each source of data has strengths and weaknesses.
Population-based surveys can suffer from bias if infected people decline to be tested. For example, in South Africa and Botswana, 40 percent of the people have refused to participate in surveys. Despite these limitations, UNAIDS and WHO are confident that our estimates are the best available, and we are committed to improving the methods used.
Comprehensive prevention efforts, integrated with treatment programs, must reach those at highest risk of infection. In high-level epidemics, this may be an uninfected person who has an infected partner; elsewhere, it may be sex workers or injecting drug users.
Comparing the disadvantages of providing treatment to a person with AIDS with treating someone suffering from malaria creates a dangerous dichotomy. Both deserve treatment, without any tradeoffs.
PETER PIOT
Executive Director
Joint United Nations Programme
on HIV/AIDS
ANARFI ASAMOA-BAAH
Assistant Director-General
HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria

World Health Organization
Geneva
Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization have been working with countries and experts to generate data to strengthen the AIDS response. But because most people do not know their HIV status, numbers cannot be obtained directly. Contrary to an April 10...','') ;
The April 6 front-page article "How AIDS in Africa Was Overstated" and the March 31 news story "HIV Drops in Worst-Infected Parts of India" might lead readers to believe that the world can breathe a sigh of relief about the HIV-AIDS pandemic.
But HIV-AIDS continues its widespread devastation and rages disproportionately among women of reproductive age. Buried in these articles is the acknowledgment that HIV rates are sometimes four times as high among pregnant women than in the general population.
Pregnant women not only face their own illness, but the possibility of losing their babies to the virus. Yet fewer than 10 percent of the millions of women worldwide who become pregnant each year have access to HIV testing and a simple drug regimen to protect their infants from the virus.
Further, a recently released U.S. government study found that programs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV are being shortchanged.
AIDS continues to be a monumental catastrophe for all of us.
PAMELA W. BARNES
President and CEO
Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation Washington

Found in the Washington Post

Just look at these editorials... there goes the saying : " Location, location, location."

By Charles King Monday, April 10, 2006
On March 6, the New York Blade published an Op-Ed piece by NYC Department of Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden, titled "We Can Stop the HIV Epidemic."
We share Commissioner Frieden’s concern about the two critical issues:
• Too many New Yorkers are unaware that they are HIV-positive, including more than 1,000 people who learn their HIV status each year when they are diagnosed with an AIDS-defining condition.
• People living in lower income areas of the city, primarily people of color, are receiving substandard care or are not engaged in care and, consequently, die at much higher rates than those who are engaged in quality care.
Commissioner Frieden proposes two changes to New York State law to address these issues. As a first step he would eliminate the requirement of mandatory pre-test counseling and signed consent for an HIV test, which he claims is the major barrier to routinized testing in medical settings. The second step, he says in his article and has told people with AIDS, service providers and lawmakers, is to allow the health department to contact doctors and their patients to improve care.
Housing Works obtained a copy of Frieden’s proposed legislation, and it is far broader and more dangerous than advertised.

The rest can be found at the link (click on the Headline).

Jennifer Nadeau was the guest speaker for the COMHE 400.40 class today and she represented the media department of the Guttmacher Institute. The institution, founded in 1967 to provide medical and reserch evidence about health disparities, now publisches scholarly reproductive advocacy on a global base. The organisation is comprised of four different interrelated divisions and Jennifer Nadeau focused mainly on the reserch and editorial sections. The Website has grown from its original splash front page over a collectin of PDFs to its state these days; an outreach tool which provides different access portals for its visitors. The approach reminded me a bit of the layout of the Hunter College webpage.
Further, we were introduced to the personal one on one or small group approach the organization utilizes to reach out to policy makers. The concept of outreach in the media was described and we were introduced to the HPV vaccine. In detail we heard about the integration of birth control medications and screenings into employer based health insurance, the comprehensive configuration options of a comparative table maker tool and the new IntelliContact software the organization uses. In addition the conceps of audiobriefing in form of conference calls, the electronic advisory network and skype, a computer to computer telephony platform were discussed. Overall the presentation showed us a collection of different tools which can be utilized to relay health information on a professional even semi professional level.
But while digging a bit deeper I found a few things I would have never expected. After over 20 years of doing outreach work in HIV/AIDS, I get stomach cramps if I see a professional organization talk about "the AIDS virus" on their website. There is no AIDS virus, its name is HIV or Human Immunodeficiency Virus. For me this is an indication of being either outdated or ignorant to aspects of health education. Further, the statements throughout the presentation painted an ethnocentric image of the U.S. with the whole world lagging behind its internet technology. While I was living in Morocco, the country introduced access to the internet on a broad and very reliable base via Itissalat Al Maghrib (IAM). Eastern Germany has a fiberglass networks that rivals any in the world and I have yet to find a city in the United States that like Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and Oxford, along with the London boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, Camden and Islington is providing citywide wifi coverage. Actually Philly is starting to think about a project like this right now.
I know that every organization has its little flaws, but the presentation today left the aftertaste of a marketing session in my mouth. (I might be spoiled by previous presenters.)

The International AIDS Conference 2006 in Toronto, Canada is scheduled for August 13- to 18 and the deadline for online registration to avoid the last minute surcharge is set for 15 May. This event will be broadcasted via satellite to several web pages so that individuals who are unable to attend can follow the presentations. (For a list please refer to the website of the event). I personally attended a few and if anyone is interested in HIV/AIDS issues I would suggest to either read abstracts provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation or to attend the conference if possible. Their website is a great resource for summaries from the conferences and in addition, they provide live video streams as well.

OK a bit of an anecdote about Amanda, Becka and my trip to Philly on Saturday. Rainy, Rainy, Rainy it sure was and soaking wet we arrived at Villanova University for the event with Dr. Paul Farmer (PIH). Needless to say we had a great time and Farmer is a very charismatic guy; actually he is literally as described in the book we all read. He took on a guy from the FDA and let him know his positions about expired drugs the FDA wants to push onto poor nations. Surprise…. According to the FDA the drugs that have an expiration date do not expire…… do we smell something? Guess the FDA is a bit too close up the pharmaceutical industry’s (insert a word you like).
Anyhow, after the event all three of us had the chance to meet with Paul Farmer and ask him a few personal questions which turned into a nice chat with where he asked us what we are doing. After the event, yes you guessed correct, we went downtown for a Cheese Steak Sandwich at Jim’s on South Street…(here a link to a fan site). What a treat… (Sorry to any nutritionist who reads this). We did some strolling around in shops, bought a thing or two and with the taste of the cheese steak sandwich on our tongues, we drove home.
Again, Thank you Amanda for the great day out… and Becka for the pictures to prove it.
Rob

One of the countries that I follow is Uganda. This country has a grassroots network that workes and guess what... someone screwed up again, and no it was not Uganda.
http://www.radionetherlands.nl/currentaffairs/hiv060407

As I mentioned before, sometimes people who think they have all the knowledge and think they are above others do more damage than good. This is a short interview, but it shows how positions of power can be misused to make people suffer or even die just to push an ethnocentric agenda and personal beliefs on others.

Here is a history about HIV and AIDS from the perspective of the Organization Avert ( An European Perspective) it is a pretty good overview, but I am still looking for the extremist events in Germany in the 1980's that actually got me into activism. Unfortunately that information was rarely translated into english.

I hope you enjoy reading this.

http://www.avert.org/historyi.htm

Another link for the history (American Perspective)

http://www.aegis.com/topics/timeline/

Robert

Martine Hackett’s presentation “Screening Messages” about the utilization of different electronic media categories was informative and enthusiastic. She introduced us to the origins of public health messages, posters from the 1920ies and progressed to WWII Syphilis campaign ads. She advanced further to electronic media we are using today, namely official websites of organizations, list-servs, professional bulletin boards, to parent memorial sites and discussion boards conveying information about SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). Scientific evidence was provided that showed SIDS was reduced by having babies sleep on their back, but we also seen that many babies prefer to sleep on their stomach.
The title might have come from the process of silk-screening the posters in the past or the necessity of screening messages released to the public through modern day technology.
Further, we analyzed the different mechanisms how audiences are reached and applied this information to real life settings. Interestingly enough to mention, the email we received reminding us to do this assignment, also reminded us about the problems electronic media can cause. The ones who can access it have the upper hand, the ones with the strongest voices take over and the rest usually falls back and watches, ethnocentric approaches of understanding a situation lead to misconceptions, negative reactions have negative counteractions, and all can become personal. Reactions or comments are perceived as personal attacks and because of misunderstandings finally lead to frustration on both sides.
This sociological or even psychological pattern can be observed on discussion boards, there a wrong word can cause a heated discussion, in academia, where a missing citation can cause the hypothesis to crumble, and in professional discussions where egos can collide and drag a professional discussion into a personal vendetta. After the whole presentation, I still wonder if values are assumed or created by others and forced upon minorities or individuals less powerful.