InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, December 30, 1997
Prangtip Daorueng
BANGKOK, Dec 30 (IPS) - A plan to have Thailand s medical students undergo HIV tests has opened a fractious debate on how to balance measures for the protection of public health versus individuals right to non-discrimination. This month, public universities have came under attack for agreeing to institute HIV tests for
InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, December 30, 1997
Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Dec 30 (IPS) - Sherman de Rose was beaten up after he set up Sri Lanka s first gay group, Companions on a Journey, two years ago. Fearing for his life, the gay activist and former Roman Catholic priest fled to Singapore but returned after two weeks. I could not keep running. I had to face up to the future.
InterPress News Service (IPS) - Tuesday, 16 December 1997.
Sandrine Loubassou
POINTE-NOIRE, Dec 16 (IPS) - Audrey appears tired as she explains to a class of children how she contracted a terminal illness. Audrey herself is a child. She s just eight. But she has the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). She explains that she was infected while in her mother s womb. Mum died six years ago s
InterPress News Service (IPS) - Monday, December 8, 1997
Melvis Dzisah
ABIDJAN, Dec 8 (IPS) -- Health experts from around the world have gathered in the Ivoirian capital this week to try once again to map out new strategies to combat the spread of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in Africa. Some 4000 participants from 80 countries in Africa, Europe Asia, and The Americas are
InterPress News Service (IPS) - Thursday, December 4, 1997.
Ives Marie Chanel
PORT AU PRINCE, Dec 4 (IPS) - Health workers in Haiti , fighting to stem the spread of AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases, have found that the efforts to increase the use of condoms depends more on the ability to afford them, rather than their availability. Many brands of condoms are available in Haiti, impor
InterPress News Service (IPS) - Monday, December 1, 1997
Daniel Gatti
Att Eds: Pls relate the following item to HEALTH-THAILAND: Gov t Steps Up AIDS Drug Trials , moved earlier from Bangkok MONTEVIDEO, Dec 1 (IPS - Latin American Desk) - Inadequate prevention policies and the high cost of treatment mark the future outlook for AIDS in Latin America, said experts from several countries in
InterPress News Service (IPS) - Sunday, November 30, 1997.
Analysis - By Laxmi Murthy
NEW DELHI, Nov 30 (IPS) - By the turn of the century, the year by which Health for All was to be achieved, India is expected to have the highest incidence of HIV/AIDS - between five and eight million cases. The HIV virus that causes the deadly disease is spreading in previously untouched populations, the National AID
InterPress News Service (IPS) - Friday, November 28, 1997.
Sergei Blagov
MOSCOW, Nov 28 (IPS) - Moscow heroin addicts use a simple, unscientific and potentially deadly method to test whether their drugs are ready for use -- they slit a vein and see if the blood coagulates in the liquid. If it passes the test then the narcotic is often shared round in a single syringe, doubling the chance th
InterPress News Service (IPS) - Wednesday, November 26, 1997.
Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 26 (IPS) - An estimated 2.3 million people - the equivalent of the combined population of Brunei , Comoros , the Maldives , Equatorial Guinea and Qatar - died of AIDS this year, ac
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 21 (IPS) -- Family Planning Associations have been urged to accelerate the global war against the spread of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). An International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) conference, which ended here Friday, noted that Family Planning Associations have years of e
NAIROBI, Nov 20 (IPS) -- A new treatment for AIDS, the latest in a line of cures introduced in Kenya , has run into trouble with medical authorities who have barred a U.S. national from praticing the treatment in the country. The treatment, known as the Ozone therapy , has been described by Kenyan medical authorities,
InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 12 November 1997.
Prangtip Daorueng
BANGKOK, Nov 12 (IPS) - His face is among the most recognised in Thailand today, thanks to the television advertisements he stars in. But Ittirak Smithsuwan is no glamourous hunk hawking the latest in fashion. The 31-year-old -- who appears in the ads with his mother -- represents the newest phase in Thailand s anti-AI
InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 7 November 1977.
Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Nov 7 (IPS) - A new project sponsored by the United Nations will attempt to bridge the enormous gap that exists in AIDS treatment between the industrialized countries of the North and developing nations. The Joint U.N. Pprogramme on AIDS ( UNAIDS ) is attempting to promote state-of-the-art AIDS care to underdev
InterPress News Service (IPS); Thursday, 6 November 1997.
Rahul Bedi
NEW DELHI, Nov 6 (IPS) - Indian officials are undertaking a countrywide campaign to popularise the use of condoms, in a move to step up efforts to contain the growth of the country s burgeoning population. As part this renewed drive, officials of the health and family ministry plan to station condom-vending machines at
InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 31 October 1997.
Andrew Forbes
VIENTIANE, Oct 31 (IPS) - Just outside the terminal of the Laotian capital s Wattay Airport, the visitor s attention is captured by the image of a fierce-eyed yaksa, or demon, apparently preparing to dine on the world with the aid of a three-pronged trident. The sign is a reminder - if any were needed - that the AIDS v
InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 29 October 1997.
Isagani de Castro
MANILA, Oct 29 (IPS) - The HIV/AIDS epidemic has been a major problem for over a decade but the responses of most countries in the Asia Pacific region are still ineffective and often discriminatory against people with AIDS. Last July, in Goa, India , the state government justified the eviction of commercial sex wor
InterPress News Service (IPS); Monday, 27 October 1997.
Satya Sivaraman
HANOI, Oct 27 (IPS) - At the height of its economic liberalisation programme in the early nineties, a popular ballad performed at Hanoi s state run opera hall depicted AIDS as a symbolic fallout of the rapid opening up to foreign influences. Five years later, as interest of foreign investors in Vietnam
InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 22 October 1997.
Wesley Gibbings
PORT OF SPAIN, Oct 22 (IPS) - Prem turned 31 in August. Two weeks ago, he succumbed to the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. The last three weeks were the most painful for he and his family. His sister, a well-known national personality, who requested anonymity, says it was the most terrible thing I have ever seen.
InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 22 October 1997.
Andrei Ivanov and Judith Perera
MOSCOW, Oct 22 (IPS) - Russia s Interior Ministry is in the process of converting an Arctic prison camp into a holding centre for jailed criminals with the HIV virus which causes AIDS. Interior Minister Anatoli Kulikov s order, and his choice of a correctional labour camp in the northern Pechora region for what is in e
MUMBAI, India , Oct 21 (IPS) - It is eight years since Dominic D souza was arrested and incarcerated in solitary confinement in the western Indian state of Goa because he tested HIV positive. It turned him into India s best known HIV/AIDS activist. D souza has since succumbed to the disease. But the Act under which he
InterPress News Service (IPS); Thursday, 16 October 1997.
Prangtip Daorueng
BANGKOK, Oct 16 (IPS) - Seeing some of their young, most productive workers hit by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, more and more businesses in Thailand are stepping forward to help contain the human and economic damage from the deadly disease. As the disease continues to spread among the general population, businesses are reali
InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 10 October 1997.
Sumegha Agarwal
SYDNEY, Oct 10 (IPS) - Australia has made major strides in its campaign against the HIV/AIDS pandemic, but social and cultural taboos are complicating efforts to raise awarness about the disease among various minority communities. The World Health Organisation lists Australia as relatively bright spots in the region s
InterPress News Service (IPS); Sunday, 5 October 1997.
Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Oct 5 (IPS) - A lack of political will rather than a shortage of funds is restricting Sri Lanka s efforts to keep the AIDS epidemic under control, according to health workers here. Most of the funding for HIV/AIDS related programmes comes from U.N coffers and, according to Sri Lankan government rules, any moni
InterPress News Service (IPS); Thursday, 2 October 1997.
Ahmad Mardini
ABU DHABI, Oct 2 (IPS) - The oil-rich Gulf states are trying to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS which has reached epidemic proportions in parts of Asia from where a large number of the region s expatriate population has come. In a new initiative aimed at preventing the disease from becoming a major health problem,
InterPress News Service (IPS); Monday, 29 September 1997.
Moyiga Nduru
NAIROBI, Sep 29 (IPS) - Widespread concern that Kenya is heading into an AIDS storm has prompted the government to formulate a long- term strategy to deal with the scourge that already has killed nearly a quarter-of-a-million young Kenyans. Figures released last week by the Ministry of Health here show that the Acquire
InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 26 September 1997.
Mitu Varma
NEW DELHI, Sep 26 (IPS) - HIV now has another name -- the poverty virus. Known to devastate economies over Africa, the deadly precursor to AIDS could single-handedly unravel the gains of the ambitious economic restructuring plans initiated in India during this decade, experts say. The official figures, however, do
InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 24 September 1997.
Rae Cashif
BELMOPAN, Sep 24 (IPS) - Health officials in Belize are concerned that the increasing number of young persons being diagnosed with the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is likely to start having an impact on the country s production targets. What is shocking for us at NAP (National Aids Programme) is the fact that th
InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 24 September 1997.
Laxmi Murthy
SANGLI, India , Sep 24 (IPS) - From being a mysterious virus which strikes so-called high risk groups, the threat of AIDS has entered the average Indian household. No longer a disease afflicting only sex workers, truck drivers and homosexuals, AIDS has become a very real possibility for housewives and new-born infants.
InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 18 September 1997.
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Sep 18 (IPS) - The most influential medical journal in the United States has assailed as unethical, US-funded medical experiments on HIV-infected women in the Third World. A blistering editorial in this week s edition of the New England Journal of Medicine compared ongoing experiments in Asia, Africa and th
InterPress News Service (IPS); Monday, 8 September 1997.
Yvette Collymore
WASHINGTON, Sep 8 (IPS) - Despite major advances in research into AIDS, no affordable therapy is yet in sight to prevent transmission of the virus from mothers to babies in poor countries, according to health workers. Although scientists have reported progress in the treatment of AIDS in the United States and
InterPress News Service (IPS); Thursday, 4 September 1997.
Prangtip Daorueng
BANGKOK, Sep 4 (IPS) - Thai women s lack of control over matters of sexuality and contraception poses a major hurdle in the fight against HIV and AIDS, denting aggressive efforts to change behaviour needed to curb the spread of the deadly pandemic. In the anti-AIDS campaign, researchers say they are coming up against d
InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 3 September 1997.
Bijoy Basant Patro
NEW DELHI, Sep 3 (IPS) - Uma (not her real name) was nine years old when she was first raped by a gang of homeless boys at the New Delhi railway station, where she also lives. She said it happened over and over again after that, until last year she became pregnant and delivered a still-born child on the platform. The 1
InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, 2 September 1997.
Tabibul Islam
DHAKA, Sep 2 (IPS) - Going strictly by the numbers, Bangladesh could consider itself safe from the rapidly worsening AIDS epidemic that is sweeping neighbouring India and Burma . Only 61 people have been detected with HIV, the virus that causes the deadly AIDS.
InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 29 August 1997
Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, Aug 29 (IPS) - A furious debate is raging in Mexico over the proposal by Roman Catholic Archbishop Norberto Rivera that condom wrappers must carry a warning, similar to tobacco products, that This product may be hazardous to your health. Government officials, health experts, and international and non- gove
InterPress News Service (IPS); Sunday, 24 August 1997
Edmond Toka
PORT VILA, Vanuatu , Aug 24 (IPS) - The growing number of AIDS cases in the Pacific is threatening development prospects in the island nations which are struggling to keep their fragile economies afloat, according to health and economic experts. With very scarce domestic resources, preventing the spread of the killer
InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 22 August 1997.
KINGSTON, Aug 22 (IPS) - How do you stem the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among prisoners? Distribute condoms, says the Commissioner of Corrections. Not so, say warders and inmates. When John Prescod, Commissioner of Corrections put that proposal on the table recently, he probably did not bargain for the cha
InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 20 August 1997.
Meena Menon
SOLAPUR, India , Aug 20 (IPS) - It is dusk and in the fading light, the small shed on this busy highway in southwestern India is only barely discernible. Two women run inside and peer through the door. Are you from the police, they ask in fear. Located on a barren stretch of land, this shed is one of the many dhabas
DIMAPUR, India , Aug 11 (IPS) - By the side of the railway track, and very close to the busy train station here in this north- eastern Indian town, is a cluster of bamboo huts, each a tiny island in slimy, stagnant pools of water. The huts are hidden behind bamboo screens. But their occupants sit on chairs by the railw
MEXICO CITY, Aug 8 (IPS) - While the Mexican government is promoting the use of condoms as the best AIDS prevention measure, police continue to crack down on people distributing - or even carrying - them. There is a total contradiction among authorities. I wish they would please reach agreement for the sake of the heal
HARARE, Aug 7 (IPS) - Health and human rights experts are divided over whether there should be legislation that gives those who take care of AIDS-infected people the right to disclose their patients conditions to their partners or close relatives. While conceding that privacy over health matters is a bic human right, s
InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 6 August 1997.
Remi Oyo
LAGOS, Aug 6 (IPS) -- The public announcement that the famous musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti died of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome(AIDS), has lifted the cover on the silence surrounding the disease in Nigeria , experts here say. The more we keep issues of AIDS under the cover, the more difficult it will be deal
InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, 5 August 1997
Remi Oyo and Toye Olori
LAGOS, Aug 5 (IPS) - Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the internationally renowned Afro-beat musician, has become Nigeria s first public figure whose death has been attributed to the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). He died yesterday (Saturday) in a hospital at approximately 5:30 pm. The immediate cause of the death is
HARARE, Jul 22 (IPS) - Health is a Cinderella sector in many African nations: medical centres, often in various stages of disrepair, have few drugs and some of their broken-down equipment is not replaced since there is not enough money for that. Not that there are no resources, but these tend to be diverted from social
InterPress News Service (IPS); Sunday, 13 July 1997.
Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 13 (IPS) - The number of children with AIDS is expected to rise from 830,000 in 1996 to more than one million this year, according to a new U.N. report released here. The disastrous impact of AIDS on children has not been given enough attention, warns Peter Piot, director of UNAIDS
KHARTOUM, Jul 10 (IPS) -- Soldiers fighting in Southern Sudan are one of the high risk groups for the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and the virus which causes the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome(AIDS), a new health report says. According to the report prepared by Juba Teaching Hospital in Sou
KATHMANDU, Jul 7 (IPS) - Open borders between some countries in South Asia and the sheer size of its population make the battle against the Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus (HIV) in the region very difficult, point out experts. Health experts see a link in the region between economic liberalisation, the lifting of state c
InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, 8 July 1997.
R. Devraj
NEW DELHI, Jul 8 (IPS) - A donor-driven anti-AIDS programme targetted at sex workers, truck drivers and other high-risk groups is creating new untouchables in India , say volunteers. The worst-hit by an AIDS scare, the result of inappropriate awareness campaigns, are suspected HIV-carriers in the rural areas where prim
InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 4 July 1997.
Mostaf Kamal Majumder
ATTN EDITORS: The following item is by Panos Features, London, and is distributed by IPS for use of subscribers. DHAKA, July 4 (PANOS) - Bangladesh is at a cross-roads, said Dr Nasir Uddin of the Voluntary Health Services Society in Bangladesh. If the country and the people take action now, they have the opportunity to
InterPress News Service (IPS); Thursday, 3 July 1997.
Shehnilla Mohamed
HARARE, Jul 3 (IPS) -- A draft law which proposes an up to 20 years mandatory jail term for anyone who knowingly infects another with the virus that causes the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), excluding spouses, has women activists up in arms. Activists have been fiercely lobbying for a review of the Crimina
InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, July 01, 1997
UNITED NATIONS, (Jun. 30) IPS - The United Nations is alarmed at the increase in the spread of AIDS through one of the world s ideal breeding grounds for the deadly disease: the prison system. The acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is spreading at a faster rate in prisons throughout the world than in the genera
InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 27 June 1997
Niccolo Sarno
ATTN EDITORS: The following item is under embargo and may not be printed or otherwise reproduced before 10.00 GMT, Friday June 27. BRUSSELS, Jun 27 (IPS) - By the end of 1997, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS ( UNAIDS ) expects 1 million children under the age of 15 years to be infected with the HIV virus
InterPress News Service (IPS); Thursday, 19 June 1997
Delfina Mugabe
MAPUTO, Jun 19 (IPS) - Unlike the civil conflict that ravaged it from the mid-1970s to 1992, the war Mozambique now faces is one in which no guns are used, but it is equally, if not more devastating. The enemy is the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV), which causes AIDS and it has been advancing at top speed. At t
InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 30 May 1997.
Nhial Bol
KHARTOUM, May 30 (IPS) -- Market vendors are selling as paper for rolling tobacco, educational books on the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) which cost some $2 million to print. According to an official in the Ministry of General Education who declined to be named, the publication would have been a useful sch
InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 28 May 1997.
Gustavo Gonzalez
GENEVA, May 28 (IPS) - Trials of new antiretroviral treatments against AIDS awoke prudent optimism in the scientific media, but the courses of drugs often prove prohibitively expensive for the poor countries. The triple combination therapies have given impressive short- term results, prolonging lives and reducing infec
InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, 27 May 1997.
Remi Oyo
LAGOS, May 27 (IPS) -- Despite the marketing of condoms and other forms of contraceptives in Nigeria , the number of new cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) continues to rise and the use of contraceptives remains low, health experts say. An estimated 41 million condoms are used each year in this West African
InterPress News Service (IPS); Sunday, 25 May 1997.
A.B. Mahapatra
CHURCHANDPUR, India , May 25 (IPS) - Sha Unn lives in a shanty town of bamboo huts in this district of India s northeast Manipur state, an eight-hour bus ride from the country s border with Burma . A Burmese who came here as a young boy 40 years ago, Unn is a drug runner, helping smuggle narcotics from ac
InterPress News Service (IPS); Monday, 19 May 1997.
Anne Akia Fiedler
ATTN EDITORS: The following item is by Panos Features, London, and is distributed by IPS for use by subscribers. KAMPALA, May 19 (PANOS) - A frank, funny and hard-hitting newspaper for Ugandan high school students is changing the way teenagers think about themselves and their relationships. Though the paper s impact is
InterPress News Service (IPS); Monday, 19 May 1997.
Janine Simon
ATTN EDITORS: The following item is by Panos Features, London, and is distributed by IPS for use by subscribers. JOHANNESBURG, May 19 (PANOS) - Ask nurse Alleta Khanye about free health care services and her first reaction is to point to the crowded wooden benches of the Kathlehong North Clinic s waiting room. Aah, s
InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, 29 April 1997.
Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Apr 29 (IPS) - The AIDS virus is rife in the prisons of most countries, creating moral, cultural and religious which societies find hard to overcome, said the UN body responsible for fighting the disease. In some cases, as in France , the amount of HIV positive prisoners is up to ten times the level seen in loc
InterPress News Service (IPS); Monday, 28 April 1997.
Rupa Chinai and Rahul Goswami
EDITORS NOTE: The following item is by Panos Features, London, and is reproduced here by IPS for the use of its subscribers. KOHIMA, India , Apr 28 (PANOS) - The expanding heroin trade in Southeast Asia s Golden Triangle - the world s largest source of illicitly grown pure heroin - is bringing with it a wave of new HIV
BEIJING, Apr 24 (IPS) - The fatal AIDS disease once considered by the Chinese to affect only foreigners is making dangerous inroads into the mainland, health officials here say. While the HIV virus that causes AIDS is usually found in coastal and border areas and cities, authorities say cases have begun to be reported
SANTIAGO, Apr 22 (IPS) - The refusal by two Chilean TV stations to broadcast public service announcements concerning AIDS awareness provoked a fierce debate over which is more important - the right to life, or freedom of speech. The Television Corporation of Catholic University - and the private TV channel, Megavision
PORT VILA, Vanuatu , Apr 21 (IPS) - Reduced aid funding in the fight against AIDS is forcing non-governmental organisations to take the lead from health ministries constrained by financial woes. Though governments set aside money for anti-AIDS campaigns in their annual budgets, some fail to deliver the amounts they all
BUREERAM, Thailand , Apr 16 (IPS) - When Samran Kanka s husband died four years ago, he not only left her with the burden of raising the family alone. Worse, he left her infected with HIV. Samran is among tens of thousands of housewives in Thailand who got the deadly virus from their husbands. This group, the Public He
InterPress News Service (IPS); Thursday, 10 April 1997.
Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Apr 10 (IPS) - Cubans have come to regard themselves as equal to anyone in the world when it comes to love and romance and the much of the world tends to agree with their assessment. Simple hallway conversations, evening get-togethers, glances on the street and other seemingly trivial moments are imbued with a
InterPress News Service (IPS); Thursday, 10 April 1997.
Johanna Son
MANILA, Apr 10 (IPS) - Tuberculosis kills many more people than AIDS, but the disease grabs more headlines and gets more funding for research and prevention. AIDS is still incurable, but is preventible. Tuberculosis, on the other hand can be cured by antibiotics. Or, so doctors thought until virulent strains immune to
InterPress News Service (IPS); Thursday, 10 April 1997.
Gustavo Gonzalez
SANTIAGO, Apr 10 (IPS) - The wrath of President Eduardo Frei has fallen on the conservative management of two TV stations who refused to air public service advertising spots as part of Chile s official AIDS prevention campaign. Frei has accused officials of the private Magavision network and the Catholic University s T
InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 9 April 1997.
Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Apr 9 (IPS) - The differences between governments and religious groups over the AIDS prevention campaigns could be resolved by each sticking to its own role, said executive director of the UNAIDS programme, Peter Piot. Our role is to protect the health of the population. The church has another role, said Piot.
InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 9 April 1997.
Gustavo Capdevila
Attention Eds: Please relate the following to HEALTH: Government and Church have Different Role moved earlier from Geneva/ GENEVA, Apr 9 (IPS) - The AIDS (Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome) epidemic, to which refugees are particularly vulnerable, continues to pick up steam worldwide, the executive director of the
InterPress News Service (IPS); Monday, 7 April 1997.
Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Apr 7 (IPS) - The health sector continues to figure among the jewels of the government of Fidel Castro, in spite of the economic crisis gripping Cuba . Still one of the top priorities of the Caribbean nation s social policy, public health will receive around seven percent of the annual budget this year - simila
GENEVA, Apr 3 (IPS) - Humanity, overexcited about its own success in erradicating infectious diseases, got lazy about control and is now suffering the return of some of these illnesses and the emergence of some new strains. The communicable diseases, which respect no frontiers, constitute a threat which needs urgent at
MANILA, Apr 2 (IPS) - Once regarded as the epicentre of Asia s AIDS epidemic, Thailand is reporting a decline in new HIV cases. Australia and New Zealand report a leveling off in AIDS, especially among the homosexual population. These are two bright spots in the health picture of the Asia- Pac
InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, 1 April 1997.
Nhial Bol
KHARTOUM, Apr 1 (IPS) - Hostility towards anti-AIDS campaigners has been hampering efforts to limit the spread of HIV in Sudan , health ministry officials here say. In our efforts to minimise the effects of AIDS, we are currently trying to change people s attitudes, but if the people themselves do not want our campaign
PORT OF SPAIN, Mar 24 (IPS) - Tobago , that picturesque, northern- easterly portion of the twin island republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is fast realising that sex -- the fourth dimension of the tourism industry that sells sun, sea and sand -- bears a terribly high price tag.
DAKAR, Mar 24 (IPS) - Offering sex for money (solliciting) is illegal in Senegal , but having sex for money is not. In this mostly Muslim African country, a sex worker may ply her trade as long as she is registered as a prostitute, has regular check-ups at a designated clinic and is discreet. Dakar, Senegal s capit
InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 19 March 1997.
Roberto Fonseca L.
MANAGUA, Mar 19 (IPS) - A social health organisation in Nicaragua has accused the government of not doing enough to prevent the spread of AIDS and say there is a danger of a boom in the number of people infected by the virus. Pascual Ortells, director of the Nimehuatzin Foundation - an organization dedicated to the str
InterPress News Service (IPS); Sunday, 9 March 1997.
Vukoni Lupa-Lasaga and Nana Rosine Ngangoue
KAMPALA/BRAZZAVILLE, Mar 9 (IPS) - Ten years down a road littered with the dead, dying and orphaned, Ugandans are beginning to see a ray of hope in the war against the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) that AIDS. A report by the Ugandan Health Ministry s STD/AIDS Control Programme (STD/ACP) shows that HIV infection i
InterPress News Service (IPS); Monday, 3 March 1997
Farhan Haq
NEW YORK, Mar 3 (IPS) - New statistics showing a sharp drop in the number of deaths from acquired immune deficiency syndrome have cheered AIDS patients, but health groups warn that many people, especially the poorest, still remain at risk. The good news, confirmed last Thursday by the Centres for Disease Control (CDC),
InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, 18 February 1997.
Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Feb 18 (IPS) - The next month is crucial in terms of prevention of meningococcal meningitis in Sudan , because of the tendency for outbreaks of the disease - which has an up to 40 percent mortality rate - at this time of year. Especially vulnerable are 1.25 million children and adolescents that make up part of
InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 14 February 1997.
Tansa Musa
YAOUNDE, Feb 14 (IPS) -- Korup National Park in south western Cameroon is a scientist s delight. The park spans some 1,259 square kilometres and is a unique primary rain forest which has been described as a real living museum . Together with the Nigerian Cross River National Park, Korup, protects a significant area of
InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, 11 February 1997.
Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Feb 11 (IPS) - Young adults, the most productive sector of society, have been hardest hit by AIDS while the virus is wreaking its worst havoc in the developing world, according to the head of the United Nations HIV/AIDS programme, Peter Piot. The acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) actually presents a th
InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, 11 February, 1997.
Josephine Masimba
HARARE, (Feb. 9) IPS - Decried by some as abuse, defended by others as the norm, and most often completely denied, domestic violence afflicts more than half of Zimbabwe s women, according to a new study. Findings revealed in a survey by the Musasa Project, a non-governmental women s rights group, were examined at a wor
InterPress News Service (IPS); Wednesday, 29 January 1997
Eduardo Gomez Ortega
BRUSSELS, Jan. 29 (IPS) -- The incidence of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) appears to have stabilized for the first time within the European Union (EU), except in Spain , Italy and Portugal , announced the European Commission today.
InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, 28 January 1997.
Gumisai Mutume
JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 28 (IPS) -- The recent controversy over a purported cure for the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) has set back national AIDS education and prevention work, experts here say. Three University of Pretoria scientists declared last week that they had developed a new, affordable drug, Virodene P
InterPress News Service (IPS); Thursday, 16 January 1997.
Rolando Napoles
HAVANA, Jan. 16 (IPS) -- If you want to take the risk that s your business, but I m not going to let you put me and our unborn child at risk, said Reynol Morales pregnant wife when he told her he wanted to be a guinea pig for the new AIDS vaccine. There is always the fear that by putting ourselves in contact with the v
InterPress News Service (IPS); Monday, 13 January 1997
Zarina Geloo
LUSAKA, Jan. 13 (AIA/GIN) -- Jane Mudenda is in a dilemma. She is HIV positive and has to choose whether to breast-feed her baby and risk passing on the infection or bottle feed with milk formula which is not only expensive but carries health risks like malnutrition and diarrhea. My neighbor, who is a gynecologist, tel
InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 10 January 1997.
Shenilla Mohamed
HARARE, Jan. 10 (AIA/GIN) -- Fierce lobbying by women activists against a draft law which proposes a maximum 20-year mandatory jail term for anyone who knowingly infects another with HIV/AIDS, excluding spouses, has forced the Justice Department to agree to review the proposed law. Following the publication of the draf
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 10 (IPS) - AIDS is rapidly becoming an illness of the poor -- affecting mainly those dependent on a public health system already burdened by the high cost of caring for sufferers. In response the government has intensified a prevention campaign which has as its centrepiece the distribution of by the
InterPress News Service (IPS); Monday, 6 January 1997
Suman Pradhan
BIRGANJ, Nepal , Jan. 6 (IPS) -- This dusty and crowded border town between tiny Nepal and its giant neighbor to the south, India , might just emerge as one of the major centers for the spread of the deadly AIDS virus. Birganj, 120-kms from the capital city Kathmandu, is
InterPress News Service (IPS); Monday, 7 July 1997.
Suman Pradhan
KATHMANDU, Jul 7 (IPS) - Open borders between some countries in South Asia and the sheer size of its population make the battle against the Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus (HIV) in the region very difficult, point out experts. Health experts see a link in the region between economic liberalisation, the lifting of state c
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