LAGOS, Dec 27 (IPS) - A fresh initiative, targeting at least 10,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, will be launched in Nigeria in January, the ministry of health says. Eighteen centres have been designated to offer anti-retroviral drugs, imported from India , for some 3.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 26 (IPS) - The Brazilian government plans to push for a more concerted international effort to come up with an HIV/AIDS vaccine, after the triumphs it has scored in its efforts to manufacture or attain cheap anti-retroviral drugs and make them available to low-income patients free of charge. Investm
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 21 (IPS) - In South Africa this year, the battle against HIV/AIDS was taken to the courts to find ways to provide the drugs that fight AIDS and can save or extend lives. It has been the year in which the technical medical terminology of terms like anti-retrovirals that do not slip easily off the tong
GENEVA, Dec 20 (IPS) - A major increase in investment in health in poor countries, funded by developing nations themselves as well as donor countries, would save millions of lives while giving a strong boost to the development of less-advanced areas. That argument constitutes the basis of a new plan drawn up by an inte
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 19 (IPS) - Celebrations among activists and South Africans living with HIV/AIDS were cut short on Wednesday when government announced it would appeal a judgement instructing the state to implement a drug treatment programme for HIV-infected pregnant women and new-born babies. Health Minister, Manto Ts
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso , Dec 18 (IPS) - Africa is the only continent where there are more HIV-positive women than men, says Dr. Antoine Kabore of the World Health Organisation (WHO). Kabore says studies conducted in eleven African countries show that the average rate of HIV/AIDS infection among teen-age girls is fiv
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 14 (IPS) - In the same month - April 1994 - South Africa won its freedom, the Marrakesh Agreement was signed, ushering the era of advanced globalisation. This had an impact on the new democracy and on its ability to develop a country left stunned by the economic ravages of apartheid. By signing th
MANILA, Dec 11 (IPS) - You re very lucky. You have a chance not to commit the same mistakes I did, Jonathan, a former seafarer, told a group of some 100 Filipinos bound for Japan to work as entertainers. Many of the would-be overseas workers in the group were barely in their 20s and the rest no more than 25 years old,
NEW YORK, Dec. 10 (IPS) - Half of all people infected with the virus that causes AIDS are aged 15 to 24 years, victims of their exclusion from prevention strategies and of cultural mores against discussing sexual matters, according to report released Monday. In effect, many die because of embarrassment, according to th
RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 9 (IPS) - Many in Brazil complain about the precariousness of the country s public health system. Like other countries in Latin America, corporations and the middle-class pay for costly insurance with private health providers if they want decent coverage. However, there is one exception, one that ma
HAVANA, Dec 7 (IPS/Tierram‚rica*) - Latin American children and adolescents living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV, the precursor to AIDS) could all lead happy lives - if they received the loving care and medical attention they needed. Happiness can be as simple as eating a plateful of fried potatoes, a visi
BANGKOK, Dec 6 (IPS) - In May, 19-year-old Duen Pomhin began a 20- week training programme at the Pan Pacific Hotel here, one tailored to teenagers from families bordering on destitution in Thailand s northern provinces. But much more than just training for work in the tourism industry, it also had another, longer-term
TAIPEI, Dec 6 (IPS) - As a rule, Father Bruno Ciceri never solemnises marriages among his flock in Taiwan , which consists largely of young migrant workers of the Roman Catholic faith from the Philippines . Why does the Italian priest forego the performance of an important social rite? He does not wan
HAVANA, Dec 6 (IPS) - The discovery of a vaccine that prevents infection with HIV, a virus that led to the deaths of three million people worldwide this year, could be just around the corner, but the scientific community opts for caution when asked to predict exactly when the breakthrough will happen. We are still a lo
MEXICO CITY, Dec 5 (IPS) - A rising number of Latin Americans with HIV/AIDS are receiving government support, giving them access to decent health services to combat the disease, but there is a long way to go to achieve universal coverage for these patients. Hugo Estrada, 43, has been HIV-positive for the last five year
MANILA, Dec 3 (IPS) - With his baseball cap turned backwards, hair dyed blond, and right ear pierced, Edwin (not his real name) looks like a typical teenager hanging out in one of the metropolis many malls. It is 5 p.m. Edwin takes the escalator to the third floor of a busy mall in the Philippine capital, a shopping ce
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 3 (IPS) - Create a catchy name, a logo for branding and a website - and you are in business. This is the approach by the Topsy Foundation who has blazed a new trail in South Africa on how to make a non-profitable charity organisation into a resounding success. The Topsy Foundation was born in the
JOHANNESBURG, 30 NOV (IPS) - Ahead of World Aids Day, South African President, Thabo Mbeki, again defended his government s refusal to make anti-retroviral drugs freely available through the public health system to those who need them. Anti-retrovirals are generally accepted to reduce the impact of Aids on people with
WASHINGTON (IPS) - The World Bank has appointed an AIDS czar and says it is weighing increased financing for efforts to combat the global pandemic but health activists remain to be impressed. The Bank also is taking part in a 30-minute documentary scheduled to run Saturday - World AIDS Day - on the international popula
JOHANNESBURG 28 Nov (IPS) - Babies born with the HIV-virus and who usually then die from Aids will know by Christmas whether they will be given a fighting chance. Judge Chris Botha has said he will pass judgement before December 25 on whether he will order government to provide an Aids-fighting drug, Nevirapine, and to
GENEVA (IPS) - HIV/AIDS is the most devastating disease humanity has ever faced and has become an measure of the existing social and economic injustices, driving a ruthless cycle of impoverishment, said United Nations experts as they presented AIDS Epidemic Update 2001 in several capitals around the world Wednesday.
JOHANNESBURG 28 Nov (IPS) - Babies born with the HIV-virus and who usually then die from Aids will know by Christmas whether they will be given a fighting chance. Judge Chris Botha has said he will pass judgement before December 25 on whether he will order government to provide an Aids-fighting drug, Nevirapine, and to
JOHANNESBURG (IPS) - A first-time pregnancy is a scary experience for any woman, even more so when you are little more than a child yourself. There are so many questions, heightened by anxiety brought on by the knowledge that everything the expectant mother does could affect the unborn child. But these fears can be all
NEW DELHI, Nov 26 (IPS) - Last week s decision by the competition commission of the European Union to slap a fine amounting to three-quarters of a billion dollars upon a slew of major pharmaceutical companies for rigging the prices of vitamins constitutes a social and legal landmark. The multinational corporations, inc
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 26 (IPS) - A first-time pregnancy is a scary experience for any woman, even more so when you are little more than a child yourself. There are so many questions, heightened by anxiety brought on by the knowledge that everything the expectant mother does could affect the unborn child. But these fears ca
BUENOS AIRES (IPS) - There is a lack of continuity in medical treatment for the thousands of Argentines who are HIV- positive or have full-blown AIDS, a problem activists blame on the government s increasingly limited and unpredictable financial and political support for AIDS programmes. In this country of 36.6 million
BEIJING, Nov 16 (IPS) - When French avant-garde ballet maestro Maurice Bejart was allowed to present his spectacular show exploring the impact of AIDS in Beijing last weekend, many were stunned by the open attitude of Chinese censors who rarely display such benevolence towards taboo topics in China . Delib
BANGKOK, Nov 15 (IPS) - Thailand is in a strong position to test the veracity of a deal struck this week by the world s trade negotiators that enables developing nations to produce or buy cheaper generic drugs to cope with pandemics devastating a country, like AIDS. On the one hand, there is AIDS, the leading killer di
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 15 (IPS) - South Africa s provincial administrations are not spending money national government has put aside to help them fight the spread of HIV and AIDS in the country. We find under-spending at the provincial level is an urgent and critical problem. Largely due to the late transfer of funds, in th
DHAKA, Nov 12 (IPS) - His serious demeanor belies his young age, but Mohammad Atikul Alam has probably seen it all. Now a peer trainor at Aparejeya- Bangladesh (AB) here in Dhaka, Alam has been on his own for the last five years, having left his home, an uncaring father, and a stepmother in a faraway village at age 11.
DOHA, Qatar , Nov 9 (IPS) - The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement could rip up the World Trade Organisation meeting underway in Doha, Qatar. This is the view of three international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who complain that the developing world s demands for changes to
DOHA, Nov 7 (IPS) - Intellectual property rules that obsruct poor countries access to medicine will be a crucial issue at the Fourth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), to begin Friday in the Qatar capital. Several countries threaten to boycott future trade talks if the matter is not resolved,
WASHINGTON, Nov 7 (IPS) - Health activists are appealing to drug firms and Western governments going to the Nov. 9-13 World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Doha, Qatar , to make life-saving but pricey pharmaceuticals affordable for the world s poorest countries. The effort, mounted by the medical aid group Medecins
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam , Nov 2 (IPS) - Overseas Vietnamese Nguyen Viet Quang was amazed when he found a set of two condoms made available to him at his bedside desk at his hotel room during a recent visit to the capital Hanoi. I have been to Vietnam many times, but this is the first time that I was offered such a gi
PORT OF SPAIN, Oct 30 (IPS) - Trinidadian artist and theatre designer Geoffrey Stanford, who succumbed to HIV/AIDS, was buried here Tuesday, on the eve of an international conference for people living with the disease. Official statistics indicate that two out of every three people in the Caribbean who are diagnosed wi
LOME, Oct 30 (IPS) - Market women in Togo have joined hands in the fight against HIV/AIDS, which is ravaging the West African country. It s not often that we get involved in awareness campaigns, says Afoua Blokpo, a grocer. But we happen to be strategically placed to quickly get a message across to our children, husban
MBABANE, Oct 29 (IPS) - Not all news on the HIV/AIDS front out of Swaziland is bad. While the health ministry dawdles on a comprehensive programme to combat a virus that currently infects 25 percent of Swaziland s one million population by the ministry s estimate, on the local level innovative projects are bringing rel
JOHANNESBURG, Oct 29 (IPS) - A warning by South African President, Thabo Mbeki, to the Parliament, about the dangers of anti- retrovirals - drugs that can improve the quality of life of people living with HIV and AIDS - has sparked a new row about his doubts about the link between HIV and AIDS. Pan Africanist Congress
NEW DELHI, Oct 24 (IPS) - It took the anthrax scare in the United States and an offer of cheap drugs from India to highlight a problem familiar to people in developing countries -- the denial of access to affordable drugs because of tough patent laws. India s thriving drug industry has provided a good examp
WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (IPS) - The world faces a surge in deaths from tuberculosis (TB) over the next five years unless funding is dramatically increased to fight the leading infectious killer of children and young adults, officials and philanthropists warned Tuesday. The world needs to fill in a gap of 900 million dollars
PHNOM PENH, Oct 12 (IPS) - Vuth Vireak, 23, does not sound like he s bragging when he talks about his many girlfriends, with whom, he says quite casually, he has intimate relations. Elsewhere, you hear about 14-year-old school boys buying sex in brothels. This casual attitude towards sex, the blatant commodification of
KATHMANDU, Oct 12 (IPS) - Sunita Chettri is a health worker, but she confesses that she used to squirm when boys asked her about wet dreams and queried her on what medicine could treat the disease . Initially, I thought they were ragging me, says the single 23-year-old. But Sunita (not her real name) soon realised the
OCHO RIOS, Jamaica , Oct 10 (IPS) - The number of new infections with the virus that causes AIDS remains nearly twice as great among Jamaican women than among men, researchers say. Estimates of the total population infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) range between 15,000 and 25,000 people in this north
HO CHI MINH CITY, Oct 10( IPS) - Vietnam has had a national anti- HIV/AIDS programme since the early 1990s, but indications are whatever lessons have been imparted have not been learned well. Indeed, one of the results of this is that this South-east Asian country now has more and more children getting HIV, which cause
GENEVA, Oct 9 (IPS) - A report released Tuesday by the humanitarian group M‚decins Sans FrontiŠres (MSF - Doctors Without Borders) says almost no new drugs are being developed for diseases that primarily affect the world s poor populations. The MSF report, titled Fatal Imbalance: The Crisis in Research and Development
CARACAS, Oct 4 (IPS) - Health authorities in Venezuela have forged a new partnership with civil society to implement a broad plan focused on AIDS prevention and advocacy of the human rights of patients. The government of Hugo Ch vez earmarked nearly one million dollars for the first phase of the programme, which went i
HARARE, Sep 27 (IPS) - Paula Donovan flipped on Cable News Network (CNN) one night while working on her laptop. Her plan was to edit a few electronic slides to use at a media and civil society conference on Gender, Rights and HIV/AIDS. When she plugged in new data, two tall grey bars on her computer screen grew even ta
Johannesburg, Sep 20 (IPS) - His government faces a high-profile class action lawsuit by a new front of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the churches and the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions (COSATU). The front met this week in Cape Town and exhorted government to provide the moral and political leadership o
NAKHON NAYOK, Thailand , Sep 20 (IPS) - Asian governments and public health policymakers should learn from India s success in producing cheaper drugs with local technology, which shows that developing countries can challenge the stranglehold that multinational firms have on technology crucial to health, experts here sa
GENEVA, Sep 20 (IPS) - The argument that drug patents represent an obstacle for poor countries in delivering health services to their populations has returned this week to stir up debate at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and threatens to be a thorn for its ministerial conference in November. The controversy pits de
NEW DELHI, Sep 12 (IPS) - A plan by India s Ministry of Health to make HIV/AIDS cases compulsorily notifiable may help government get a better picture of how many people are affected, but health activists warn this could result in driving the disease underground in this taboo- ridden country. We have to know what is th
NEW DELHI, Sep 10 (IPS) - Rights groups are dismayed by an order of India s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) banning prisoners from donating blood on the grounds that they formed a high-risk group. The NHRC, a statutory body, was acting on a complaint made by the country s top prison official Ajay Agarwal that t
LAGOS, Sep 6 (IPS) - Away from the prying eyes of parents and guardians, Nigerian youths now have an opportunity to ask questions about HIV/AIDS that affects about 5.4 percent of the country s population of 120 million. Of the 5.4 percent, youths in the age bracket 20-24 are the worst hit, according to a 1999 survey by
DURBAN, SEP 5 (IPS) - To understand the racial and other discrimination that the HIV/AIDS epidemic trails in its devastating wake, take a walk in the park across the road from the venue of the UN World Conference Against Racism. Two young women sit in the sun, braiding each other s hair. They are not much younger than
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 23 (IPS) - Brazil s Health Ministry has started the paperwork for launching local production of an AIDS- fighting drug, Nelfinavir, breaking the patent rights of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, and backing the measure with a controversial national law. It is the first time this South American
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 23 (IPS) - A coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) Thursday criticised the United Nations for playing down the links between racism, drug addiction, caste systems, and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). All three issues, the U.S.-based groups said, have been marginalised in the
NEW DELHI, Aug 15 (IPS) - Activists fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India are in increasing danger of being arrested by police and put away for weeks under archaic, British colonial laws on obscenity and homosexuality. Currently incarcerated are four volunteers of the Naz Foundation International and the Bharosa (tru
HAVANA, Aug 14 (IPS) - Cuba could send 4,000 doctors and health technicians to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa tomorrow - if industrialised countries would provide the necessary resources. So far, only Portugal , Belgium , France and the aut
BLANTYRE, Malawi , Aug 13 (IPS) - Widening poverty, HIV/AIDS, trade, debt relief and conflict resolution dominate this week s annual summit of leaders of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) in Malawi. The three-day meeting, which is being attended by ten SADC leaders, began Sunday in Blantyre, the business
KINGSTON, Aug 7 (IPS) - Jamaican homosexuals battered by violence and discriminatory laws hope to benefit from public defender Howard Hamilton s willingness to stand up for anyone whose constitutional rights have been violated. With more than 38 homosexuals killed here since 1980 and hundreds of alleged homosexuals vic
IBADAN, Nigeria , Aug 6 (IPS) - President Olusegun Obasanjo is leading the fight against HIV/AIDS to prevent the virus from spreading in Africa s most populous country. This terrible thing called HIV/AIDS for which there is no cure must not be allowed to take the upper hand in our country , Obasanjo told members of the
HAVANA, Aug 3 (IPS) - Only a revolution similar to the one women led 40 years ago in search of gender equality could curb the spread of AIDS in Cuba and uproot the widespread resistance to the use of condoms, say local AIDS prevention workers. The process in which women began to achieve equal opportunities in education
GENEVA, Jul (IPS) - The price of treatment for drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis will be slashed, thanks to efforts by M‚decins Sans FrontiŠres (MSF - Doctors without Borders) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). The Paris-based humanitarian organisation MSF, winner of the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize, has convinced
LAGOS, Jul 20 (IPS) - Africa is anxiously waiting for the outcome of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialised nations summit, which began in Genoa, Italy , on Friday. Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria , Omar Konare of Mali , Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Abdelaz
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 16 (IPS) - South African Catholic Bishops will consider giving their blessing to the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS, at a meeting to be held next week. The Catholic Church has traditionally been opposed to the use of condoms - or any type of artificial contraception - because the
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 10 (IPS) - Science may soon have the means to control HIV/AIDS, but the disease will continue to be devastating for poor countries, even if a vaccine is developed, just as other preventable or curable ills persist in the developing world. Such is the forecast of infectious disease specialist Pedro Cah
MEXICO CITY, Jul 10 (IPS) - In a direct challenge to the world s pharmaceutical industry, the authors of a new UN report call on developing countries to strengthen their national laws in order to enable local production of cheaper, lifesaving AIDS drugs AIDS. Such an option can be pursued legitimately under compulsory
NAIROBI, Jul 4 (IPS) - Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi s call to hang people who deliberately infect others with HIV, has brought to the fore the vulnerability of women and girls in Kenya who, either unable to negotiate safer sex or through rape, become part of the AIDS statistics. Moi said at the weekend, upon return
JOHANNESBURG, Jun 28 (IPS) - South Africa s largest trade union federation has accused government of fiddling while Rome burns because it has steadfastly refused to start an HIV/AIDS treatment programme. The Congress of South Africa Trade Unions (Cosatu), a 1.8-mn strong federation, says it is disappointed by ongoing p
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 27 (IPS) - The United Nations wrapped up a major conference on AIDS Wednesday with a slew of pious declarations and new commitments to fight AIDS, has killed more than 22 million people over the past 20 years. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was nominated Wednesday by the Security Council for a
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 27 (IPS) - African civil society groups packed their bags Wednesday to return home distressed that commitments made at this week s UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV- AIDS would amount to mere rhetoric. While pleased by the renewed commitment to fight the global pandemic, Moustapha Gueye, di
WASHINGTON, Jun 26 (IPS) - President George W. Bush pledged Wednesday to work closely with Pretoria on issues ranging from the fight against HIV-AIDS, to trade and conflict resolution. In a joint statement after Bush had lunch at the White House with South African President Thabo Mbeki, the two men characterised bilate
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 (IPS) - After a slow and hesitant start, the much-ballyhooed Global AIDS Fund has garnered close to one billion dollars in contributions - still far short of its target of seven billion to 10 billion dollars per year to fight the deadly disease. The pledges and contributions came during the three
HAVANA, Jun 26 (IPS) - A group of Cubans who are HIV-positive have set up a community pharmacy in the capital to ensure the continuity of treatment for others, like themselves, with HIV/AIDS. We are not giving away medicine, we are providing it as a loan, Armando Alvarez, one of the founders of the initiative, told IPS
UNITED NATIONS Jun 26 (IPS) - If this week s UN talks on the global AIDS pandemic were supposed to be a study in diplomacy and technocratic problem-solving, some delegates from poorer nations would have none of it. Numerous speakers rose Tuesday to decry the role that donors have played - or rather, failed to play - in
WASHINGTON, Jun 25 (IPS) - As HIV-AIDS decimates nuclear and extended families in Kenya , some one million AIDS orphans there are not receiving adequate care and protection from the state, Human Rights Watch (HRW) charged in a report Monday. Millions more Kenyan children affected by the epidemic in other ways also are
PORT OF SPAIN, Jun 25 (IPS) - The government considers it a practical step to deal with the AIDS epidemic, but religious organisations here oppose a decision to lift restrictions on the sale of condoms. The religious bodies are holding to their belief that sex, the main transmitting agent for the deadly HIV virus, shou
JOHANNESBURG, Jun 25 (IPS) - South African President, Thabo Mbeki, may want to put the Millennium Africa Recovery Programme (MAP) on top of the agenda when he meets with United States President, George Bush, this week. While in Washington, he will also have to deal with the HIV and AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa and
SAN JOSE, Jun 25 (IPS) - The discrimination against pregnant women who test positive for HIV, the precursor to AIDS, is a large-scale problem in the developing South, warns a Nicaraguan expert. Psychologist Rita Arauz, whose support for people with HIV/AIDS has won the recognition of the United Nations Development Prog
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 (IPS) - Youth groups rallied outside United Nations headquarters Monday to protest their exclusion from this week s UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV-AIDS. The activists stand symbolised that youth - officially, people aged 15 to 24 - had joined the list of constituencies sidelined or ex
GENEVA/RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 25 (IPS) - The United States has withdrawn the patent complaint against Brazil it filed with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Dispute Settlement Body, a move that could open the way for other developing countries to legally copy and manufacture certain patented medications. Ellen t Hoe
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 (IPS) - African leaders used the opening of the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV-AIDS Monday to assail the international community s response to the deadly epidemic for failing to match the speed and seriousness with which the disease is infecting their citizens. Official after official
MEXICO CITY, Jun 24 (IPS World Desk) - Governments and societies in all parts of the world continue to violate the human rights of sexual minorities in pervasive, pernicious, and often violent ways, investigators say. The discrimination faced by gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people is so extensive and pr
JOHANNESBURG, Jun 24 (IPS) Thanks to the fact that 32-year-old Lucky Mazibuko works in former President Nelson Mandela s backyard, the elder statesman is becoming an ambassador in the battle against HIV/Aids. Mazibuko works at the Nelson Mandela Foundation, where he heads its HIV/Aids programme. The Foundation is based
HARARE, Jun 22 (IPS) - The life story of Esther Guzha is awe inspiring. She is 36 years old and has been living with AIDS for more than 13 years. Speaking to this delightful woman reveals how a woman can break away from the confines of culture and rejection, even when experiencing intensive abuse from her husband s fam
BEIRUT, Jun 22 (IPS) - In a society where sex education is not included in school curricula and HIV patients continue to be feared and misunderstood, four non-governmental organisations have established hotlines to answer questions about subjects considered taboo in Lebanon : sex and AIDS. AIDS
HAVANA, Jun 22 (IPS) - Although all HIV/AIDS patients in Cuba are to receive free treatment from the state, therapy is sometimes interrupted due to a delay in imports, and not all patients have access yet to the latest anti-retroviral combination drugs, several of which have begun to be produced in Havana. To guara
MEXICO CITY, Jun 22 (IPS World Desk) - When it was first reported in June, 1981, the unknown disease that later came to be called AIDS only infected gay men. And so, it was either called a gay cancer or gay-related immune deficiency. But this month, as the world marks 20 years since the first reports of AIDS, it was am
GENEVA, Jun 22 (IPS) - The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has conceded to the demands of developing countries and civil society groups that had called for a review of the international agreements standing in the way of poor nations access to low-cost pharmaceuticals. The WTO body specialising in the matter agreed to ex
NAIROBI, Jun 22 (IPS) Patricia Asero Ochieng , an HIV infected mother, says she is lucky to be alive, after losing her husband to AIDS last year. Unlike many women in Kenya who have little knowledge of the disease, she has acquired skills on managing the HIV virus and gets a constant supply of drugs at a low cost from
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 21 (IPS) - The United Nations pooh-poohed Thursday the notion that the AIDS epidemic - which has killed more than 22 million people over the past 20 years - has been virtually contained in high-income industrial countries. The view that the epidemic is a thing of the past is wrong , said a new 44-pa
NAIROBI, Jun 21 (IPS) - Living with HIV/Aids is hard enough. Worrying about your health and your children s future are massive burdens that we would all struggle to cope with. Add to that prejudice, hostility and discrimination from many of the people around you, and it s a small miracle that people living with HIV/Aid
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam , Jun 21 (IPS) - Sometimes, I feel like I m doing a hopeless job, says Nguyen Thi Ha, a 32-year-old volunteer who has devoted three years of her life persuading sex workers in Ho Chi Minh City to use condoms regularly. Ha knows what to say to sex workers, since she used to be one herself. She
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 21 (IPS) - The new signals coming out of AIDS- stricken countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean are that the proportion of women living with HIV/AIDS has risen steadily in recent years. .. Today, young women in the developing world are twice as likely to be infected as men, warns
JOHANNESBURG, Jun 21 (IPS) - Two killer trends in South African society have combined to heighten women s vulnerability. Grafted onto what activists call an endemic rate of sexual and domestic violence, the spread of HIV/Aids has brought a double jeopardy. In a country where a woman is raped every 26 seconds, the horro
JOHANNESBURG, 20 Jun (IPS) - Ten young South Africans - new to each other and with nothing in common -- were left in the wilderness for 18 days to learn about life, and living and working together. Their experiences, lessons, struggles and frustrations have been turned into a television series, that the producers of So
WASHINGTON, Jun 20 (IPS) - AIDS has not caused any wars but the security implications of its rapid spread in Africa and other regions must be taken far more seriously by the industrialised West, according to experts here who are calling for much stronger measures - and a lot more money - to fight the deadly epidemic.
GENEVA, Jun 20 (IPS) - A large group of developing countries demands that the World Trade Organisation (WTO), at its next ministerial conference, must clear up all the legal uncertainties that stand in the way of countries rights to protect the health of their populations. Representatives of 46 countries from Africa, A
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 19 (IPS) - The United Nations appealed to world leaders Tuesday to shift the central focus from men to women at upcoming talks to devise a global strategy to fight the spread of AIDS. Officials and non-governmental commentators alike expressed worry that insufficient attention had been paid to gende
WASHINGTON, Jun 17 (IPS) - With words reminiscent of a television show, the top US aid official has provoked calls for his resignation, gales of scientific derision, and complaints of serious problems in the Bush administration s attitude toward the millions of Africans living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Andr
KINGSTON, Jun 15 (IPS) - Jobless and infected with the virus that causes AIDS, Devon is one of thousands of Jamaicans who cannot afford drugs to lengthen or improve the quality of his life. Even when he had a job, his weekly wage of 33 dollars was woefully inadequate to buy a cocktail of anti-retroviral drugs that cost
GENEVA, Jun 14 (IPS) - The much-awaited debate on how international patent laws affect developing countries access to medications begins Wednesday, Jun 20, at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the countries, corporations and civil society groups involved are putting the final touches on their arguments. The scena
BANGKOK, Jun 13 (IPS) - They are not sure what, if any, good the free pills are bringing them, but thousands of people with HIV/AIDS have been queueing up anyway to get them outside a police station here. For two weeks now, newspapers have been carrying reports and photographs about people lining up to get the V-1 Immu
HARARE, Jun 12 (IPS) - Zimbabwe has dismissed as exaggerated a new United Nations report that the life expectancy rate in the southern African country will drop to a mere 27 years in 10 years as a result of HIV/AIDS. The UN Childrens Fund (UNICEF) Progress Report on Zimbabwe 2000, released in Harare, the capital of Zim
KAMPALA, Jun 11 (IPS) - After their shaming in the South African courts, the multinational drug companies are doing their best to prove that they do put life before profit . US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is spending 11-million-dollar funding -- the first large-scale state-of-the-art HIV/AIDS clinic in Africa, which op
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 8 (IPS) - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan s ambitious 10 billion-dollar Global AIDS and Health Fund is growing at a painfully slow pace - with the latest contribution of a million dollars trickling in from the corporate sector. Gro Harlem Brundtland, the World Health Organisation (WHO) director-gene
DURBAN, South Africa , Jun 8 (IPS) -Health must be a business concern, Southern African corporate and government leaders said this week. HIV-AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria should be considered part of the investment risk equation in the region but should not be reasons not to do business, Mozambican President Joaquim C
BANGKOK, Jun 7 (IPS) - Nobody contracts AIDS, we die from the stigmatisation. We don t contract AIDS, we die from it, said Natashya, a 21-year-old Singaporean representative from the Asia- Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS. Natashya was one of several young people who spoke candidly -- and were sometimes b
MEXICO CITY, Jun 6 (IPS World Desk) - Paul Wetaka, a soldier from Uganda , and Henk Cazemier, a librarian from the Netherlands , have volunteered to participate in trials to develop a vaccine against AIDS. The non-profit International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) describes the men, both in their thirties, as vaccine
NEW DELHI, Jun 4 (IPS) - Medical tests conducted last year proved conclusively that Kaushalya, 29, did not have HIV. But by then the virus had destroyed her social life and forced her to abort her child. Tragedy struck Kaushalya three years ago when her husband, Ranbir Singh, who drove buses for the nationalised Delhi
BEIJING, Jun 3 (IPS) - When desperate, dying peasants with AIDS took their grievances to the capital this week, it became clear that for the second time this century, China s quiet rural province of Henan is becoming the stage for an immense, covered-up tragedy. During the late fifties to early sixties, millions of peo
WASHINGTON, Jun 1 (IPS) - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is playing down fears that US pressure could exclude cheaper, generic drugs from a new global initiative to fight AIDS. Annan, who spoke with journalists after addressing the US Chamber of Commerce here Friday, said he was unaware of US pressure to exclude gener
LIBREVILLE, Jun 1 (IPS) - Health experts blame unequal medical care and poor public health services for the latest outbreak of infectious diseases in Gabon . The high cost of medical care and increasing poverty, mostly among the country s most disadvantaged, has given way to an outbreak of numerous diseases successfull
CARACAS, May 29 (IPS) - The school drop-out rate, sexual exploitation, AIDS and violence have reached alarming levels among children in Venezuela , where authorities admit that 8,000 minors live in the streets and 60,000 are the victims of sex trade rackets. Government officials say much progress has been made towards
NEW DELHI, May 28 (IPS) - The portrayal of an Indian caste as being inherently given to prostitution, in a government report on HIV/AIDS funded by the United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF), has drawn condemnation from human rights and women s groups. After controversy grew over the report last month, UNICEF asked t
KATHMANDU, May 25 (IPS) - If governments have been working for many years on preventing AIDS, why are the number of cases increasing instead of decreasing? asked 14-year-old Kelzang Dorjee from Bhutan . In response, a delegate at a South Asian conference on children here this week said that the public education message
GENEVA, May 22 (IPS) - The World Health Organisation (WHO) adopted forceful resolutions that promote breastfeeding and restrict tobacco industry lobbying, but proposals on the crucial matter of access to low-cost essential medications were watered down, say observers at the World Health Assembly. The annual internation
WASHINGTON, May 18 (IPS) - An influential group of AIDS activists is challenging the US administration to take the lead in the push for an HIV vaccine. The Bush administration must take ownership of the HIV vaccine challenge and provide global public leadership toward developing and delivering an HIV vaccine, says the
WASHINGTON, May 18 (IPS) - An influential group of AIDS activists is challenging the US administration to take the lead in the push for an HIV vaccine. The Bush administration must take ownership of the HIV vaccine challenge and provide global public leadership toward developing and delivering an HIV vaccine, says the
GENEVA, May 17 (IPS) - Civil society groups spoke out at the World Health Assembly against the policies the United Nations and its specialised agencies have spelled out for access to low-cost medications and the fight against HIV/AIDS, saying they do not go far enough. An alliance of non-governmental organisations (NGO
MANILA, May 17 (IPS) - God s will be done is the prayer Esper (not her real name) utters each time she has sex with her husband, a seafarer from the Philippines who has been in the trade for the last 22 years. When he comes home for a two-to-three-month holiday after being away at sea for months, Esper is not sure whet
BRUSSELS, May 17 (IPS) - Twenty-one year old Mpule Kwelagobe is a refreshingly empowering figure in the fight against Aids in Africa. She spoke on Thursday at the UN Conference on the least developed countries in Brussels, Belgium . The image of Aids is more commonly that of wasted babies with bulging eyes, reed thin m
BRUSSELS, May 17 (IPS) - It s hard not to get biblical about Aids, to see it as a plague visited on a planet that has angered the gods. It s hard not to get biblical, especially in Africa - the disease s epicentre, where 3,800 people are infected daily with the virus that causes death, especially in the poor world. Ye
MEXICO CITY, May 13 (IPS World Desk) - A United Nations agency shed light this week on the manner in which AIDS threatens the world s food supply. If left unchecked, declares the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), AIDS could dramatically cut both the quantity and quality of food produced in the rural regions of t
WASHINGTON, May 11 (IPS) - US President George W. Bush announced Friday that Washington will contribute 200 million dollars to a proposed global fund to fight HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases. AIDS and Africa activists immediately denounced the offer as far too little given the magnitude of the problem. It was th
WASHINGTON, May 11 (IPS) - AIDS prevention strategies in Africa are doomed to fail if they continue to emphasise condom use at the expense of other factors, experts say. Because of the over-emphasis on changing behaviour we are missing a lot, says Eileen Stillwaggon, a health and development economist at Gettysburg Col
ISTANBUL, May 8 (IPS) - No one should die by a disease that can be prevented by a three US cents condom, says Melinda Kimball, Director International Programmes, of the UN Foundation. Condoms are the only existing prevention against STDS (sexually transmitted diseases) including HIV, says Michaekk Fox of
NEW DELHI, May 7 (IPS) - Fearing that new drugs will be out of reach of most Indians once the rules on intellectual property rights come into force in 2005, activists have kickstarted a national campaign to raise awareness on citizens rights to affordable drugs. The campaign, launched by a Mumbai-based NGO Lawyers Coll
CHIANG MAI, Thailand , May 2 (IPS) - Sitting in a seminar room in the corner of an AIDS hospice outside this northern Thai city, Cambodia s most senior monks listen attentively to a Thai Buddhist monk talk about helping local communities affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In what ways can monks best help their communit
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 30 (IPS) - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Monday took his cash-strapped battle against AIDS before one of the richest audiences in the United States . Annan, who is seeking to build a massive war chest of about seven-to-ten billion dollars to launch his global fight against the deadly disease, appe
ABUJA, Apr 25 (IPS) - Nigeria s vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, has urged African nations to mobilise resources against the scourge of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and other infectious diseases. There is greater need for African nations to support each other and mobilise resources from within and outside their borders t
GENEVA, Apr 23 (IPS) - Brazil has obtained international support for its policy ensuring free access to the latest medications for its citizens living with HIV/AIDS, a measure sharply challenged by the United States . The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, reaching the end of this year s six-week session, appro
MEXICO CITY, Apr 20 (IPS World Desk) - Should more women be encouraged to use female condoms to curb the spread of sexually transmitted diseases? Public health workers seem to think so in the face of mounting evidence from studies conducted in a number of countries. Researchers reveal, for instance, that women who use
BUENOS AIRES, Apr 19 (IPS) - The Argentine Congress is debating a controversial bill on reproductive health that would make birth control information available free of cost, even to minors, in an attempt to curb sexually transmitted diseases, back alley abortions and teen pregnancies. The initiative was shelved several
PRETORIA, Apr 19 (IPS) - International pharmaceutical companies Thursday dropped their legal challenge to South African legislation that allows the government to import cheaper anti-AIDS drugs and said they would pay the legal costs of the South African government. The news brought loud cheers from inside and outside t
LONDON, Apr 19 (IPS) - Non governmental organisations and anti- AIDS activists are celebrating Thursday s withdrawal of a legal challenge to a South African law permitting the import of cheaper, generic drugs, but they say they are very much aware that there are more battles on this front still to be waged. The moral v
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 17 (IPS) - Millions of Africans are dying each year of diseases that can be readily controlled by existing technology, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) stressed at a special meeting Tuesday. At the special presentation on the economics of health, UN economists joined health professionals
ISLAMABAD, Apr 16, (IPS) - Sexual activity between men is increasingly spreading HIV in Pakistan with the national AIDS control programme unable to clearly convey the safe sex message, say health activists. A survey by the National Aids Programme and the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (
GENEVA, Apr 11 (IPS) - Progress on human rights issues related to HIV/AIDS has been disappointing in the 20 years since the epidemic began, denounced the United Nations Wednesday. The director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS ( UNAIDS ), Peter Piot, stated before the UN Commission on Human Rights that
LONDON, Apr 6 (IPS) - Several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are backing a proposal by Harvard academics to set up a central fund to battle AIDS - but say a money pool will not by itself solve the problem. Oxfam, a leading British charity, welcomed the move strongly. It has been calling for a 5-billion-dollar gl
GENEVA, Apr 5 (IPS) - A group of African trade ambassadors achieved their objective of opening a debate within the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on the impacts of intellectual property rights and pharmaceutical patents on poor countries access to low- cost medications. The decision of the Council for Trade-Related Asp
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 5 (IPS) - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Thursday met with top executives of six leading pharmaceutical firms and urged them to provide affordable medicines to the world s poorest nations. I am pleased to tell you that the companies have agreed to continue and accelerate reducing prices substantial
GENEVA, Apr 4 (IPS) - The group of African countries that belong to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is calling for a special session of the council on intellectual property rights to discuss medical patents and access to low-cost medications -- a bid to ensure treatment for populations suffering from HIV/AIDS and ot
NAIROBI, Apr 4 (IPS) - African countries have been urged to begin including HIV/AIDS impact assessments in their long-term development plans, if they are to succeed in tackling the epidemic, which has infected 25 million people on the continent. Head of UNAIDS , Peter Piot, says most development programmes in Africa ar
GENEVA, Mar 28 (IPS) - Poor countries and transnational pharmaceutical firms are wrangling over the question of access to inexpensive medications, a controversy that has entangled the two international bodies governing health and trade, the WHO and the WTO, respectively. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Worl
MEXICO CITY, Mar 21 (IPS World Desk) - Close to 10 million tuberculosis (TB) patients in the developing world are set to benefit from a new initiative that seeks to supply free TB drugs over the next five years. The plan for such an ambitious effort was announced Wednesday in Washington D.C. during the launch of the Gl
HAVANA, Mar 19 (IPS) - Nearly 80 percent of pharmaceutical products employed in Cuba are locally manufactured - a proportion that authorities want to push even higher over the next few years. The growth of the local pharmaceutical industry, which by the mid-1990s was bringing Cuba some 100 million dollars a year in exp
PRETORIA, Mar 14 (IPS) - President Thabo Mbeki Wednesday told parliament that he would not subvert the Bill of Rights by declaring a state of emergency on the AIDS pandemic. Finally quashing rumour that he would, Mbeki said there were legal and other mechanisms he could use to access cheap drugs. His country would not
HAVANA, Mar 13 (IPS) - Cuba plans to step up education and prevention efforts to maintain its position as one of the countries with the lowest incidence of AIDS, while local researchers try to come up with a vaccine. Today, 2,385 people in this Caribbean island nation of 11 million are living with the Human Immunodefic
PRETORIA, Mar 13 (IPS) - The government here has turned down calls from the country s largest trade union and from the official opposition that it declare an emergency on AIDS. Speculation had been rife this week that it would declare a national emergency to counter a challenge from the world s big pharmaceutical compa
HAVANA, Mar 13 (IPS) - Cuba plans to step up education and prevention efforts to maintain its position as one of the countries with the lowest incidence of AIDS, while local researchers try to come up with a vaccine. Today, 2,385 people in this Caribbean island nation of 11 million are living with the Human Immunodefic
WASHINGTON, Mar 12 (IPS) - Hundreds of demonstrators protested outside the offices of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) Monday in solidarity with the South African government, which is currently facing a patent infringement lawsuit lodged by a group of drug companies. Chanting slogans and
NEW DELHI, Mar 12 (IPS) - In an unusual complaint, India s top prison official has accused the country s biggest blood bank of violating the human rights of jail inmates. The Director General of Prisons, Ajay Agrawal has formally complained to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), against the refusal by the Indi
NEW DELHI, Mar 11 (IPS) - Accused of piracy by Western transnational drug companies, India is defending its right to make cheaper generic medicines, on legal and ethical grounds. The charges were renewed when an Indian pharmaceutical company recently offered poor countries an anti-AIDS medication at a fraction of its i
MEXICO CITY, Mar 7 (IPS World Desk) - While a number of developing countries such as India , Senegal , South Africa and Mexico have been commended for taking some steps to protect girls and women from succumbing to the killer disease A
TEHRAN, Mar 6 (IPS) - A major transit point for the global traffic in narcotics, Iran has a fast growing population of drug addicts who have become the main cause for the alarming spread of HIV/AIDS in the Islamic nation. The deadly disease was first detected in Iran in the year 1987 in a six-year-old haemophiliac boy
PRETORIA, Mar 5 (IPS) - When the electricity kept going off at the High Court here Monday, activists took it as a sign their cause was just. It meant lights out for excessive corporate profit, they said. Their mood was buoyed by the approximately 2,000 protestors who marched on the court and to the US Embassy in this c
BALTIMORE, Mar 2 (IPS) - While world attention has focused on the reluctance of multinational pharmaceutical companies to flood poor countries with cheap AIDS drugs, senior researchers working in the area say other important factors such as developing effective national systems of delivery are being ignored. Ron Gray a
SANTIAGO, Feb 26 (IPS) - The Chilean state provides combination anti-retroviral drug therapy to less than half of the official number of AIDS patients, and the government s programme against HIV/AIDS has had to opt for treating patients instead of carrying out prevention campaigns, due to limited funding. Low-income AI
LAGOS, Feb 26 (IPS) - Georgina Ahamefule, a medical nurse, is seeking justice for wrongful dismissal from work. Her case marks the first test in the treatment of people living with AIDS in Nigeria . Until October 1995, Georgina worked in Imperial Hospital in Ebute Metta, a suburb of Lagos. But, she was sacked, accordin
WASHINGTON, Feb 22 (IPS) - In a major victory for AIDS and Africa activists here, the new administration of President George W. Bush has decided to keep in place an executive order by his predecessor, Bill Clinton, that was designed to make it easier for African countries to obtain anti-AIDS drugs inexpensively. The ne
NAIROBI, Feb 22 (IPS) - Kenyan non-governmental organisations (ngos) are seeking to import generic drugs from India , following delays by pharmaceutical industry to cut the price of anti- retroviral drugs for people living with Aids. We have seen too much suffering and wonder what happened to the offer which was announ
GENEVA, Feb 21 (IPS) - The United Nations agency entrusted with HIV/AIDS issues seeks improved access to treatment for those testing positive for the disease through a multi-faceted approach, one that coincides with initiatives put forth by developing countries in the international trade arena. The Joint United Nations
BRUSSELS, Feb 21 (IPS) - The European Commission Wednesday approved a new accelerated programme to combat the spread of three major communicable diseases - HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis - and pledged to improve its admittedly poor record of spending funds allocated for development and health aid. Poul Nielson,
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 20 (IPS) - UN secretary-general Kofi Annan Tuesday appealed to the world body s 189 member states to reallocate their national budgets in order to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS. The primary challenge for governments is to mobilise resources to meet the scale and devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS e
GENEVA, Feb 14 (IPS) - Heads of government, business leaders and institutions from the Caribbean pledged Wednesday to reduce the prevalence of AIDS among the young by 25 percent in the year 2005 in that region, the hardest hit by the pandemic, bar Africa. At a meeting in Bridgetown, the Caribbean Community (Caricom) he
MEXICO CITY, Feb 11 (IPS World Desk) ˇ The battle lines between the Western-based pharmaceutical industry and companies in the developing world that produce generic drugs have grown sharper this month, with anti-AIDS drugs being at the heart of this dispute. And the catalysts in such a turn of events include
LIBREVILLE, Feb 11 (IPS) - Health officials here are only now waking up to the fact that the government s National Programme Against AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases is not working. A recent report outlining that the disease is spreading quickly has them scrambling for solutions to the public health threat. Accor
WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (IPS) ˇ A new international AIDS lobby group intends to set up shop on the day the South African government is hauled into court by the pharmaceutical industry which is demanding the country amend laws favouring generic drugs. Plans are at an advanced stage to launch the Global AIDS Alliance (GAA) on
ISLAMABAD, Feb 6 (IPS) - Shamim has gone as far as sitting on a bench outside a doctor s clinic, but she is still reluctant to seek treatment. She has contracted a sexually transmitted disease (STD) from her husband, and she is afraid that consulting a doctor for a cure may expose her husband s apparent indiscretions.
MEXICO CITY, Jan 30 (IPS World Desk) ˇ Women s rights and human rights activists, taking a look at one of the first acts of new US President George W. Bush have concluded that he may not be totally committed to the universally recognised principles of freedom of expression and women s reproductive rights. How could he
CHIANG MAI, Thailand , Jan 29 (IPS) - Yaitum Kornkhamnoi wakes up early every morning to make sure that her young grandson has food to eat and gets to school on time. She thought that in her old age, her children would take care of her and she would lead a quiet life in retirement. But then her son and his wife succumb
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 19 (IPS) - The outgoing US Ambassador to the United Nations Friday lambasted the UN s Department of Peacekeeping operations (DPKO) for being lethargic towards the spread of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) among UN peacekeepers worldwide. I have to state with reluctance that I am not satis
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 10 (IPS) - Alarmed by the devastation caused by the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the 189-member UN General Assembly is holding a Special Session in June to devise a global plan of action to fight the disease which killed three million people last year.
CHOCHI, India , Jan 10 (IPS) - From the outside, the small grey house in this hamlet in India s northern Haryana state, looks peaceful and inviting. A brick path leads to the door covered with a fading green garland and a sign wishing the visitor a Happy New Year .
ABIDJAN, Jan 18 (IPS)- Cote D Ivoire s scientific community is divided as to the efficacy of Therastim, a new product being hailed here as an anti-AIDS wonder drug.
JAKARTA, Jan 2 (IPS) - The number of people with HIV/AIDS in Indonesia has increased significantly due to rampant use of illegal drugs, officials here say. Compounding worries is the fact that the sector of the population most at risk these days to the twin dangers of drugs and HIV/AIDS is the country s adolescents and
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