Mon, Nov 24, 2008
The Jakarta Post

IT SOUNDS like a notion from a science-fiction film.

The provincial legislative council of Papua, Indonesia, is set to pass a bylaw on HIV/Aids that requires certain sufferers living with the disease to be implanted with a microchip, so their movements can be monitored.

“This will violate the rights of people living with HIV/Aids,” said Mr Constan Karma, executive director of the Papua Aids Commission (KPAD).

Councillor John Manangsang said the microchips would be implanted only in HIV patients who were deemed to be “aggressive”.

“Aggressive means actively seeking sexual intercourse. This is one way to protect healthy people,” he said.

“Do not misunderstand human rights; if we respect the rights of the people living with HIV/Aids, then we must also respect the rights of healthy people.”

He said the public should judge the bylaw draft as a whole rather than by its constituent articles.

“The draft, for example, requires everyone to take HIV/Aids tests so that preventative measures can be taken early,” he said.

“I am a doctor, saving lives is my profession. If we want to save the limited number of Papuans, we have to take real action because 47 per cent of the country’s HIV/Aids cases are in Papua.”

Papua is the largest province of Indonesia and comprises the larger part of the western half of the island of New Guinea.

The 40-article-long bylaw also stipulates that the KPAD executive director should be a physician who understands epidemiology.

A liaison officer of the West Papua chapter of the NGO Save Papua, Mr Gunawan, said he disagreed with the bylaw.

“People with HIV/Aids do not always have sex, especially those with full-blown Aids,” he said. “And how do you measure aggressiveness?”

Mr Gunawan said Indonesia would be the worst human-rights violator if the implant plan was passed.

Ms Enita Rouw, coordinator of the Papua branch of the Indonesian Network of People Infected with HIV, said incidences of discrimination against people with HIV/Aids had declined.

“However, the stigmatisation is still there,” she said. “So please don’t use microchips. We’re humans, not animals.”

The number of people living with HIV/Aids in Papua is increasing, with 319 new cases reported as of October this year, taking the total to 4,114 reported cases.

-The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network
View article at AsiaOne

Herb Mathisen
Northern News Services
Published Monday, November 17, 2008

TORONTO, ONT - Inuit in Canada have a rate of tuberculosis (TB) 90 times higher than the national average.

“The current rate of TB among Inuit in Canada is totally unacceptable,” said Gail Turner, the director of health with Nunatsiavut government. “It’s the worst ratio for any aboriginal group in the world.”

Approximately 100 delegates from more than 60 countries met in Toronto, Ont, from Nov. 12 to 14 to address the high rates of TB among the world’s aboriginal populations and to look for solutions to the problem.

“Coming out of this conference is the realization that the solutions are not going to be medical, they are going to be social,” said Turner, who addressed the conference Thursday.

She said TB rates tend to be higher in aboriginal populations due to the social conditions in some of the more remote communities.

Turner cited the limited access to medical health resources, along with inadequate housing and high rates of unemployment as factors.

“TB is a microscope of which we should look at society,” she said. “For each case or each outbreak, if you look behind it, what you will see is the real reasons we still have TB.”

Cheryl Case, communicable disease specialist with the Department of Health and Social Services, said the potentially fatal disease is fairly prevalent in the NWT.

Case said this is due to the way it spreads - through the air.

“It can float around in the air for quite a while,” she said.

Factors that increase the likelihood of spreading the disease are the time and airspace shared with the carrier, which could explain why tuberculosis is commonly associated with poverty or poor living conditions.

“TB is a disease of the marginalized population,” said Case.

“In other words, it comes down to persons who don’t have optimum nutrition, maybe living in overcrowded housing,” she said.

To date, there have been 13 reported cases of tuberculosis in the NWT this year.

Case said, on average, the NWT has about 10 cases per year.

Case said, however, last year’s outbreak at the Salvation Army in Yellowknife is a contributing factor to this year’s higher-than-normal cases.

Four communities in the NWT, including Yellowknife, have reported tuberculosis this year.

Case said the NWT has a centralized tuberculosis program that is getting stronger every year.

“We have people working on the front-line all over the NWT,” she said.

The department is working to keep health care workers educated and trained on the common signs of tuberculosis - including a cough that lasts for more than two weeks, feelings of fatigue, night sweats and chest pains. They are also ensuring healthcare workers know the common control measures.

“For every case identified as having TB, we ensure they take all their medication,” she said.

Case said tuberculosis is treatable, especially in its early stage.

“It is a curable disease but we know if people are not diagnosed early enough and the bacteria starts to take over their lungs and other parts of their bodies, then yes, they are susceptible to death,” she said.

Turner said aboriginal people have to be involved in creating solutions to problems affecting their communities.

The global Stop TB initiative hopes to decrease incidents of tuberculosis among aboriginal people by 50 per cent in 2015 from 1990 levels.

View article at Northern News Service

www.chinaview.cn 2008-11-17 22:20:58
NEW DELHI, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) — Press Council of India (PCI) has revised its 1993 guidelines for media coverage of HIV/AIDS and now says no to using the term “scourge”, hidden camera to show people living with HIV, and images of the sick and dying, reported Indo Asian News Service Monday.

The new guideline has also stipulated that journalists should not disclose the identity of the people infected with HIV. The council clarified that since “HIV is not synonymous with AIDS, ‘HIV/AIDS’ as a term is no longer considered accurate”.

India’s 1993 guidelines were revised after a writ petition was filed by the National Network of Positive People, objecting to visuals shown by the media of two children suffering from the condition and the subsequent false reporting of the death of one of them.

The court then directed the PCI to issue fresh directions to the media. The council held meetings with the UNAIDS and activists working in the field and issued its revised guidelines Sunday.

India is now home to 2.5 million HIV-positive patients, including 70,000 children below the age of 14.

View article at Xinhua

By Simeon Bennett

Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) — Interpol seized more than $6.65 million of counterfeit medicines against malaria, HIV and tuberculosis in Southeast Asia and made 27 arrests, disrupting the region’s fake drug trade for the second time in three years.

The haul, part of a five-month investigation called Operation Storm across Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, involved almost 200 raids, Aline Plancon, an officer involved in the action, said today by e-mail from Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Global sales of fake drugs may reach $75 billion in 2010, an increase of more than 90 percent from 2005, the Geneva-based World Health Organization said on its Web site, citing the New York-based Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.

Under Operation Storm, which ran from April 15 to Sept. 15, police seized more than 16 million pills, including fake antibiotics for pneumonia and child-related illnesses, Plancon said.

Asia is the world’s biggest producer of all counterfeit products, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a report last year. About 40 percent of 1,047 arrests related to fake drugs worldwide last year were made in Asia, according to the Washington-based Pharmaceutical Security Institute.

Counterfeits account for as much as 30 percent of all drugs in developing nations and less than 1 percent of all medicines in developed nations such as the U.S., according to the WHO.

Malaria Drugs

Of particular concern to health officials are copies of a class of malaria drugs called artemisinins that are the basis of the most effective treatments against the disease, including Novartis AG’s Coartem.

Counterfeit artemisinin-based treatments containing small amounts of the medicine are helping the parasite responsible for malaria to evade authentic drugs in patients near Cambodia’s border with Thailand, a recent study showed.

As a result, genuine artemisinin-based treatments are starting to fail, raising the risk the resistant parasite will spread, leaving millions of people defenseless against a disease that already kills about 2,400 people every day.

Operation Storm was a joint effort between Lyon, France- based Interpol, the WHO and the World Customs Organization. It’s the first time police, customs, drug regulators and health authorities from different nations have worked together to combat counterfeit medicines, Plancon said.

It followed Operation Jupiter, which led to drug seizures and arrests in China and Myanmar.

To contact the reporter on this story: Simeon Bennett in Singapore at sbennett9@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: November 17, 2008 03:34 EST

View article at Bloomberg.com