It that time of year for the International HIV/AIDS conference this time in Vienna in Austria.
There will be much online coverage and reporting thereafter in the usual magazines and across the sector.
If you want to follow what happens here are some links, by no means, all that you may find useful
http://www.aids2010.org - the conference website
http://blog.aids2010.org - an ongoing blog throughout the conference period.
if you use twitter
The AIDS2010 twitter feed is - http://twitter.com/aids2010
Baseline Magazine are tweeting coverage here - http://twitter.com/Baselinetweet
The All Party Parliamentary Group HIV/AIDS is also tweeting here - http://twitter.com/APPG_HIV_AIDS
And of course you are welcome to follow us at http://twitter.com/tcell_org_uk
PDF version
From the All Party Parliamentary Group on HIV/AID's
Laws against HIV transmission counter- productive UN Human Rights chief tells MPs
20th July 2010
APPG in Vienna...
The UN’s top human rights adviser on torture, urged MPs from around the world to think carefully before creating laws that criminalise the transmission of HIV, at a packed event today in the Austrian parliament.
Professor Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, told MPs that there was no evidence that such laws were effective in reducing transmission and on the contrary, they made fighting AIDS more difficult.
He warned that such laws “created a false sense of security amongst HIV negatives.”
However, a Ugandan MP insisted that the new HIV laws currently going through her parliament were necessary to protect people who are HIV negative.
The Ugandan ‘HIV Prevention and Control Bill’ would prosecute individuals who are aware of their HIV status and pass on their infection. It would also allow medical practitioners to disclose a patient's HIV status to others.
In a high controversial move, the country has also been considering whether to ramp up its penalties against gay men in an Anti-Homosexuality Bill that proposes hanging for certain gay ‘offences’.
MPs from Angola to the Ukraine to Ecaudor heard about the unintended impacts of such laws which criminalise gay men, and other groups particularly vulnerable to AIDS.
Susan Timerlake, a lwayer for the UN’s specialist AIDS programme, explained,
“Criminalisation drives people underground, reducing voluntary testing and increasing unsafe practices.”
Human rights NGOs say that gay men in countries like Uganda find it difficult to speak openly to their doctors or seek advice because they fear prosecution.
At a later session chaired by The All Party Parliamentary Group on AIDS, MP delegates also heard that pregnant women and mothers face punitive AIDS laws in some countries.
There has been a recent surge in Africa countries passing laws to criminalise mother to child transmission of HIV.
Transmission can be avoided if the mother takes the right medicines. However using the law to require mums to test and take the medication could have negative consequences.
The prospect of jail would deter women from using health services said a South African MP “I’d have may baby at home or think twice before having a test.” she commented.
Thus far the majority of criminal prosecutions for HIV transmission of any kind have occurred in North America and Western Europe.
Now there are concerns that African criminal cases may mushroom following the introduction of new laws.
UNAIDS is calling on MPs from all countries to put aside their moral views, consider the evidence and repeal laws which are a barrier to tackling the HIV epidemic.
UNODC toolkit for HIV situation and needs assessment in prisons
The Toolkit was launched at the 2010 International AIDS Conference. It provides information and guidance on conducting situation and needs assessments for the prevention and treatment of HIV infection and tuberculosis in prisons. The document aims to help governments set more specific targets for achieving the universal access of prisoners to evidence-based HIV prevention, treatment, care and support interventions.
The launch of the Toolkit supports the aim of the AIDS 2010 conference calling for "Rights Here, Right Now" since the rights of prisoners are often overlooked by public health authorities.
Some of the core issues and findings to come out of the Toolkit are:
- From the limited data available, it is evident that HIV, hepatitis C and TB rates in prisons are particularly high, and always higher than in the community at large. In Mauritius for instance the rate is up to 50 times higher. In the absence of appropriate measures, outbreaks can occur - for example in Australia, Lithuania, Russia, Scotland and Thailand;
- Women in prisons are at higher risk than men in prisons. In the US state of Connecticut in the year 2006 for example, HIV prevalence for women prisoners was at 16 per cent compared to 5 per cent among male prisoners;
- Annually 30 million men, women and children spend time in prisons and are therefore at risk for HIV, hepatitis C and TB and may continue their spread after they leave prison;
- Effective policies to prevent HIV and hepatitis inside prisons and other correctional institutions are often hampered because of the denial of the existence of factors contributing to the spread of HIV such as men having sex with men, drug use or tattooing;
- The people at greatest risk of contracting HIV are also those who are at greater risk of committing crime and facing incarceration, such as drug dependent people or the mentally ill;
- Effective action to address HIV and AIDS must be undertaken in substandard or antiquated prison conditions. Overcrowding, violence, corruption, inadequate natural lighting and ventilation, violence and malnutrition, are common in many prisons across the world and undermine the implementation of effective responses to HIV and AIDS;
- All HIV prevention, treatment and care interventions, including harm reduction interventions, available in prisons, must be available both to prisoners and prison staff. There is evidence that all HIV prevention and treatment interventions are effective in prisons. Health care in prisons should be at least equivalent to that in the community;
- Detained persons living with HIV are often stigmatized and at increased risk of isolation, violence, and human rights abuses from both prisoners and prison staff.
Read the full toolkit.
Ground-breaking new research has shown that as the average age of people living with HIV in Britain rises they are facing huge financial and social problems related to their condition.
Produced jointly by the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) and Age UK, the first national study of its kind looked at the implications of the illness on people over 50, many of whom expected to have died sooner after being diagnosed back in the 1990s before effective treatment was available. Today, someone diagnosed with HIV in their 30s can expect to live into their 70s, with proper treatment.
The investigation revealed that, while effective drug treatment can dramatically lengthen the lifespan of HIV-positive individuals, it does age people far faster, throwing up implications for the future care of patients – often gay men who are feeling socially isolated.
There are now an estimated 90,000 people living with HIV in the UK, with almost a third of those infected unaware of their status. Last year one in six of those receiving treatment for HIV was aged over 50.
Lisa Power, policy director of the trust, who will present her report to the World Aids Conference in Vienna on Wednesday, said the research had thrown up a lot of surprises, not least that older people living with HIV were experiencing far more health problems than other people of the same age.
"Whether it is a result of treatments, the rough and ready ones that were first available in the late 90s, or the result of how long they were ill before they were diagnosed and began effective treatments is not clear, and more clinical work needs to be done on that. This does paint a clear picture, though, of people living with HIV and over 50 being really much more financially poorer and socially isolated than their peers. They have been systematically disadvantaged and have huge fears about the future in terms of social care; many had experienced a lot of discrimination, interestingly not from disclosing their status socially, but in healthcare and in the workplace."
When former British Telecom manager Julian Hows, now 54, was told in 1990 he had HIV he said it felt like a death sentence. "I was going to die, so I left my job, cashed in my pension and went off round the world, did all my credit cards," he said. "Five years later I was still alive, which was a bit of a shock. I had burned a lot of bridges, I was out of the jobs market. A lot of friends had died."
When the first treatments came in, in the late 1990s, Hows was, like many others, a guinea pig for often toxic drugs that kept them alive but with side-effects still little understood.
He suffers from a weak chest and has had repeated bouts of pneumonia. "We all look towards old age with a certain fear, but without HIV I would have been looking forward to a comfortable retirement, the mortgage paid off. Now, for those of us over 50, we face the vagaries of state care, our social networks depleted, so those fears are very much heightened."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/18/hiv-over-50s-cash-problems