Africa HIV News

Sex minorities and commercial sex workers pose the risk of increased HIV/AIDS prevalence in the society, according to a study which shows that over 30 per cent of the group have contracted the deadly virus.

A Human Rights Watch researcher, Ms Neela Ghoshal, said this in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday while releasing a report titled, 'Treat us like human beings,' which focuses on commercial sex workers, sex and gender minorities and people who use drugs in Tanzania.

Tanzanians who are most at risk of HIV face widespread police abuse and often can’t get help when they are victims of crime, Human Rights Watch and the Wake Up and Step Forward Coalition (WASO) said in a report released today.

The 98-page report, “‘Treat Us Like Human Beings:’ Discrimination against Sex Workers, Sexual and Gender Minorities, and People Who Use Drugs in Tanzania,”documents abuses including torture, rape, assault, arbitrary arrest, and extortion.

Nearly all of 44 Ugandan children who had genotypic resistance testing after failure of first-line antiretroviral therapy (ART) had mutations conferring resistance to both nonnucleosides and nucleosides. The findings underline the need for routine viral load monitoring in children and adults receiving ART.

Because viral load monitoring is not available in many resource-limited regions, antiretroviral-treated people may continue taking a failing regimen too long and so allow resistance mutations to accumulate.

President Joyce Banda has assured Malawians that the HIV and AIDS programmes will remain tight on the Government's agenda as a way to curb the pandemic.

The president made the remarks during the launch of up-scaling of HIV and AIDS programmes for the Joyce Banda Foundation International held at the College of Medicine in Blantyre on Sunday.

The president also said Tuberculosis and Malaria have mostly affected Southern Africa and assured Malawians that her government is committed to dealing with the diseases.

Thousands of Ugandan lives at stake after generic HIV/AIDS drugs deadline extension snub

The lives of thousands of Ugandans enrolled on HIV treatment hang in the balance after an application by poor countries to extend the deadline for manufacture of generic AIDS drugs was rejected by the World Trade Organization (WTO) under a treaty known as Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS).

Over 90% of HIV drugs in Uganda are generic drugs manufactured mostly in India, according to Denis Kibira, a pharmacist and Medicines Advisor at HEPS-Uganda, a coalition of health and social development rights organisations.

Press release

The Global Fund Board has approved $151 million in funding for a two-year extension of a single-stream-of-funding (SSF) HIV grant to Rwanda. The principal recipient (PR) for the grant is the Ministry of Health. In approving the funding, the Board was acting on recommendations of the Grant Approvals Committee (GAC) and the Technical Review Panel (TRP).

The SSF grant was formed from the consolidation of some rounds-based grants and a successful National Strategy Application (NSA).

Doctors in Libya say they are seeing a “growing” number of patients with drug problems and a corresponding risk of HIV infection, in a post-Gaddafi era marked by limited law enforcement and government capacity.

“Every month more people come to us needing help,” said Abdullah Fannir, deputy director of Gargaresh psychiatric hospital in Tripoli.

“It’s part of the fallout from the revolution. Border control is weak, making it easy for drug-traffickers, and there’s more demand as well. Hundreds of thousands of Libyans were displaced, wounded or bereaved during the uprising.”

It has been estimated that out of every 125, 000 Nigerian infants, 67,000 are born with the Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus (HIV) annually. This, according to an expert, is a sharp increase in the rate of mother to child transmission of the virus.

Kwara State AIDS Programme Coordinator in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Salmata Lawal, disclosed this during a sensitization programme on HIV/AIDS organised by the state Ministry of Information in conjunction with the Agency for the Control of AIDS (KWASACA).