Comrades's blog

We are on the verge of achieving several major public health breakthroughs. According to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, by 2015 we could virtually eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and finally eradicate malaria as a public health problem. The International AIDS Society reports that if everyone who needed treatment for HIV received it, we could save millions of lives and reduce new HIV infections by up to a third. And we could meet the United Nations millennium development target of reducing tuberculosis prevalence by half, and contain the threat of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.
We could do it. But will we?

Background story: http://www.worldcarecouncil.org/content/cambodia-un-should-review-role-d...

UNICEF must do more to oppose Cambodia’s involuntary rehab centres, comment by Joe Amon

My 8-year-old son was understandably confused earlier this month. He was sitting in my lap as I read news that the United Nations agency responsible for protecting children’s rights was being criticised for supporting Cambodian detention centres where children are subject to arbitrary detention, torture, violent beatings and other sadistic punishments. “UNICEF is torturing kids, Dad?” he asked.
Investigations by Human Rights Watch had uncovered widespread and serious abuses in Cambodia’s drug detention centres, including a “youth rehabilitation” centre run by the Ministry of Social Affairs. The news accounts were critical of UNICEF’s support for the ministry and for the youth centre at Choam Chao. UNICEF’s Cambodia office was vague and equivocal in response to the reports of torture and abuse, but no, I told my son, UNICEF was not torturing kids.

SWAPOL, Swaziland Nurses Association, Positive Women Together in Action and ARASA call for uninterrupted supply to TB/HIV treatment. Swaziland Positive Living (SWAPOL), Swaziland Nurses Association (SNA), Positive Women Together in Action and the AIDS & Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA) have called upon on the government of Swaziland to ensure a constant, uninterrupted and predictable supply of essential medical supplies at all levels of the Swazi health system, particularly TB and HIV prevention, diagnostics and treatment.

Much of the discussion surrounding President Barack Obama's proposed fee on financial institutions to help cut the U.S. deficit overlooks how similar revenue-generating ideas could close the glaring gaps in the global fight against several health emergencies. Even though the past decade has seen a dramatic increase in efforts and funds dedicated to global health programs -- governments and private sources contributed upwards of $22 billion in 2007 -- huge shortfalls exist. Unprecedented efforts have given 4 million people living with HIV/AIDS access to treatment, but 10 million more have been left behind. The lack of maternal and childhood health services, including emergency obstetric care and vaccinations against pneumonia and measles, desperately needs to be addressed. Without better diagnostics and medicines, we cannot hope to stem the tide against tuberculosis or the most neglected diseases like Chagas, sleeping sickness, and kala azar.

Dear Minister Thomas (and Ambassador Goosby), You know, I guess after decades of being an empire, the British can't give up easily. On 9th March, DfiD is hosting a high-level meeting in London, with the heads of UNAIDS, the Global Fund, PEPFAR, and African ministers to decide the fate of AIDS in Africa. It's clearly a framing meeting, to decide what the "new" message is that will come out at the next G-8 and G-20 meetings, and that message to millions of people with AIDS in Africa is:
1) you're not invited to these discussions--you don't count enough to be part of the decision-making about your own lives--we know what's best for you;
2) AIDS treatment is dead. "While we want a strong focus on prevention, we need to see UA clearly guiding the prevention focus.

The Food and United States Drug Administration (FDA) states that 10% of all drugs sold in the global medicine market are counterfeit. According to WHO, 25% of the drugs consumed in developing countries are fake. Counterfeit drugs are a major concern in the growing economies of Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia where their prevalence is about 10%. In Vietnam an investigation shows that 64% of antimalarial tablets contained no active ingredient, which eventually led to the death of patients. In India 7% of medicines were found counterfeit and Indian companies were accused of exporting counterfeits to African markets. Counterfeit drugs are 40-50% of all the drugs present in Pakistan. Pakistan is considered one of the 13 countries of the world where the manufacturing of counterfeit medicines is on the rise. The situation is alarming, as the country is also alleged as being a counterfeit hub- exporting counterfeit drugs to North America. ( Source: http://www.chowk.com/articles/10120 )
Javed Abbas

Recently, media was abuzz with news of an orphanage in Gandhidham in Gujarat's Kutch district removing two minor boys after they tested positive for HIV. The head of the orphanage claimed that the young boys posed a risk to the other children in the orphanage. The young boys have lost their mother to AIDS, their father suffers from mental illness and no one else in their family is willing to look after them. So these boys - aged six and nine - barely recovered from the grief of having lost a parent, found themselves being taken out of their family and put in an unfamiliar orphanage, and being thrown out of even that place.

This story is neither unusual nor is it new. Across the country, Indians living with HIV face neglect, discrimination and violence. Sometimes we hear about it, sometimes we don't. We heard about the two children in Kerala who were forced out of their school when parents of other students threatened to pull their children out of school. We did not read about the man who died from AIDS and was refused burial services; we did not hear about the man who lost his job at a privately owned factory after his employers found out he was HIV+; news channels did not interview the pregnant woman living with HIV who delivered her baby all by herself isolated in a delivery room with no help from doctors or nurses.

All these situations have occurred with unnerving frequency in India in the last few years despite government policies that espouse a humane response.

Good nutrition is increasingly recognised as an important component in the effective treatment of HIV infections. As Edward Low plucks generic names of HIV drugs out effortlessly with nary a glimpse at the fact sheet on his laptop, traces of the average guy who spent most of his life – including the initial years when HIV became part of it – putting his health on the back burner are barely detectable. “I’d never been overly concerned (before),” he says. “I started learning only when I started treatment and gained experience on the ways to take care of myself.” Low was just about to start taking medications for his HIV infection four years ago (seven years after his diagnosis), when an opportunistic infection hospitalised him. His CD4+ count plunged and he weighed 25kg less after he survived the infection. (The CD4+ count is a marker used to estimate the levels of white blood cells in a person’s blood following HIV infection; this tells you how well his immune system is functioning.)

As the global architects of a new treaty to combat climate change meet in Copenhagen this month, they continue to work from a conspicuously incomplete blueprint.

More than 1 billion people across all continents live in slums. These communities, characterized by inadequate housing, lack of basic services, overcrowding, and high levels of violence and insecurity, are also places where residents live, work, and raise their children. Yet, many governments are failing in their duty to protect the rights of these people.

Global slum populations are growing at alarming rates. Disinvestment in rural areas, conflict, natural disasters, climate change, forced evictions and corporate land grabbing continue to force people to migrate to cities where affordable housing is scarce.

People living in slums experience a staggering number of human rights violations. They are routinely denied their right to adequate housing, safe water, sanitation and drainage, electricity, health and education, and face the constant threat of police and gang violence, and forced eviction.