A roundup of HIV-related news from Australian and selected international media.
In this edition:
Australia
The Australian, 13 Mar
Tags: STIs Trish Langdon WAAC Western-Australia miners fly-in-fly-out HIV
THE Barnett government is preparing the first guidelines in the nation to help resource companies reduce their workforces' exposure to sexually transmitted infections as the state's AIDS Council warns it is increasingly concerned about miners' risky behaviour.
Star Observer Online, 13 Mar
Tags: PLWHA-Vic SoFA welfare-to-work work PLHIV HIV
A new program which aims to get people living with HIV back into the workforce will start in Melbourne next month.
Our Region
Fiji Times (Fiji), 13 Mar
Tags: surveillance mortality Fiji HIV
THE Health Ministry has yet to ascertain how many people have died in the country so far from HIV/AIDS.
Radio New Zealand (New Zealand), 13 Mar
Tags: compensation Shaun Robinson NZAF rape disclosure HIV
The Aids Foundation says a Court of Appeal ruling that people with HIV could be charged with rape if they do not tell a sexual partner about their disease is over the top.
New Zealand Herald (New Zealand), 13 Mar
Tags: disclosure PTSD compensation NZ HIV
A precedent has been set for people who unwittingly have sex with HIV-positive people to be covered by ACC for mental injury.
Gay NZ (New Zealand), 12 Mar
Tags: coronial-inquiry suicide prisons NZ Glenn Mills HIV
A Coroner’s Inquest has heard the man accused of purposely infecting a string of sex partners with HIV was extremely anxious about the publicity surrounding his case, and threats from other inmates, prior to his death in his Auckland prison cell.
Radio New Zealand (New Zealand), 12 Mar
Tags: suicide coronial-inquiry prisons Glenn Mills NZ HIV
An inquest into the death of a man accused of deliberately infecting people with HIV has heard he was likely to have faced more serious charges.
TVNZ (New Zealand), 12 Mar
Tags: prisons coronial-inquiry Glenn Mills deliberately-infected HIV
A coroner's inquest into the death of a man accused of deliberately infecting people with HIV started in Auckland this morning.
New Zealand Herald (New Zealand), 12 Mar
Tags: inquest Glenn Mills criminal-law NZ HIV
Police had to limit the number of HIV-negative complainants against the man dubbed the 'HIV predator', a court has heard.
International
The Guardian (UK), 11 Mar
Tags: personal-stories children born-with-HIV HIV
Clive was nine years old when he discovered he was HIV positive. The devastating news that his mother, doctors and support workers had spent years preparing to break to him in the gentlest manner possible, was blurted out by a careless receptionist at his local hospital.
The Guardian (UK), 11 Mar
Tags: resistance AZT MTCT children born-with-HIV HIV
The first children with Aids were identified in the USA in 1983, two years after the first cases among gay men in San Francisco. This new and inexplicable disease was a death sentence. Nobody knew what it was, how it was caused or why it manifested in a variety of symptoms in different people. All they knew was that nobody was surviving.
Los Angeles Times (US), 8 Mar
Tags: women African-Americans USA HIV
HIV infection rates among black women in some parts of the United States are similar to the incidence seen in sub-Saharan Africa, researchers reported Thursday.
Washington Post (US), 10 Mar
Tags: stigma AIDS-free generation Hillary Clinton African-Americans USA faith-based-groups HIV
For more than 20 years, Juanita King sold her body to pay for crack cocaine. She’s done with all that now, but she struggles with a disease once considered a death sentence, and with her children, who aren’t ready to forgive.
Washington Post (US), 10 Mar opinion
Tags: risk compensation treatments-access AIDS-free generation PEPFAR circumcision colonialism sex-workers multiple-partners Hillary Clinton treatment as prevention Africa HIV
Optimism has never run higher that the AIDS epidemic can be defeated. Effective medications have reached millions of people worldwide over the past decade, and new research also suggests that even more investment in distributing HIV drugs mighthelp slow the disease’s spread.
HIV Treatment and Care
Aidsmap (UK), 10 Mar
Tags: CROI 2012 superinfection HIV
Two studies of people with HIV in Rakai, Uganda and Mombasa, Kenya presented at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections show that the rate at which they acquired second, subsequent strains of HIV was about the same as the HIV incidence rate in the general population.
Aidsmap (UK), 12 Mar
Tags: CD4-nadir smoking cancer HIV
A very low CD4 count in the past, and a history of smoking, are the most consistent risk factors to emerge from large studies of risks for developing non-AIDS-defining cancers, researchers reported at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle this week.
Aidsmap (UK), 12 Mar
Tags: ANI CROI 2012 neurology cognitive-impairment HIV
A number of papers at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections presented advances in research on HIV-related brain impairment and neurocognitive problems.
Aidsmap (UK), 13 Mar
Tags: CROI 2012 CROI elvitegravir quad-pill treatments HIV
The Quad single-tablet regimen, an all-in-one pill containing the experimental(Of a drug) Not licensed for use in humans, or as a treatment for a particular condition. Experimental drugs are studied in clinical trials to determine their safety and efficacy, and are sometimes made available via Special Access Schemes prior to their approval. integrase inhibitor elvitegravir plus two other antiretroviralA medication or other substance which is active against retroviruses such as HIV. drugs and a novel boosting agent, was as effective as the widely used Atripla combination but with fewer neuropsychiatric side-effects, researchers reported at the Nineteenth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections last week in Seattle. In a companion study the Quad regimen also matched boosted atazanavir (Reyataz).
Chicago Tribune (US)/Reuters, 12 Mar
Tags: Merck vorinostat IAS CDC Kevin De Cock CROI 2012 CROI cure HIV
Scientists, stymied for decades by the complexity of the human immunodeficiency virus, are making progress on several fronts in the search for a cure for HIV infections, a leading medical research conference was told this week in Seattle.
HIV Prevention
Bangkok Post (Thailand), 9 Mar
Tags: Paul De Lay UNAIDS treatment as prevention HIV
A new study shows that people living in areas where uptake of HIV treatment is high are less likely to acquire the virus than in places where few are given care, UNAIDS said Thursday.
ABC Science, 9 Mar
Tags: Kinsey-Institute condoms
Incorrect use of condoms is undermining their effectiveness(Of a drug or treatment). The maximum ability of a drug or treatment to produce a result regardless of dosage. A drug passes efficacy trials if it is effective at the dose tested and against the illness for which it is prescribed. In the standard procedure, Phase II clinical trials gauge efficacy, and Phase III trials confirm it. in preventing pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted infections, an international team of researchers has found.
HIV Criminalisation
Criminal HIV Transmission (UK), 9 Mar
Tags: intentionality law-reform Switzerland criminal-law HIV
In a remarkable turns of events in the Swiss Federal Assembly's National Council (lower house) yesterday, the new, revised Law on Epidemics was passed with a last minute amendment by Green MP Alec von Graffenried that only criminalises the intentional spread of a communicable disease.
Criminal HIV Transmission (UK), 12 Mar
Tags: NZAF compensation consent disclosure rape criminal-law NZ HIV
The New Zealand Court of Appeal has ruled that otherwise consensual unprotected sex without disclosure of known HIV-positive vitiates consent, meaning that potential HIV exposure (non-disclosure without transmission) could well be upgraded from criminal nuisance to sexual assault in future criminal cases.
Drugs
John Stanhope, WA Today, 13 Mar opinion
Tags: ACT CPSU needle-exchange NSP discrimination prisons IDU HCV HIV
Jail needle-exchange proposal brawl shows how prisoners remain fair game to be demonised and vilified, JON STANHOPE writes
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