Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and HIV fight for resources in Kenya

via PlusNews Global

"NCDs are sexy now, last year it was maternal health; there doesn't seem to be a genuine commitment by government to fully address any of these issues... where are the results? The government must not forget about people living with HIV," said James Kamau, coordinator of the Kenya Treatment Access Movement. "Where is the 15 percent they promised - that way, we could improve treatment of all illnesses."

The crowd of health issues jostling for a share of Kenya's inadequate health budget is expanding, with activists calling for an increase in resources for the management of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which account for more than 50 percent of hospital deaths and admissions.

"We need to see more commitment in terms of resources; we have policies and guidelines for the management of non-communicable illnesses, but we need strategic focus on operational implementation," said Andrew Suleh, medical superintendent of Mbagathi District Hospital in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

According to the NGO, NCD Alliance, NCDs are responsible for more than half of all hospital admissions and deaths; 13 percent of deaths are due to cardiovascular disease, while cancers account for 7 percent and diabetes for 4 percent of deaths, respectively.

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[If an item is not written by an IRMA member, it should not be construed that IRMA has taken a position on the article's content, whether in support or in opposition.]

How Much Would it Cost to End AIDS?

via Bloomberg, by Simeon Bennet

Michel Kazatchkine and Eric Goosby may be able to halt the spread of HIV. They just need the money.

The two men control the funds that buy drugs for most of the world’s AIDS patients. Studies in July provided the strongest evidence yet that medicines used since 1994 to treat HIV can almost eliminate the chance an infected person will pass the virus to a sex partner. Given to healthy people, the treatments can also protect against infection, offering the potential to end a pandemic that has killed 30 million people in 30 years.

Governments are now planning projects to assess whether those findings can be replicated in the real world, and what that might cost. Getting the drugs just to those patients who should be treated under existing guidelines would cost another $6 billion a year, according to the United Nations. Treating all those infected, in some of the world’s poorest countries, would cost tens of billions more.

Finding more money will be difficult with economic growth stalling and nations including the U.S., the biggest donor to the AIDS fight worldwide, trying to curtail overall spending to rein in debt. Funding for AIDS in poorer nations fell 10 percent to $6.9 billion in 2010 from 2009 levels, according to the UN.

“We may well be able to overcome AIDS,” Kazatchkine, the director of the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said in an interview. Still, “the gap between what the science is telling us we can achieve and what we would be able to achieve is at risk of increasing.”

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[If an item is not written by an IRMA member, it should not be construed that IRMA has taken a position on the article's content, whether in support or in opposition.]

Criminalizing HIV Transmission Will Only Spread the Problem

Via the Vancouver Sun, by Peter McKnight.

It sounds like the synopsis of a B-movie: Thanks to the long arm of the law, the world is once again safe from The Attack of the Killer HIV-people.

Safe from Johnson Aziga, the Ontario man who had sex with more than a dozen women without informing them of his HIV-positive status. Several of the women contracted HIV, including two who subsequently died, which led to Aziga being declared a dangerous offender and handed an indeterminate sentence earlier this week.

And safe from the 17-year-old Edmonton girl who was charged this week with two counts of aggravated sexual assault after allegedly having sex with two men without informing them of her HIV-positive status. The girl had been the subject of an urgent police bulletin, which led to the worldwide publication of her name, picture and health status. Aside from painting a rather ghoulish picture of people living with HIV, such unusual cases inevitably send the message that the best way to handle HIV-non-disclosure is through the criminal law.

Police forces across the country seem to have got the message, given the increase in the number and severity of charges laid for HIV-non-disclosure in recent years. Well over 100 HIV-positive people across Canada - and at least 14 in B.C. - have now been charged with offences ranging from assault to first-degree murder.

Courts, too, have been enthusiastic in prosecuting cases of non-disclosure, with defendants receiving everything from suspended sentences to, in Aziga's case, an indeterminate and potentially lifelong sentence of imprisonment.

This enthusiasm for criminal prosecution exists despite - or perhaps because of - uncertainty about the disclosure obligations of HIV-positive people. The Supreme Court of Canada has held that individuals are under a legal duty to reveal their HIV-positive status before engaging in sex that poses a "significant risk" of HIV transmission, but what constitutes a significant risk remains unclear.

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[If an item is not written by an IRMA member, it should not be construed that IRMA has taken a position on the article's content, whether in support or in opposition.]