Thursday, December 13, 2007

Canadian AIDS Society HIV/AIDS Education Survey


The Canadian AIDS Society is launching its HIV and AIDS Education survey. CAS wants to know more from parents/guardians, educators and students to improve HIV/AIDS education in Canada. You can help! Please take some time to fill out the survey. After you're finished, spread the word. Please tell others about this important survey and encourage them to participate!

Surveys for:

Parents/guardians

Educators

Students

The survey closes December 30, 2007.

Fighter for addicts ready to quit

Source: The Tyee

Ann Livingston of VANDU is wearied by death.
By Sarah Ripplinger
Published: December 13, 2007

After spending the past 13 years trying to save Vancouver's poor from the filthy alleys of the Downtown Eastside, Ann Livingston doesn't have a pension plan or any significant savings, but she has decided to quit her job.

Livingston, a star of the widely shown documentary Fix [video available in the library], has spent the last nine years co-ordinating the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), a non-profit operated by addicts. She's done a lot to help drug users get their voices heard. But she says she is tired of Vancouver's hypocrisy. While the host of the 2010 Olympics is termed the world's "most liveable city" by The Economist magazine, its poorest neighbourhood grapples with an epidemic of HIV/AIDS comparable to Botswana's.

After devoting more than a decade of her life helping people in the Downtown Eastside, Livingston says she hasn't noticed improvements in living conditions or a decrease in the demand for aid. In fact, she says, things just seem to be getting worse.

"Yeah, people did change, but then they died," Livingston remembers thinking to herself last spring. "I started to realize, I do leadership development with people who are very likely to die and there's more dead people now that I've worked with than live people." (...)

Click here to read the article.

Woman Misdiagnosed With HIV Gets $2.5 M

Source: The Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — A jury awarded $2.5 million in damages to a woman who received HIV treatments for almost nine years before discovering she never actually had the virus that causes AIDS.

In her lawsuit against a doctor who treated her, Audrey Serrano said the powerful combination of drugs she took triggered a string of ailments, including depression, chronic fatigue, loss of weight and appetite and inflammation of the intestine. Serrano, 45, said she cried after hearing the verdict Wednesday in Worcester Superior Court and was gratified that the jury believed her.

"I'm going to finish my school and I am going to continue to help others," Serrano said in a telephone interview from her Fitchburg home. "I am going to find another doctor that will help me."

Serrano's attorney, David Angueira, said Dr. Kwan Lai, who treated his client at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester's HIV clinic, repeatedly failed to order definitive tests even after monitoring of Serrano's treatment did not show the presence of HIV in her blood. (...)

Click here to read the article.

Figures on H.I.V. rate expected to rise

Source: The New York Times

By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: December 2, 2007

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 — More people in the United States are infected each year with the AIDS virus than previously thought, according to federal health officials, in a finding that could affect the debate over how much money should be spent on prevention efforts. No one is yet sure whether more people have actually been infected in recent years or the figures, still undergoing peer review, are simply a better estimate than the old ones.

For 14 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used informal methods to estimate that about 40,000 people annually in the United States are newly infected with H.I.V. In recent years, federal officials have worked to set up a more accurate assessment technique. The numbers from the new system are now in, although the agency has not released them. The Washington Blade, a gay newspaper, reported on Nov. 14 that the new estimates showed infection rates were 50 percent higher than previously believed, with 58,000 to 63,000 infected in the most recent 12-month period. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal had similar reports on Saturday.

“We currently have a paper going through a scientific review process,” Tom Skinner, a C.D.C. spokesman, said Saturday, “and until that process is complete, we’re not in a position to say one way or another whether the numbers will actually be up from current estimates.”

A federal official who would not speak for attribution about the new numbers because of the review process said they were indeed higher than the old estimate, but not by as much as The Blade and The Post reported. It has been clear for at least a year that the old estimate would have to be revised upward, said David R. Holtgrave of Johns Hopkins University, a former director of one of the C.D.C.’s principal AIDS prevention programs. From 2001 to 2005, more than 186,000 people in 33 states received diagnoses of H.I.V. or AIDS, according to figures. That amounts to more than 37,000 new cases each year from just two-thirds of the country.

“With just a little simple math, you get more than 40,000 new cases,” Dr. Holtgrave said.

Whether the number of infections is higher than previously believed and whether infection rates are rising are both politically charged issues. President Bush has increased financing for AIDS treatment and prevention programs abroad, but spending for domestic prevention efforts dropped 19 percent in inflation-adjusted terms from 2002 to 2007.

Julie Davids, executive director of the Community H.I.V./AIDS Mobilization Project, a national advocacy group, said it planned to protest Tuesday in front of the C.D.C. headquarters in Atlanta to demand that the agency release the new figures and step up prevention efforts. “We don’t know whether infection rates are rising or they’ve just been higher than we thought,” Ms. Davids said. “But either way, this shows that prevention efforts are insufficient.”

Doctors and states are required to report cases of full-blown AIDS, but only some states report positive results on tests for H.I.V. infection to the agency. It takes years for someone who is infected to develop symptoms; many people have been infected for years before they are tested. Under the C.D.C.’s new surveillance system, 19 states and cities are performing two different blood tests of H.I.V. antibodies — the first indication of an infection. One test is highly sensitive and is able to spot an infection even in its earliest months. The other test is cruder, and patients must nurse an infection for many months before it can be identified with this test. When a blood sample receives a positive result on the first test and a negative result on the second, officials have decided that this person was probably infected recently. By adding up these mixed results and projecting them across the country, the agency is able to come up with an estimate for new infections. The agency sent out a letter to scientists on Nov. 26 describing the new system and urging patience as the numbers are reviewed.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting from New York.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

New event at PARC: HIV and Nutrition

The PARC library and
BCPWA Treatment Information Program (TIP)

are hosting an event on
Nutrition and HIV


Videos on nutrition will be presented:
Wednesday, December 12th and Tuesday December 18th, 12:00PM 3:00PM.

There will also be a book display until Thursday, December 20th.

Come and get your copy of the new
"Practical guide on
nutrition for people living with HIV
"
published by CATIE!

Lawmakers Protest HIV/AIDS Travel Rule

Source: Yahoo News
By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - On World AIDS Day last month the White House said new rules would soon make it easier for people with HIV/AIDS to travel to the United States. Democratic lawmakers and gay rights groups are complaining that the regulations proposed by the Homeland Security Department could actually create more barriers.

Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., said Tuesday that the proposal "offers little of value to HIV-positive applicants."

"It imposes strict requirements that unfairly limit travel to the United States," Kennedy said after chairing a Senate health committee hearing on the Bush administration's international AIDS efforts. "It is mired in the past, a past where people feared HIV as a contagious disease that could not be controlled or effectively managed."

Bebe Anderson, HIV project director at the gay civil rights group Lambda Legal, said the rules were "inappropriate based on medicine and public health concerns."

Gay rights advocates have long opposed a 1993 federal law that strictly restricts travel and immigration to the U.S. by HIV-positive people, arguing it's discriminatory. Foreigners with the virus can obtain visas only after receiving a waiver from the Homeland Security Department in a cumbersome process that requires approval from DHS headquarters.

The White House says it wants to make the process easier for HIV-positive people seeking 30-day stays. As President Bush observed World AIDS Day on Nov. 30, the administration announced the publication of regulations meant to speed up the process. (...)

Click here to read this article

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

New issue of JANAC: Vol. 18, no 6, Nov/Dec 2007

Just Say No
Lucy Bradley-Springer
pages 1-2

Features
Conception Practices of HIV-Infected Women in the Midwest
Nancy J. Cibulka
pages 3-12
Abstract

Predictors of sexual Behaviors Among Thai Young Adults
Amnuayporn Rasamimari, Barbara Dancy, Marie Talashek et al.
pages 13-21
Abstract

HIV/AIDS Education, Prevention and Control Course (BNS101): The Way Forward
Keitshokile Dintle Mogobe, Naomi Seboni, Marie Scott Brown et al.
pages 22-31
Abstract

Nurses' Health Education Program in India Increases HIV Knowledge and Reduces Fear
Hemlata Pisal, Savita Sutar, Jayagowri Sastry et al.
pages 32-43
Abstract

Comprehensive Clinical Adherence Interventions to Enable Antiretroviral Therapy: A Case Report
Dunja Nicca, Kimberly Moody, Luigia Elzi, Rebecca Spirig
pages 44-53
Abstract

Healthy Lifestyles and Health-Related Quality of Life Among Men Living With HIV Infection
Constance R. Uphold, Wanda Holmes, Kimberly Reid, Kimberly Findley, Jorge P. Parada
pages 54-66
Abstract

Relationships Among Functional Social Support, HIV-Related Stigma, Social Problem Solving, and Depressive Symptoms in People Living With HIV: A Pilot Study
Worawan Prachakul, Joan S. Grant, Norman L. Keltner
pages 67-76
Abstract

Practice Brief
Difficult-to-Manage HIV/AIDS Clients With Psychiatric Illness and Substance Abuse Problems: A Collaborative Practice With Psychiatric Advanced Practice Nurses
Betty D. Morgan, Anne P. Rossi
pages 77-84
Abstract

Research Brief
Process and Contents of Telephone Consultations Between Registered Nurses and Clients with HIV/AIDS in Japan
Masakazu Nishigaki, Megumi Shimada, Kazuko Ikeda,
pages 85-96
Abstract

Contact the library to request copies of articles.

Monday, December 03, 2007

Unstable housing makes access to B.C. AIDS treatment difficult

Source: CBC News

The B.C. Persons With AIDS Society says thousands of British Columbians with the disease are not receiving the medication and services available to them because they are low-income people with unstable housing.

About 4,000 people in B.C. are on antiretroviral therapy, which is a drug combination that helps control the HIV virus, said Glyn Townson, the group's chair.

"We know that there's at least 2,000 people here who meet the current criteria that should be treated but because of unstable housing [and] because of communication barriers, they're not accessing that treatment," Townson told CBC News.

Townson said he was diagnosed with the disease in 1995 but has been living a relatively full life thanks to the drugs developed to combat AIDS.

He said more treatment centres will help but with thousands homeless in Vancouver, getting those who are high risk tested and stabilized continues to be a huge challenge.

Townson said people should know there are better medications available and that finding out they have HIV-AIDS is no longer the death sentence it once was.