In Brief: Lack of midwives increases maternal deaths – Zimbabwe needs midwives now more than ever

Photo: IRIN

Receiving polio drops

HARARE,  – Increasing poverty, understaffing of clinics and shortages of equipment are seen as contributing to the increasing trend of maternal deaths in Zimbabwe, according to three UN agencies.

Apart from the 2,000 women who die as a result of giving birth, “Several thousands more suffer severe or long lasting illness or disabilities. Zimbabwe needs midwives now more than ever,” said the United Nations Population Fund, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization in a statement that coincided with the International Day of the Midwife on 5 May.

The country’s economic collapse is blamed for the migration of midwifery skills to neighbouring countries and further afield, which is thought to have exacerbated the figures for 2007, the last recorded statistics, when there were 1,068 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births, and a neonatal rate of 24 deaths in every 1,000 live births.

Between 2005 and 2006, only 68 percent of pregnant women were delivered by a skilled attendant, a situation Zimbabwe’s health ministry attributed to long distances between communities and health centres, poverty, and transport problems, particularly in rural areas.

fm/go/he source.www.irinnews.org

AFRICA: Governments must step up HIV funding, activists – It is time African governments started walking the talk and fulfilling their obligations

Photo: Glenna Gordon/IRIN

Activists fear other international donors may follow the US lead and reduce their global AIDS funding

NAIROBI,  – A disappointing allocation for global AIDS programmes in the United States budget means African governments will have to step up their own funding, say activists.

“It is time African governments started walking the talk and fulfilling their obligations,” James Kamau, director of the Kenya Treatment Access Movement, told a press conference in the capital, Nairobi, on 19 May. “The Kenyan government spends just 5.6 percent of the national budget on health, yet half a million people need ARVs [antiretrovirals] immediately.”

In 2001, African Union leaders signed a declaration in Abuja, Nigeria, that health budgets should constitute a minimum of 15 percent of national budgets, but according to Kamau, apart from notable exceptions like Botswana, Namibia and Zambia, the vast majority have failed to achieve this.

“Programmes like PEPFAR [the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief] are intended to be emergency short-term programmes – African governments need to plan for the long term,” he said. “Many, many more people need ARVs.”

The Regional Network on Equity in Health in Southern Africa (EQUINET), a network of research, civil society and health sector organisations, said African governments accounted for less than one percent of global health spending despite carrying 25 percent of the global disease burden, having over 60 percent of those living with HIV, and the highest burden of tuberculosis and malaria.

The activists said it was imperative that African governments step up their funding, but it was also important that the US reconsider its spending on global HIV programmes, especially in the short term.

It is time African governments started walking the talk and fulfilling their obligations

Paul Zeitz, executive director of the US-based Global AIDS Alliance, pointed out that US President Barack Obama’s proposed allocation of US$6 billion for PEPFAR’s HIV/AIDS programmes in 2010, and $900 million for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, fell short of his campaign commitment to allocate $7.5 billion a year to PEPFAR’s AIDS programmes, and $2.7 billion to the Global Fund.

“The funding shortfall in US spending on global HIV programmes is a tiny fraction of the total US budget of 3.6 trillion dollars,” Zeitz told the press conference. “That money can be found easily, with just a little political will.”

Researchers have estimated that 1.2 million deaths in Africa were averted between 2004 and 2007 as a direct result of interventions funded by PEPFAR.

“We have a saying in Kenya that if the lead sheep is limping, all the rest fall behind. The US’s decision could be a sign of things to come,” Kamau commented.

“The US has made a commitment to provide one-third of the total Global Fund budget; a decrease in US funding is therefore likely to translate to a decrease in funding provided by the other donors,” Zeitz noted.

“Governments are having to recalibrate their plans for HIV – in Malawi, for instance, the government has announced … that it will, from now on, only purchase and distribute first-line ARVs.”

Zeitz said AIDS activists appreciated that the US was in the midst of an economic recession, but “The US just spent one trillion dollars to bail out the banks on Wall Street, and the military budget has been increasing year on year; it is really a question of priorities.”

kr/ks/he source.www.irinnews.org

SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE: HIV makes a TV debut – Twenty years after the first case of HIV infection was recorded in the archipelago

Photo: Programa Nacional de Luta contra SIDA

The producers hope that people living with HIV will no longer have to hide their faces

SÃO TOMÉ,  – Twenty years after the first case of HIV infection was recorded in the archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe, off the coast of Gabon, six people living with HIV/AIDS have decided to take a stand against stigma and discrimination by telling their stories on national television.

A documentary, A Saída do Gueto (Coming out of the Ghetto), produced by the state-run public broadcaster, TVS, is a first for the country, where an estimated 3,000 people – 1.5 percent of the population of 155,000 – are living with HIV, according to data from the National Programme for the Fight Against AIDS.

Magda Soares, who discovered her HIV-positive status during a medical check-up in 2006, decided to appear in the film because she believes that discrimination by relatives, in the workplace and on the streets is the biggest problem faced by HIV-positive people.

“Nobody went to the market to buy this sickness – all diseases kill when they’re not treated, and those who live hiding their HIV/AIDS die as well,” she told IRIN/PlusNews.

Ignorance and prejudice

The film is the fruit of a project funded by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), which trained TVS broadcast journalists and technicians in programme production. It premiered on TVS on 15 May, and also on RTP, the Portuguese television network, and Canal France International.

Coming out of the Ghetto not only challenges viewers to question their attitudes to people living with HIV, but also asks for their help. “I call on people to do something for us, the HIV positive and those ill with AIDS,” says Celso Carvalho in his testimony.

“This documentary will awaken São Tomean society to become aware of the disease, because I believe that there are people here who still don’t believe that AIDS exists,” said Jacinto Godinho, the course instructor.

Rita Aleixo, programme coordinator at the international humanitarian organisation, Médicos do Mundo (Doctors of the World), hopes the film will educate people and contribute to reducing the strong AIDS-related stigma in São Tomé and Príncipe. “This documentary is a new era that is opening up in these people’s lives,” she said.

Celecia Pereira, a lawyer who assists Apoio à Vhida, the country’s first association of people living with HIV, said the documentary alone would not be enough to combat stigma.

“We don’t have any legal instrument to protect the HIV positive from the discrimination they suffer on a daily basis,” she said. “The first thing prospective employers ask for is an HIV test; we live in a country in which everybody knows who does and who doesn’t have AIDS.”

rg/cb/ll/jh//ks/he source.www.irinnews.org

KENYA: North-Eastern province at higher HV risk

Photo: Neil Thomas/IRIN

Only a quarter of women surveyed identified consistent condom use as a way to prevent HIV

GARISSA,  – In 2002, one bus per day connected Garissa, in Kenya’s North-Eastern Province, with the capital, Nairobi, and not a single case of HIV had been reported in the region.

By 2008, 30 buses were running between the two cities, bringing better access to goods and services, and more interaction between the traditionally conservative people of North-Eastern Province and the rest of the country. New research has shown that these interactions may also be contributing to an increase in HIV infections in the region.

A study by the AIDS, Population and Health Integrated Assistance programme, funded by USAID, found that although the HIV prevalence of just over one percent in North-Eastern Province was still significantly lower than the estimated national average of around eight percent, the sexual risk behaviours of people in Garissa were similar to those of other Kenyans.

Researchers assessed HIV risk behaviours in key groups – including students, taxi drivers, milk traders and truck drivers – living in Garissa, and also in the Nairobi neighbourhood of Eastleigh, which is largely populated by people from the northeast.

They found that 22 percent of men and 35 percent of women in Garissa had engaged in transactional sex, while nine percent of men and 14 percent of women had been forced to have sex.

More than half the young people reported having multiple sexual partners and engaging in sex to acquire cell phones, clothing and jewellery; 41 percent of those with a regular sexual partner never used a condom.

“A friend can ask you to have a ‘puff’ [a brief sex session] with the lady he is pushing with,” one Garissa student told researchers. “Such puffs become frequent and the lady ends up having many sexual partners at the same time.”

The study also showed that many people from North-Eastern Province had low levels of knowledge about HIV, heightening their risk. Only one-third of the men and a quarter of the women named consistent condom use as a way to prevent HIV transmission, while just over half the women and 39 percent of the men identified faithfulness to one partner as a prevention strategy.

In Nairobi the main sources of information about HIV were television and other media, while in Garissa most people learned about it from religious leaders, parents and other family members.

Misconceptions about how HIV is transmitted were common, and almost 75 percent of respondents in both Garissa and Eastleigh believed that AIDS was a punishment from God. Stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV were higher in Garissa, but were also present in Eastleigh.

“The government always quarantines sick animals to protect those that are healthy; it should do the same to people with HIV/AIDS – we must be protected,” Ibrahim Dekow, a miraa (local herbal stimulant) trader in Garissa, told IRIN/PlusNews.

The authors recommended intensifying HIV education programmes at schools, and targeting high-risk groups like miraa and milk vendors, sex workers and out-of-school youth with prevention programmes.

They also suggested working with religious leaders and using familiar faces – such as local women wearing the customary Islamic headscarf, or hijab – to deliver HIV prevention messages.

“We need a special approach to the HIV/AIDS programme in this province,” said Anab Haji, of Garissa Simaho, a local community health organisation. “We are very different to other parts of Kenya, and our problems require different solutions.”

na/kr/ks/he source.www.irinnews.org

1300 Girls Harmed by HPV Vaccines in UK; Bizarre Side Effects LikeParalysis and Epilepsy

1300 Girls Harmed by HPV Vaccines in UK; Bizarre Side Effects Like Paralysis and Epilepsy by David Gutierrez, staff writer (NaturalNews) More than 1,300 girls in the United Kingdom have experienced negative reactions to the government-mandated Cervarix vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV), according to adverse events reports collected from doctors by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

“When they introduced this new vaccine, we had major concerns about its safety,” said Jackie Fletcher of Jabs, a support group for those negatively affected by vaccines. “The current statistics detailing adverse reactions — including cases of epilepsy and convulsions — bears out that we were right to be concerned.” Cervarix, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, inoculates patients against strains 16 and 18 of HPV, which are believed to be responsible for 70 percent of cervical cancer cases. The British government began a program to vaccinate all secondary school girls in September 2008, and 700,000 have received the injections so far.

The government’s plan is to have all girls under the age of 18 vaccinated by 2011. Critics have objected, however, that the government based its decision on studies of women under the age of 26, rather than studies conducted on school-age girls. In addition, while the vaccine has been shown to prevent against HPV infection in the short term, there is no evidence of its long-term efficacy or that it actually lowers cancer rates. The MHRA reports show a total of 2,891 adverse events reported in 1,340 girls. The majority were minor and short-lived problems, such as swelling, rashes, pain or mild allergies to the vaccine.

A number of cases were more severe, however, including 20 cases of blurred vision, four cases of convulsions, one case of seizures and one epileptic fit. Five cases of partial paralysis were reported, including Bell’s palsy (face), Guillain-Barre syndrome (legs), hyopaesthesia (loss of sense of touch) and hemiparesis (severe weakening or paralysis of half the body). “The government needs to look at the future of this program given the number of side-effects coming through,” Fletcher said.

 

Sources for this story include: www.dailymail.co.uk.

Posted by Catherine Mills