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The Baton Rouge Advocate/WBRZ: “Ministers from seven Baton Rouge churches soon will step forward and be among the first tested for the HIV/AIDS virus in a new pastoral effort to combat the city’s high incidence rate. The ministerial initiative was prompted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s summer report showing the Baton Rouge metro area ranks third in the nation for AIDS case rates … Only 10 percent of the Baton Rouge population has been tested for the disease, said Jack Carrel, prevention manager with the Louisiana Office of Public Health, HIV/AIDS Prevention Program … In Baton Rouge, ‘people find out very late in the HIV process,’ he said” (Couvillion, 6/22). The action was prompted by a CDC report.

In related news, WAPT.com (Jackson, Miss.), examines how the Office of National AIDS Policy chose large cities and Southern cities to hold their HIV/AIDS community forums to address HIV/AIDS on a national level (8/24).

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Former National Basketball Association player Earvin “Magic” Johnson gave the opening address of the CDC’s 2009 HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta, the Southern Voice blog “The Latest” reports. He “spoke frankly about being HIV positive for nearly 20 years,” and discussed the impact black religious leaders have on addressing HIV/AIDS in the black community, according to the blog. Johnson said, “We now have a major problem in urban America, in inner cities - the face of AIDS has changed from a gay white man’s disease to a black and [Hispanic] disease. And if we don’t get the black church involved, there is no way we can bring these numbers (of new HIV cases) down.” The Magic Johnson Foundation “is working to partner with black churches … because African-Americans are disproportionately impacted by the disease,” according to the blog. Johnson said, “We all have to get black churches involved. If we do, we will see change quickly. One constant in the black community is the church” (Bagby, 8/24).

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Foster City, Calif.-based Gilead Sciences on Thursday said it has entered into a license and collaboration agreement with Johnson and Johnson subsidiary Tibotec Pharmaceuticals for the development and commercialization of a new once-daily fixed-dose treatment for HIV, the San Francisco Business Times reports. The FDA approved the first once-daily HIV treatment Atripla in 2006 (7/16). The new antiretroviral drug would contain Tibotec’s experimental non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor, known as TMC278, and Gilead’s combination pill, Truvada. Kevin Young, head of commercial operations at Gilead “said the new combination pill, along with Gilead’s experimental ‘quad’ pill, will be used for newly-diagnosed patients, with physicians reluctant to change therapy for patients who are responding well to Atripla,” Reuters reports. Young said the drug is expected to reach the market in 2011 (Beasley, 7/16).

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The Department of Justice on Thursday said that it is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act to bar people — such as barbers, masseuses, and home health care aides — from receiving professional licenses or training at occupational schools because they have HIV or AIDS, the AP/Los Angeles Times reports. Some states, for example, require that cosmetologists be free of communicable diseases. “The government says that type of regulation is outdated and was not intended to bar people with HIV. The original goal of such a rule was to prevent the spread of tuberculosis and other diseases, not prevent people with [HIV] from working in certain fields,” according to the AP/Times. Furthermore, “The Supreme Court has found people with AIDS or HIV are covered under the law barring discrimination against people with disabilities,” the article states (7/16).

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The U.N. Development Program (UNDP) will help fund a three-year program in response to the increase in HIV/AIDS cases in the Philippines, the Manila Bulletin reports. The program aims to help the country combat the spread of the disease and reach the related U.N. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets. “The program has five components that aim to develop intervention packages, especially among vulnerable and at-risk groups in rural areas,” writes the Manila Bulletin (Sabater, 7/23).

On Thursday, Renaud Meyer, the UNDP country director, said about 89 percent of reported HIV transmissions were due to unprotected sex, AFP/Google.com reports. “All the main ingredients for an epidemic are present in the country,” he said. Most of the people who have contracted HIV are males in their 20s who had same-sex relationships and are mainly from urbanised areas around Manila, Meyer said, adding that it is likely that the government will fall short of achieving the MDG of decreasing the spread of HIV by 2015.

Meyer said that condom use among the most at-risk groups — “including homosexual men, female sex workers and their male clients” — is below 90 percent, he said, AFP/Google.com reports (7/23). According to the Manila Times Meyer said, “It is important to promote voluntary testing especially among vulnerable and high risk group[s] because when more people get tested, we’ll have a better knowledge on the real situation in the Philippines” (7/24).

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In Chicago, 17.4 percent of gay men are estimated to be HIV-positive, compared with 1.2 percent of the general male population, according to a new report by the Chicago Public Health Department, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The report is based on data collected from 570 Chicago men through the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance system, and found that half of the men with HIV were unaware they were infected (Thomas, 7/25). “Health officials said Friday, information in the report on HIV infection mark the first time Chicago health officials have used blood-testing to determine infection rates among men,” the AP/Chicago Tribune reports. In the past, estimates have relied on interviews with gay and bisexual men, according to Christopher Brown, the Public Health Department assistant commissioner. The report also found that “black men who have sex with other men have double the HIV infection rates of white and Hispanic men,” the AP/Tribune reports (7/24).

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House Democrats on Friday as part of a spending measure to fund the Departments of Labor and HHS for fiscal year 2010, “unveiled legislation to lift a ban on federal funding for needle-exchange programs, a shift to try to reduce [HIV infections] but one that will probably spark a fight,” Reuters/Boston Globe reports (7/11). The ban has been included in the annual spending bill in previous years. House Appropriations Committee Chair David Obey (D-Wis.) said, “Scientific studies have documented that needle exchange programs, when implemented as part of a comprehensive prevention strategy, are an effective public health intervention for reducing [HIV] infections and do not promote drug use” (Reuters, Pelofsky, 7/10). “The move is in keeping with a pledge [President] Obama made during the primaries to remove the prohibition on such funding, although the ban was carried in his budget request this year,” CQ Today reports (Wolfe, 7/10). However, “Republicans are girding for a fight over the ban and lawmakers could try to restore it as the legislation moves through the House during the next two weeks,” according to Reuters (7/10). The bill also addresses sex education and “appears to continue Democrats’ slow march away from funding abstinence-only sex education,” CQ reports (7/10).

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A recent court decision in Black Hawk County, Iowa where a 34-year-old HIV-positive man was sentenced to 25 years in prison and a lifetime of parole for not informing a sexual partner of his status, might lead to a national discussion on state criminal transmission laws, the Iowa Independent reports. Nick Clayton Rhoades pleaded guilty to criminal transmission of HIV, a felony in Iowa, although he did not transmit the virus to his partner. Under state law, “in direct contradiction to its formal title,” transmission is not required for a person to be prosecuted - engaging in activity that intentionally exposes others to the body fluids of an infected person could result in prosecution, including kissing, according to the Independent. Some say that such unintended consequences might encourage Iowa and other states to revisit their transmission laws, the article states (Waddington, Iowa Independent, 6/29).

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Botswana’s Ministry of Health is launching a project that aims to circumcise nearly 500,000 men over the next five years in an effort to prevent the spread of HIV, the uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/botswana/5292646/Botswana-to-circumcise-half-a-million-men-in-Aids-fight.html” target=”_new”>AFP/Daily Telegraph reports. Janet Mwambona, a public health specialist who is leading the project, said that officials decided to launch the program following a series of studies that showed circumcision can reduce a man’s risk of HIV. “For the public health benefits of the preventive effect of circumcision to be realized, the Ministry of Health is supposed to cover 80% of eligible males in Botswana,” Mwambona said, adding that hospitals nationwide are scheduling and performing the procedure.

According to the AFP/Telegraph, about 50 health care providers, including 27 physicians, have been trained to perform surgical circumcisions. In addition, the campaign includes television and radio advertisements that encourage men to visit clinics to undergo a safe circumcision surgery (AFP/Daily Telegraph, 5/8).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

© 2009 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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