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“The U.S. State Department … has agreed to policy changes that will prevent people with HIV from being automatically barred from working under department contracts” according to the American Civil Liberties Union, the Advocate.com reports. The action was prompted after the ACLU filed a lawsuit in September 2008 on behalf of a 20-year-old veteran who was denied employment by a federal contractor because of his HIV status. “The suit claimed that John Doe, as he is identified in court documents, was illegally fired, violating the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act” (Garcia 8/25).

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KHOU.com examines the Ryan White Program, which expires on Sept. 30: “If Congress doesn’t reauthorize it, patients in cities across the country may go without access to their medications, doctors and case management.” KHOU.com reports, “What happens if Congress doesn’t act fast is a subject of debate,” and “there has also been some talk that aspects of the [program] could be absorbed into health care reform” (Sanz, 8/30).

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During a press conference on Thursday, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warned that the “global economic crisis and calls to commit funds to other health crises” threatened to undermine recent gains in the fight against HIV/AIDS, the Associated Press reports. MSF “says money for other health issues should be given in addition to money for [HIV/]AIDS” (11/5).

“After almost a decade of progress in rolling out AIDS treatment we have seen substantial improvements, both for patients and public health,” Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director of MSF’s Access to Essential Medicines Campaign, said in a press release (11/5).

“The HIV/AIDS emergency is definitely not over,” von Schoen-Angerer added. The news conference coincided with the organization’s release of a report (.pdf) that examines the impact of HIV/AIDS treatment programs worldwide, including an increase in the number of patients on antiretroviral therapy, Deutsche Presse-Agentur/M&C reports (11/5).

“A stronger commitment to other health priorities must happen, but this should be in addition to, not instead of, continued, increased commitment to HIV/AIDS,” von Schoen-Angerer said. According to the release, “The report provides evidence that, particularly in high HIV-prevalence settings, treating AIDS has a positive impact on other important health goals, in particular maternal and child health” (11/5).

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The National HIV Prevention Conference will take place Aug. 23 to Aug. 26 in Atlanta and will feature discussions, a town hall, seminars and speeches that address HIV prevention including some focused on the gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual community, Southern Voice’s blog, “The Latest” reports. Earvin “Magic” Johnson, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, CDC Director Thomas Frieden, and Jeff Crowley, director of National AIDS Policy are among the speakers set to address the conference. Crowley will host a “town hall meeting in Atlanta to discuss a national HIV/AIDS strategy … the first of many town hall meetings Obama’s administration has promised to hold across the country” (8/20).

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“The first clinical trial of an HIV/AIDS vaccine designed and developed in South Africa was launched in Cape Town” Monday, the SAPA/The Times reports. The trial will seek to determine the immune response of HIV-negative people to two experimental vaccines — SAAVI DNA-C2 and SAAVI MVA-C (7/20).

Similar tests of the vaccine began in the U.S. earlier this year, the AP/Washington Post reports. The University of Cape Town developed the experimental vaccines with technical assistance and manufacturing of the vaccine provided by the NIH, according to Anthony Mbewu, president of South Africa’s Medical Research Council. “With 5.2 million already infected and with hundreds getting infected every day despite all the condom distribution and behavioral education programs, we know that a vaccine really is what we need,” Mbewu said, adding, “When the next influenza pandemic hits the world, every country will be scrambling to develop a vaccine … so it is important that countries like South Africa have the technology and capacity to develop vaccines and the industry to manufacture them” (Faul, 7/20).

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the partnership between South Africa and the U.S. “the most important AIDS research partnership in the world,” but cautioned the years ahead would prove challenging as researchers test the safety and efficacy of the HIV vaccine, the AP/Google.com reports.

“South Africa was the site of the biggest setback to AIDS vaccine research, when the most promising vaccine ever, produced by Merck & Co. and tested here in 2007, found that people who got the vaccine were more likely to contract HIV than those who did not,” the news service writes, adding that “AIDS vaccine research is so filled with disappointments some activists are questioning the wisdom of continuing such expensive investments. They say the money might be better spent on prevention and education” (Faul, 7/20).

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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will give an additional $80 million to Avahan, a foundation initiative launched in 2003 for HIV prevention programs in India, Bill Gates said on Thursday, the Seattle Times blog, “Business of Giving” reports. Previous foundation commitments to the program, “which involves more than 100 non-profits in six Indian states,” total $258 million, the blog writes (Heim, 7/23).

According to the Times of India, Gates and Indian Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad “will discuss gradual transition of Avahan to the government. Avahan has already awarded more than $100 million in grants for this transition.” Gates said, “It’s not that the foundation is leaving India. The amount we spend in India on health and development will actually go up but will focus on other things like nutrition, maternal and child health and vaccines,” the Times of India reports (Sinha, 7/24).

The Telegraph reports that the Foundation plans to support other health issues, including vaccines to prevent pneumonia and viral diarrhea and drugs to treat visceral leishmaniasis, said Gates, who is in India to receive the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development on behalf of the foundation. According to the Telegraph, “Avahan-supported programmes have reached an estimated 220,000 commercial sex workers, 80,000 gays and about 5 million men at risk of becoming infected with HIV” (7/23).

Gates, who received the peace prize on Saturday, said, “The Indian government must accelerate its progress toward its health spending targets, so that innovations benefit the poor people who really need them,” the International Business Times reports. He also reiterated the foundation’s long-term commitment to helping India deal with a variety of health issues, saying, “India bears a massive burden of disease. But in the next five years, it can make more progress on health than it has made in any other five-year-period in its history” (7/26).

The Seattle Times reports that “Avahan has begun handing over the reins to the government-run National AIDS Control Organisation [NACO]. During the transition, ‘Avahan will provide financial and technical support to ensure that prevention programs can be sustained over time,’” according to the foundation (7/23). In a written statement, K. Sujatha Rao, Secretary and Director General of NACO said, “Our collaboration with Avahan has made it possible to reach far more people with proven HIV prevention interventions. This strong partnership will continue as key aspects of Avahan transition to the government in the coming years” (Gates Foundation release, 7/23)

While in India, Gates also met with the state of Bihar’s chief minister, Nitish Kumar, via video conference about polio and visceral leishmaniasis eradication efforts in the area, the Hindu reports (Banerjee, 7/25). Gates told Kumar, “We are ready to work with your government and all partners in the polio effort to stop transmission in Bihar and ultimately assure all parents that their children are safe from this crippling disease,” the Bihar Times reports (7/24).

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The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is facing a budget shortfall of about $3 billion, Marcela Rojo, a Global Fund spokesperson, said on Friday, Reuters reports. Rojo said the Global Fund needs $170 million to pay for the programs it committed to supporting last year, and the organization will need between $2.5 billion and $3 billion to maintain and finance programs planned for 2010. “The Global Fund will need a substantially higher amount than the one pledged at the last replenishment in Berlin in 2007 ($10 billion),” Rojo said, adding, “The decisions that are made in the next 18 months will be critical for sustaining the gains achieved in global health so far and further scaling up programmes.”

According to Reuters, the U.S. “is the largest donor supporting public health programmes through the Global Fund.” Since the Global Fund was created in 2002, Washington has pledged more than $4.4 billion to support its programs. “Question marks over funding for the Global Fund’s long-term programmes may raise public health threats, because patients receiving AIDS and tuberculosis drugs need to keep taking the treatment to avoid developing resistance to it,” writes Reuters (MacInnis, 7/3).

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“In the past few months, we’ve experienced near hysteria over swine flu and almost constant media attention to scares about tainted food,” syndicated columnist Marie Cocco writes in the Oregonian, adding, “These are genuine health hazards - but they aren’t necessarily deadly, nor do they affect nearly as many people in the United States and around the world as does AIDS.” Cocco discusses a recent finding by researchers from Columbia University and the Alan Guttmacher Institute that links a drop in condom use among teenagers “in part to waning public concern about transmission of HIV.” She writes, “The clear increase in the proportion of teenagers using condoms came during years when public health and media messages about the dangers of HIV were at a height.” Cocco continues, “You can argue, based on hard data, that when it comes to teenagers and sex, good policy and genuine leadership get better results than moralizing or ignoring signals that an upsurge in HIV infections may emerge” (Cocco, 7/2).

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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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More than 17 percent of gay men in Chicago have HIV, and 39 percent went untested in the last 12 months because of fear of the results, according to a study of nearly 600 gay men in the city by the Chicago Department of Health, the Chi-Town Daily News reports. The study also found that gay black men had an infection rate that was more than twice the rates of gay white and Hispanic men. Jim Pickett, director of advocacy for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, said the findings indicate that, “We need to incorporate HIV into a broader or more holistic framework (covering) gay men’s health needs from top to toe.” The city will formally release the study’s results next week (Parker, Chi-Town Daily News, 6/2).

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