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The Illinois attorney general on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the Center for AIDS Prevention for unlawful fundraising and falsifying official documents, ProPublica reports (Weaver, 7/27). Attorney General Lisa Madigan said the state revoked the organization’s registration 20 years ago, but its director, Steve Neely, also known as Morrell Neely, has continued to solicit donations in the state. “The state says the group tried to reregister as a nonprofit using a phony Chicago address, though its boss, … lives in Riverside, Calif.,” Courthouse News Service reports (Freeland, 7/27). “If the suit is successful, Illinois could seize money illegally raised there, bar Neely and others involved with the center from future charitable work in the state, freeze their assets, force them to pay back donations they may have ‘misused and/or wasted’ with interest, and attempt to shut the group down for good by revoking its corporate status,” ProPublica reports (7/27).

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Officials at an East Texas health care organization, Health Horizons, which provides HIV testing and other services to people in 12 counties, “has seen more East Texans test positive for [HIV] so far this year than it did for all of 2008,” the Lufkin Daily News reports. Executive Director Wilbert Brown said, “We’ve had eight people out of more than 800 test positive for HIV in the first seven months of this year. Most of those have been African-American men. Last year we had a total of six out of more than 1,000. I expect us to see two or three more positives before the year is out. The state average for testing positive is one in 100, and we’re getting close to that number.” According to the article, “Brown said he attributes the increase to Health Horizon’s aggressive outreach program targeting high-risk groups and to people realizing the importance of getting tested.” The Daily News article also profiles a client of Health Horizons (Cooley, 8/2)

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Congressional Quarterly examines a “three-page concept paper” issued by the House Foreign Affairs Committee that lays out a plan to overhaul U.S. foreign aid. The committee suggests “giving the administration greater flexibility to control aid in exchange for greater public oversight and a performance- and need-driven allocation system,” the news service writes. “The plan would reorganize aid programs around seven purposes, including ‘reducing poverty and alleviating human suffering,’ ’supporting human rights and democracy,’ and ‘expanding prosperity through trade and investment,’” according to CQ. The House committee wants to enhance USAID’s role, “giving the agency a seat on the National Security Council and putting it in charge of the U.S. global AIDS plan and the Millennium Challenge Corporation,” the news service writes.

Reforming U.S. foreign aid is a “top legislative priority” for Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), who earlier this year introduced a bill “to require the administration to put together a development strategy, which he called a ‘down payment’ on greater change,” CQ reports. Last week, Senate Foreign Relations Chair John Kerry (D-Mass.) introduced bipartisan legislation “to beef up” USAID, “also intended as a first step toward an overhaul,” writes CQ.

The story includes reaction to the House committee’s concept paper from Capitol Hill and foriegn aid experts (Graham-Silverman, 8/3).

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The fifth annual report card from the Washington, D.C.,-based Appleseed Center for Law and Justice examining the district’s response to HIV gives the city “high marks for rapid testing, interagency coordination, surveillance and fighting the disease in the D.C. Jail,” but finds that the city falls short in other areas, the Washington Examiner reports (Neibauer, 8/5). “The government also received above-average grades for leadership, managing grants to groups that help people with the illness, and monitoring the effectiveness of those programs,” the Washington Post reports. However, “While Mayor Fenty and his administration deserve recognition for the continued support of … numerous [HIV/AIDS Administration] initiatives, his public appearances and statements about the epidemic have fallen short of his enthusiasm for action inside the government,” the report said. The report added that the district could do more to address HIV and recommended that HAA assess whether the improvements they have made are reducing the spread of the virus, according to the Post (Fears, 8/5).

In related news, district officials are expanding a pilot program to all high schools in the coming year that offers tests for sexually transmitted diseases to students, the Post reports. The program began last year at eight local high schools and “found that 13 percent of about 3,000 students tested positive for an STD, mostly gonorrhea or chlamydia, according to the D.C. Department of Health,” the article states. Walter Smith, executive director of the D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, said, “If 13 percent of these students are testing positive for STDs, those same kids could get HIV. A lot needs to be done to get the message out to the schools.” The program was praised in D.C. Appleseed’s report released today on the district’s HIV/AIDS response (Fears/Hernandez, 8/5).

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The national HIV/AIDS strategy to be developed by Jeffrey Crowley, director of the Office of National AIDS Policy, within the next year is “long overdue and desperately needed,” a Gainesville Guardian editorial states. This “national strategy being crafted for the president must include efforts to destigmatize the disease and to get people tested and into treatment,” the editorial adds, continuing, “HIV testing must become a routine part of medical care (akin to testing for diabetes, for instance).” In addition, “Work with African-American civic organizations to stress the importance of testing and treatment must be accelerated. But none of this will work if all people from all ages and backgrounds don’t know or refuse to learn their HIV status,” according to the Guardian (8/6).

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The Department of Veterans Affairs on Monday began “offering routine HIV tests to veterans who receive medical care,” the Associated Press/Washington Post reports. The new policy follows CDC’s recommendations for voluntary, routine HIV testing and no longer requires veterans to sign a consent form, the article states, adding that “veterans must verbally consent to the test. They can also decline it.” According to the news service, “The CDC says all patients should be offered HIV testing even if they are not considered at risk. The hope is that by dropping the written consent, more veterans will get tested and get medical treatment earlier” (Hefling, 8/17).

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The Cincinnati Enquirer examines how STOP AIDS - a local organization providing cash assistance, HIV education, tests and treatment - has “had to dig into reserve funds to continue to provide” some of its services to clients. According to the Enquirer, “Delays in reimbursement of federal funds by the state forced [STOP AIDS] to scramble for the past six weeks to serve its 1,000 clients.” The Enquirer reports that “[f]unds from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program distributed by the Ohio Department of Health were held up when lawmakers and Gov. Ted Strickland [D] failed to reach a budget compromise in July”; officials contend that the funds “could arrive late this week.” The Cincinnati-based organization “conducts about 3,000 HIV tests a year and provides education programs to 20,000 people a year in schools and prisons,” according to the article (Curnutte, 8/19).

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“The severe and continued burden of HIV in this nation is neither acceptable nor inevitable. But, significant progress will require that we strengthen our national response,” Kevin Fenton, director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, writes in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution opinion piece. He continues, “As a nation, it is time to determine the direction we will take in fighting this serious - yet entirely preventable - disease. One direction continues down the dangerous path of complacency. The other leads to a reinvigorated, accountable, science-driven effort to ensure all people know their HIV status, and have the tools to protect themselves and others from infection.” Fenton concludes, “The future of the epidemic in the United States will depend on the choices we make today” (Fenton, 8/21).

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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).

This information was reprinted from dailyreports.kff.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily U.S. HIV/AIDS Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at dailyreports.kff.org.

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Prospective Candidates For USAID Administrator

“Sources in the development community and on the Hill say they are hearing” that the people being considered for the USAID administrator position are likely to be “safe,” it could be “someone already in place in the administration and possibly confirmed for something else,” Foreign Policy’s blog, “The Cable,” reports. The post lists a few names that “appear to be in the realm of speculation at this point,” the blog writes (Rozen, 8/24).

Zimbabwean Health Experts Skeptical Of Study Finding Drop In HIV Infection Rate

Zimbabwean health experts have raised doubts over a recent study that suggested “the country’s deep economic crisis helped reduce the HIV prevalence rate or the percentage of adults infected with the deadly virus,” VOA News reports. The study of more than 18,000 pregnant women, presented at the 5th International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, revealed the HIV prevalence rate fell from 23 percent in 2001 to 11 percent in late 2008. However, as VOA News writes, some Zimbabweans feel the findings “understate the severity of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, adding that the sample may not have been representative” of the population (Nyaira, 8/24).

Globe And Mail Examines Plumpy’Nut Situation In India

The Globe and Mail examines India’s decision to stop using Plumpy’nut, which is used to treat “severe acute malnutrition” in children. India’s central government “says it never approved UNICEF’s import of Plumpy’nut, is not convinced it works and that UNICEF and others must use Indian-made products rather than imports in order to safeguard the country’s food security,” the newspaper writes. This dispute “is the latest twist in a story of bureaucratic ineptitude and corruption that has kept a nation with a booming economy from making any progress in lowering malnutrition over the past 15 years,” the Globe and Mail writes (Nolen, 8/25).

This information was reprinted from globalhealth.kff.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at globalhealth.kff.org.

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