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SA student study finds 3.4% are HIV positive
A major new study on the HIV prevalence at universities and colleges has found that 3.4% of students were HIV positive – an HIV prevalence that is less than half of that of the general adult population (about 10%).
24 000 students and staff took part in the research, which revealed that the HIV rates were:
*1.5% among academic staff
* 4.4% administrative staff and
*12.2% among service staff
Despite the lower prevalence, students were practising risky sexual behaviour the research by the Higher Education HIV and AIDS Programme (HEAIDS) study found.
Nearly one in five men and one in 16 women had more than one sexual partner the month before they took part in the study.
This study showed – like many previous studies – that female students (4.7% HIV positive) were at much greater risk of infection than male students (1.5%).
Students with sexually transmitted diseases were at higher risk of HIV than others: 12.1% of women and 6.5% of men who had STDs were HIV positive.
Eastern Cape students had the highest rates of HIV at 6.4%, and Western Cape students the lowest at 1.1%.
Condom use was common, with 65% of male students using condoms, but students in relationships usually stopped using condoms use after three months.
Alcohol and binge drinking were associated with casual sex and with coercive sex.
Integrating HIV and TB care – in line with SA’s newly approved ARV guidelines due to come into effect from April 1 – improves the wellbeing of patients.
MSF, TAC, Cape Town City and the Western Province health department released a report today showing that the integration and decentralisation of care result in “better outcomes”.
What this report also shows is the benefits of partnership. All of them are working together at Khayelitsha at the project, which started in 2001.
Dr Gilles van Cutsem, the project coordinator for MSF Khayelitsha, stated that enrolment on ARVs for TB patients was low prior to integration.
In 2007, only 19 % of patients enrolled on ARVs were referred from TB services and now, since integration, 68% of patients at one clinic on ARVs are on TB treatment.
The rate of notification of drug-resistant TB notification has significantly improved with the launch of a pilot project providing for treatment “in clinics while patients live at home, rather than requiring hospitalisation away from family and friends for at least six months”.
Van Cutsem stated that: “The integration of ARVs within TB services in Khayelitsha (where approximately 70% of all TB patients are HIV positive) was an innovation that improved efficiency and clinical care.
“Previously, patients were referred from TB clinics to distant ARV service points (and vice-versa), resulting in long waiting times and duplication of both clinical and laboratory investigations and medical records.
“It is a matter of one patient with two diseases. There are different meanings of TB/HIV integration, but it is more than treating a patient for HIV and TB under one roof — it is about one clinic, one queue, one folder, one clerk, one nurse and one doctor, for both diseases in one patient.”
“Integration of ARVs in TB clinics is also an incentive for TB patients to take an HIV test: Using an opt-out strategy in 2009, 96% of TB patients in Khayelitsha accepted to be tested for HIV.”
The AID Law project uses the law to protect the rights of people with HIV
An American insurance company was ordered by the court last year to pay Jerome Mitchell $10 million for “wrongly revoking his heath insurance policy”.
And this week Reuters revealed that: “Previously undisclosed records from Mitchell’s case reveal that Fortis had a company policy of targeting policyholders with HIV”.
“Mitchell not only obtained a measure of justice for himself; he also helped expose wrongdoing on the part of Fortis (now known as Assurant Health) that could have repercussions for the entire health insurance industry,” the Reuters story said.
“A computer program and algorithm targeted every policyholder recently diagnosed with HIV for an automatic fraud investigation, as the company searched for any pretext to revoke their policy.
“As was the case with Mitchell, their insurance policies often were canceled on erroneous information, the flimsiest of evidence, or for no good reason at all, according to the court documents and interviews with state and federal investigators.”
Reuters reported: “Insurance companies have long engaged in the practice of ‘rescission’, whereby they investigate policyholders shortly after they’ve been diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses.
“But government regulators and investigators who have overseen the actions of Assurant and other health insurance companies say it is unprecedented for a company to single out people with HIV.
“In his previously undisclosed court ruling, the judge in the Mitchell case also criticized what he said were the company’s efforts to cover its tracks.”
It seems that Assurant Health has set a record new low with its illegal discrimination against people with HIV.
In South Africa the AIDS Law Project has fought countless battles in the courts to protect the rights of people with HIV.
Soccer star Didier Drogba is the global ambassador for (NIKE) RED
The (NIKE) RED Lace Up 2 Save Lives campaign reached hundreds of fans at the Atteridgeville Super Stadium in Pretoria at the last match of the Premier Soccer League.
Last weekend 346 people took the opportunity to take a free, confidential HIV test and three of them won a RED game ball, N 98 jacket and pair of mercurials signed by Mphela.
One of them told other fans happily that he was HIV negative after he got his results.
The (NIKE) RED campaign aims to fight AIDS in Africa and 100% of the profits from the sale of the (NIKE) RED laces – R40 a pair in South Africa – go towards The Global Fund and community football programmes, supported by NIKE.
The HIV/AIDS NGO Right to Care set up testing stations and their staff worked to their limit on Saturday, at the Mamalodi Sundowns match against Golden Arrows.
The Brazilians wore (NIKE) RED laces and a (NIKE) RED ball was used for the game.
Making communities aware of HIV/AIDS is one of the goals of NIKE South Africa and Grassroots Soccer.
By Paolo Pellegrin, an image from the Access to Life project in Mali
Imagine a world where no children are born with HIV. This is within reach by 2015 says Professor Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.
“Malaria may be eliminated as a public health problem within a decade in most countries where it is endemic,” according to projections from the Global Fund’s 2010 Results Report.
“Tuberculosis prevalence in many countries is declining and the international target of halving TB prevalence could be met by 2015,” states the report, released this week.
To achieve this “the current rate of scaling up of health investments for the three diseases (must be) at least maintained and ideally accelerated further.”
Kazatchkine said: “No other area of development has seen such a direct and rapid correlation between donor investments and live-saving impact as these investments in fighting AIDS, TB and malaria.”
Global Fund-supported programs saved at least 3 600 lives per day in 2009 – and an estimated total of 4.9 million since the creation of the Global Fund in 2002, according to this report.
But, to sustain these achievements, the fund needs donors to commit to replenish its finances in October this year.
To see what a difference these projects can make, look at the Access to Life photos. This is a joint advocacy project by The Global Fund and Magnum photo agency that, through pics, video and test, portrays the lives of 30 people from nine countries from their initiation of ARV treatment and through the first four months
Most injecting drug users worldwide not offered help to prevent HIV
In 2004 I visited a needle exchange programme on the outskirts of Bangkok, in Thailand, that aimed to prevent the spread of HIV. Former drug users were running it and their results were impressive.
But, as new research shows, such initiatives are the exception globally.
Very few injecting drugs users get access to these services, a report in Lancet this week reveals.
“Worldwide coverage of HIV prevention, treatment, and care services in IDU populations is very low.
“There is an urgent need to improve coverage of these services in this at-risk population,” Dr Bradley Mathers and his co-authors conclude, after reviewing a number of studies published from 2004 onwards.
They found: “By 2009, National Syringe Programmes had been implemented in 82 countries and Opiod Substitution Therapy in 70 countries; both interventions were available in 66 countries.
“Regional and national coverage varied substantially.”
“Sub-Saharan Africa (0·1 needle—syringes per IDU per year) had the lowest rates of syringe-needle distribution,” they reported.
UNAIDS estimates that around 30 per cent of HIV transmission outside sub-Saharan Africa is driven by unsafe injecting practices, Reuters reports.
