Category Archives: Aids and HIV

Gareth Thomas on coming out as HIV positive: ‘It was my right to tell my family – not somebody else’s’

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The Welsh rugby star talks about why he revealed his status, his mission to help others deal with prejudice – and how Mickey Rourke nearly played him in a biopic of his life

The moment Gareth Thomas found out he was HIV positive, all he could imagine was the Aids epidemic. Sensational images of his future took over: frailty, shame, isolation, social exclusion. He remembered Norman Fowler’s tombstone advert and the people with leprosy he learned about at school who were banished to colonies. He thought it was a death sentence.

“It was an overriding feeling that my life was over,” says the former Welsh rugby captain. “It’s like somebody holding a gun to your head and pulling the trigger – how do you explain how that feels?”

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Larry Kramer, groundbreaking author and Aids activist, dies aged 84

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  • Kramer founded pioneering Gay Men’s Health Crisis group
  • Playwright and author died Wednesday morning in Manhattan

The groundbreaking American writer and tireless activist for gay rights and a national effort to tackle the HIV/Aids crisis, Larry Kramer, has died in New York.

Related: Coronavirus US live: cases still increasing in two dozen states amid push to reopen

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How South Africa’s action on Covid-19 contrasts sharply with its response to Aids

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Country’s swift response is distinct from the handling of the HIV crisis 20 years ago. Have lessons been learnt?

Twenty years ago Nelson Mandela made an impassioned plea for international cooperation on “one of the greatest threats humankind has faced”.

Aids was ravaging lives and overwhelming health systems, at its peak killing up to 1,000 people a day in South Africa.

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Everyone wants to ‘follow the science’. But we can’t waste time on blame

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The Royal Society president says scientists must not be made scapegoats for policy failures

In 1981, a virus that had jumped the species barrier some decades earlier to infect humans began to wreak havoc among the gay community in San Francisco and New York. A taskforce was set up to study the cause of this disease, and it took a few years to identify HIV as the definitive cause of Aids and its genome to be sequenced, and nearly 15 years before a cocktail of drugs meant that having an HIV infection was no longer a certain death sentence.

Forty years later, the cause of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan was identified as a new coronavirus Sars-CoV-2, and its sequence determined in a matter of weeks. That, in turn, paved the way for a sensitive test for infection and, now, antibody tests for people who may have had the disease. That we know so much in such record time is due to sustained international investment in science.

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Covid-19 crisis raises hopes of end to UK transmission of HIV

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Sexual health experts see in lockdown restrictions a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ chance

“In the war against any infectious virus,” says Dr Alan McOwan, “You’re trying to win various battles. You have to keep clobbering it from every direction you can.”

That’s true for coronavirus, he says, as well as for other viral conditions. An HIV specialist at London’s 56 Dean Street sexual health clinic, McOwan sees similarities between Covid-19 and HIV. Both are viruses without a working vaccine, you can be infectious without knowing it, and both rely mostly on close human contact to spread.

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Brazilian court lifts restrictions on gay and bisexual men giving blood

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Supreme court decision hailed as victory for LGBT community

Brazil’s supreme court has overturned rules that limit gay and bisexual men from donating blood in a decision considered a human rights victory for LGBT+ people in the country.

The move came as more nations review restrictions on blood donations imposed during the 1980s HIV/Aids crisis, with some countries applying blanket bans, some have waiting periods after gay sex, and others – like Italy – having no limitations.

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‘Millions hang by a thread’: extreme global hunger compounded by Covid-19

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Coronavirus ‘potentially catastrophic’ for nations already suffering food insecurity caused by famine, migration and unemployment

The warning from the World Food Programme (WFP) that an extra 265 million people could be pushed into acute food insecurity by Covid-19, almost doubling last year’s total, is based on a complex combination of factors.

WFP’s latest warning underlines the increasing concern among experts in the field that for many the biggest impact will not be the disease, but the hunger hanging off its coat tails.

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Coronavirus in Africa: what happens next?

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As Covid-19 creeps across the region, fears mount over how it will unfold. Will a young population help stem the spread of disease, or will it unleash catastrophe on creaking health systems?

Just seven weeks after Africa recorded its first case of Covid-19 – an Italian national in Algeria – the virus is creeping across the continent, infecting more than 10,000 people and causing 487 deaths. Three of the region’s 54 countries – São Tome and Principe, Comoros, and Lesotho – remain apparently virus-free.

“Case numbers are increasing exponentially in the African region,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Africa. “It took 16 days from the first confirmed case in the region to reach 100 cases. It took a further 10 days to reach the first thousand. Three days after this, there were 2,000 cases, and two days later we were at 3,000.”

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‘There is no magic bullet’: the town that turned the tide against HIV

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Lessons learned in Eshowe, South Africa, one of the areas worst hit by the HIV pandemic, are being used against coronavirus

In the visitors’ books of Eshowe’s many guesthouses and hotels, tourists inspired by verdant sugar cane fields and blossoming trees write about “a corner of Eden”.

Locals and specialists know the small town set high among the rolling hills that run along South Africa’s eastern coast for another reason.

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Second person ever to be cleared of HIV reveals identity

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Adam Castillejo, known as the London patient, goes public to give hope to others with illness

The second person ever to be cleared of HIV has revealed his identity, saying he wants to be an “ambassador of hope” to others with the condition.

Adam Castillejo, the so-called London patient, was declared free of HIV last year, 18 months after stopping antiretroviral therapy following a stem cell – or bone marrow – transplant to treat blood cancer.

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UNAids chief vows to act after tribunal upholds staff harassment complaints

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Winnie Byanyima pledges to stamp out abuse after International Labour Organization rules that agency breached duty of care

The head of UNAids said the agency would “take stock, learn and become a stronger and better organisation” after a tribunal ruled that it had failed in its duty to deal adequately with complaints of staff harassment.

In an email to staff, Winnie Byanyima, who promised to stamp out abusive behaviour when she took over the agency in November, said losing a case at the International Labour Organization tribunal – the highest internal court of appeal – was “very significant”.

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China trials anti-HIV drug on coronavirus patients

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News of Kaletra being tested as a possible treatment for the disease sparks panic buying

Coronavirus – latest news

A drug used to treat people with HIV, the virus that causes Aids, is being trialled in patients in China as a possible therapy against the coronavirus.

News that HIV drugs are being deployed in hospitals, however, has led to panic buying on the black market by people who fear they are ill or are going to get sick. They have been obtaining the drug, Kaletra, from generics companies in India and even from people with HIV in China willing to sell or donate their own stocks.

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Changing violence requires the same shift in understanding given to Aids

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Violence is a contagious and epidemic health problem and those exposed to it deserve treatment, compassion and care, writes Gary Slutkin

When the Aids epidemic first hit in the early 1980s, I was beginning my career in epidemiology at San Francisco general hospital. There was fear everywhere, especially in cities with large LGBT populations such as San Francisco. People didn’t understand what was happening and where Aids would strike next.

Today, Aids remains a major public health threat, but anxiety over the spread has largely abated. The thing that made the biggest difference in getting us here was the shift in how the world looks at people affected by Aids: from immoral people or bad people, to people with a contagious health problem who deserve to receive compassion and care.

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I lived through Aids denialism in South Africa. Morrison’s slippery climate stance is doomed | Sisonke Msimang

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Using tactics straight out of the Trump playbook, the PM has mocked those who are outspoken

It is painful to watch political denial in action. Believe me, I’ve been down this road before. I lived through Aids denialism in South Africa and I’m witnessing denial again in Australia.

In the last few weeks, as fires have raged across New South Wales, and as the nation has grown increasingly furious about Scott Morrison’s lack of leadership, I have felt like I am in a time warp.

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UN #MeToo whistleblower sacked for alleged sexual and financial misconduct

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Martina Brostrom, who accused senior UNAids official of sexual harassment, claims her dismissal is an act of ‘retaliation’

A high-profile UN whistleblower, whose claims of sexual assault at the main agency dealing with Aids prompted a long-running scandal, has been sacked along with another colleague for alleged sexual and financial misconduct.

Martina Brostrom publicly accused a senior director at UNAids of forcibly kissing her and trying to drag her out of a Bangkok elevator in 2015. She also said he had sexually harassed her on other occasions.

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South Africa begins rollout of cutting-edge HIV drug

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Introduction of three-in-one pill hailed as a ‘game-changer’ in efforts to treat 7.7 million South Africans with HIV

South Africa has begun rolling out a state-of-the-art antiretroviral drug in a “game-changing” bid to drastically reduce the number of people living with HIV.

The distribution of the new three-in-one pill, timed to coincide with World Aids Day on Sunday, is eventually expected to treat the 7.7 million South Africans who have HIV, accounting for 20% of the global prevalence of the disease.

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Angola’s war is over and now it faces up to an HIV legacy – in pictures

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A long civil war ended in 2002 but disasters, poverty and food insecurity have allowed Aids-related deaths to rise by more than 33% in the past decade. The number of new HIV infections is also on the rise and too many pregnant women are not getting access to medicines to protect their babies

All photographs by Cynthia R Matonhodze for the UNDP

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New Zealand launches world’s first HIV positive sperm bank

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Effort aims to reduce the stigma experienced by those living with the virus

The world’s first HIV positive sperm bank has been launched in an effort to reduce the stigma experienced by those living with the virus.

Sperm Positive has begun with three male donors from across New Zealand who are living with HIV but have an undetectable viral load, meaning the amount of the virus in a person’s blood is so low that it cannot be detected by standard methods.

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New UNAids chief vows to stamp out sexual misconduct and abuse of power

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Winnie Byanyima says known cases of sexual harassment were ‘tip of the iceberg’ as she pledges to restore trust in organisation

The new head of scandal-hit UNAids has vowed to transform the agency’s culture to safeguard staff not only from sexual harassment – which she called “the tip of the iceberg” – but any abuse of power by those at the top.

Winnie Byanyima said she would draw on lessons learned following allegations of sexual misconduct at Oxfam, of which she was international executive director until earlier this year, to address problems at the UN agency.

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