Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: AIDS: misure drastiche

Some people with HIV/Aids in Papua New Guinea are being buried alive
by their relatives, a health worker says.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6965412.stm
Palmiro Pangloss

 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6965412.stm
non che negli USA, grazie al governo USA, la situazione sia meglio eh ? 
The Bush Policy on AIDS
By Joe Amon
Published in The Huffington Post
July 26, 2007  
 
(New York) - Watching the Presidential candidates debate, the question I'd
like to ask is "how many times per page would you make your Surgeon
General refer to you in her speeches?" Two weeks ago former Surgeon
General Richard Carmona told a Congressional panel that he was ordered to
mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. I figure
any candidate who pledges two or fewer references would be a positive step
towards putting US health policy back on track. 
 
 
And as the Surgeon General made clear, we can certainly use better
policies when it comes to our failed response to fight AIDS.  
 
In the US, despite half a million deaths and 1.5 million HIV infections
over 26 years, there is still no strategic national plan to eliminate
HIV/AIDS domestically. Although we are spending $16 billion per year, the
money goes to an ad-hoc array of national, state and local programs with
no consistent monitoring, benchmarks or review. This lack of coordination
results in inconsistent access to prevention and treatment programs. For
example, federal AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) funding and
eligibility guidelines differ by states, so that the program that is the
safety net for low income persons ineligible for any other coverage may or
may not be available depending on where you live. And as of March of this
year there were 571 people on waiting lists for drugs in 4 states. In
2006, 4 people died while on the South Carolina waiting list.  
 
There is no national plan to address the crisis in the African-American
community, which accounts for one half of all new HIV infections, even
though blacks are only 12 percent of the US population. Latinos have the
second highest AIDS case rate in the nation and Latino adolescents have
3.5 times the case rate of adolescent whites. Yet, current US AIDS efforts
regularly ignore the issues which make these groups vulnerable and affect
their access to health care, such as housing, education and employment,
and focus instead on simplistic strategies like "National HIV testing day"
(June 27th).  
 
Surgeon General Carmona testified that as "the nations doctor" he wanted
to address sex education, and that scientific studies suggest that the
most effective approach to sex education includes a discussion of
contraceptives. Yet Dr Carmona stated that he was blocked from doing so by
those who "wanted to preach abstinence only". This is not merely a
scientific debate - the US spends well over $150 million annually for
abstinence-only sex education programs in public schools and since
President Bush took office the US has spent more than $2 billion
worldwide.  
 
Similarly, despite overwhelming evidence of their efficacy in reducing HIV
transmission, federal policy prohibits funding of needle exchange
programs. Like abstinence-only, the ban on funding of needle exchange
programs has been a triumph of ideology over evidence. At the July 10th
hearing, former Surgeon General David Satcher said that while the Clinton
administration had discouraged him from issuing a report showing that
needle-exchange programs were effective, he had released it anyway.  
 
In Dr Satcher's report, he wrote: "After reviewing all of the research to
date, the senior scientists of the Department and I have unanimously
agreed that there is conclusive scientific evidence that syringe exchange
programs . . . are an effective public health intervention that reduces
the transmission of HIV and does not encourage the use of illegal drugs."
However, under President Bush, the Office of National Drug Control Policy
(ONDCP) has continued to misconstrue evidence in support of needle
exchange as an effective strategy for HIV prevention. A recent interview
with an ONDCP policy analyst entitled "What's Wrong with Needle Exchange
Programs?" claimed that research about the programs' effectiveness in
lowering HIV infection had been inconclusive, and that their effect on
continued drug use is unknown.  
 
For the fourth year in a row, the President's budget has proposed cutting
funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Adjusted
for inflation, CDC spending on domestic HIV prevention in 2006 was the
lowest since 1993. Not coincidentally the number of new HIV infections in
the US is unchanged since 1990. And evidence of politics trumping public
health science does not stop at the Office of the Surgeon General. The
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has increasingly put the
Atlanta-based CDC under greater restrictions and scrutiny from political
appointees. Staff requests for overseas travel are required to be vetted
by political appointees in Washington. A recent internal CDC memo leaked
to the Atlanta Journal Constitution complained that such approvals were
causing roughly half of CDC overseas posts to be unfilled. And HHS has
also routinely gone around CDC to push its ideological agenda. For
example, the department funds a website, 
www.4parents.gov
, targeting
adolescents which highlights contraceptive failure rates and gives such
helpful tips as this: "Find non-sexual ways to show you care (give a card
or a nice comment)."  
 
Under President Bush, the CDC has capitulated to pressures from Washington
to censor information about the effectiveness of condoms and to restrict
funding to community AIDS organizations not preaching abstinence. At a
national conference on sexually transmitted diseases sponsored by the CDC
last year, officials bowed to pressure from Congressman Mark Souder and
added two pro-abstinence speakers to a panel and removed a scientist whose
presentation had been accepted via peer review. The title of the panel -
proposed by public health scientists - was changed from "Are
Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs a Threat to Public Health?" to
"Public health strategies of Abstinence Programs for Youth".  
 
Surgeon General Carmona was testifying to the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee as part of an effort by Congressman Henry
Waxman to examine ways to strengthen the authority and autonomy of the
Office of the Surgeon General. It is essential for the credibility of that
office, and for the entire Department of Health and Human Services that
such reforms take place. For the health of our nation, we should be
confident in America's doctor being able to speak openly and honestly. 
 
-- 
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