• In Myanmar, stigma and neglect add to HIV misery

    Damir Sagolj / Reuters

    Ma Jam, a 42 year-old AIDS patient hold hands with 2 year-old HIV positive Kanama at the HIV/AIDS hospice founded by a member of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party in the suburbs of Yangon May 26, 2012. Their plight demonstrates the painful limits of democracy in Myanmar. While the government is pursuing reforms that promise to overhaul its health ministry and other institutions, the process is too slow to bring change to its most destitute. There are few better examples than AIDS sufferers, who due to a combination of poor education, social stigma and bureaucratic mismanagement are isolated in clinics, cut off from society.

    Damir Sagolj / Reuters

    A volunteer measures the blood pressure of HIV-positive patients at the HIV/AIDS hospice founded by a member of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party in the suburbs of Yangon on May 26.

    Damir Sagolj / Reuters

    HIV-positive Eiphyu Khine, whose husband died of AIDS, rests under a mosquito net on May 26.

    Reuters reports -- The mother and child who touch hands in an overcrowded Yangon hospice are not family, but their tragic history begins in the blood. Jam, 42, a mother of six, and Kanama, aged 2, are both HIV positive. Abandoned by their families, they must now find comfort in each other, although Jam still yearns for her husband to return to the private HIV hospice in the suburbs of Myanmar's biggest city.

    "He promised to come back but I'm afraid he never will," said the woman as she burst into tears. She is known in the hospice by her nickname, Jam.

    The hospice is home to 182 HIV patients, whose plight demonstrates the painful limits of Myanmar's new democracy. A reform-minded government has vowed to overhaul a decrepit health system, but little change is likely for HIV/AIDS sufferers, who thanks to social stigma and medical neglect, are shut off in hospices that bring to mind leper colonies.

    Continue reading.

    Damir Sagolj / Reuters

    27 year-old HIV-positive Zinmar Nwe, whose husband died of AIDS, bathes at the HIV/AIDS hospice, founded by a member of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party in the suburbs of Yangon on May 26.

    Damir Sagolj / Reuters

    HIV-positive Ei Ei Phyu, who lives at the hospice with his HIV-positive mother, sleeps in a hammock at the HIV/AIDS hospice founded by a member of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party in the suburbs of Yangon on May 26.

  • Laurent Gillieron / EPA

    Bill Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation next to a cut out of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair during a photocall for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 26, 2012.

    Bill Gates pledges another $750M to fight killer diseases

    The Associated Press reports from DAVOS, Switzerland:

    Bill Gates rode to the rescue of a beleaguered health fund Thursday by pledging $750 million to fight three of the world's killer diseases.

    The Microsoft founder says the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's donation to the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria comes on top of $650 million it contributed to the fund over the past decade.

    "These are tough economic times, but that is no excuse for cutting aid to the world's poorest," Gates said. Read the full story.

    (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft Corp. and NBC Universal, which is jointly owned by Comcast Corp. and General Electric.)

  • Prakash Mathema / AFP - Getty Images

    Fifteen year old Nepalese villager Nirmala Nepali, center, serves food to her sister Sita, 13, and brother Suresh, 10, at their home in the village of Biraltoli in Acham District, some 500 miles west of Kathmandu. As dawn breaks Nirmala Nepali steels herself for another week of cooking, cleaning, back-breaking hard work and the daily struggle to put food on the table that she has faced for many years. Yet she is still a child herself, cast suddenly into the role of head of her household at the age of just six after her mother died of AIDS.

    Fifteen-year-old AIDS orphan serves as breadwinner to younger siblings in Nepal

    From the full story:

    "I'd like to play but if I spend time playing it means we don't eat," she says.

    Nirmala's father, a migrant labourer working in Mumbai, infected her mother with HIV on one of his visits home. He eventually died of an AIDS-related illness while he was in India.

    Nirmala's story is all too common in remote Achham, one of the poorest regions in South Asia where health infrastructure was ravaged by a decade-long civil war that ended in 2006.

    Read more...

  • Victor R. Caivano / AP

    The Christ the Redeemer statue, top right, is lit in red light to commemorate World AIDS Day in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Dec. 1, 2011. Rio de Janeiro's city government illuminated several urban monuments in red as part of its actions to commemorate World AIDS Day.

    Rio's Christ the Redeemer statue turns red for World AIDS Day

    Related content:

  • China says HIV/AIDS cases are soaring

    Reuters reports from BEIJING:

    The number of new HIV/AIDS cases in China is soaring, state media said on Wednesday, citing health officials, with rates of infections among college students and older men rising.

    The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued figures showing 48,000 new cases in China in 2011, the official Xinhua news agency said.

    David Gray / Reuters

    A nurse gives an infected patient medicine as she lies in her bed at the HIV/AIDS ward of Beijing YouAn Hospital on Dec. 1, 2011.

    Str / AFP - Getty Images

    An AIDS patient receives free treatment at the Ying Zhouqu Huangzhuang AIDS treatment center in Fuyang, in Anhui province, China, on Nov. 28, 2011.

    AP

    Boys infected with the AIDS virus participate in a classroom performance at a special school for AIDS-infected children in Linfen, in northern China's Shanxi province, on Nov. 30, 2011. Chinese characters on the chalkboard read "Hand in hand to prevent AIDS."

    "The distribution of HIV/AIDS cases in our country is now wider and more scattered than ever, posing great difficulties for prevention and control efforts," Wu Zunyou, the director of the Center, said according to Xinhua.

    The number of officially registered HIV carriers and AIDS patients in China is expected to jump from 346,000 to 780,000 by the end of 2011 after the data is updated, Xinhua said. Read the full story.

    Eugene Hoshiko / AP

    A mdoctor talks to guests during an AIDS awareness event on World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, 2011, in Shanghai.

    Jason Lee / Reuters

    Drug addicts attend a class about AIDS during psychological treatment at a compulsory drug rehabilitation center in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, on Nov. 28, 2011.

     

    Related content: Few Americans with HIV have virus under control

  • Graying of AIDS: Older Americans at risk for HIV infection

    Anna Fowlkes, 64, didn't date for years after her husband, Sonny, died of a brain tumor. And after she finally did, she learned she’d become infected with HIV. She taught her son about safe sex, she says, but, like many other seniors, it didn’t occur to her that she needed to practice it too.

    “We are of a generation where that was not something we have to think about,” she says. “Now I know better.”

    Anna Fowlkes contracted HIV from a man she had a relationship with in her 50s. Now 64, she's found purpose doing HIV and AIDS outreach and education for other seniors.

    One in 10 people newly diagnosed with HIV are age 50 or older, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2006 statistics, the last year for which there is data. Dr. Brad Hare, the medical director of San Francisco General Hospital’s HIV/AIDS clinic, Ward 86, says up to half of the new infections seen in San Francisco among that age group are in women. That’s far higher than the 27 percent of new infections that occur in women of all ages, according to the CDC’s 2006 statistics.
     
    Some, like Fowlkes, may be entering a new sexual relationship for the first time in decades after the death of a spouse and may not be aware of the risk, says Hare.  In other cases, women may have believed they were in a monogamous relationship with a husband or partner, who wasn’t monogamous with them.
     
    Today, Fowlkes, is an advocate for HIV prevention among her peers. “I don’t want [others] to have to go down the road I’ve gone down,” she says. “I want them to get tested.”

    Msnbc.com health editor Linda Dahlstrom teamed up with Katja Heinemann (Aurora Select), a freelance photojournalist who has been documenting the graying of AIDS since 2005, to report the video above and this story.

    See more of Heinemann's work on the subject at www.grayingofaids.org

     

  • Celebrities raise consciousness and funding on World AIDS Day

    Reuters

    U2 front man, Bono, middle, poses with fellow band member, The Edge, left, Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard, right, and New South Wales state Premier Kristina Keneally at an event to launch World Aids Day in Sydney.


    Dylan Martinez / Reuters

    Elton John attends the morning conference at The Independent newspaper editorial office in London, Nov. 30, 2010. John is the guest editor of the special World Aids Day edition of the British daily paper, due out on Dec. 1.

    Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

    Panha, 8, suffering from diarrhea uses a bucket at the special ward at the National Pediatric Hospital for HIV/AIDS, Feb. 12, 2010 in Phnom Penh. About 170,000 Cambodians live with HIV/AIDS and more than 60,000 children are orphaned by the disease.

    By Robert Hood

    When I was younger, much younger, AIDS/HIV was horrifying. It was so scary that people didn’t really talk about it, and that was a big part of the problem. It’s been interesting to see AIDS/HIV become mainstreamed to the point where it’s a popular celebrity cause.

    Today, when we talk about AIDS, we often reference rock concerts and famous people sporting red ribbons. Meanwhile, the disease is raging in third world countries. Do you think celebrity endorsement is the best way to raise money for AIDS research and medication for the poor? I sometimes wonder if celebrities are too pretty and too far removed from the terrible reality.

    Click to see a World AIDS Day slideshow.

  • Jon Hrusa/EPA

    Potso Seoete rides by horseback through a pass in the Maluti mountains on a journey to the Molika-liko health clinic in the Mokhotlong district of Lesotho. Seoete is employed by a new program, called Horse-riding for Health, that pays him to transport blood samples from the remote mountainous region.

    Jon Hrusa/EPA

    A neighbor watches as Potso Seoete prepares for his journey on Sept. 1. Approximately 25 percent of Lesotho’s adult population is living with HIV, and the country suffers from high rates of maternal mortality, infant mortality, and malnutrition.

    Jon Hrusa/EPA

    A woman carries her newborn baby into a clinic in the Mokhotlong district of Lesotho on Sept. 2. Health clinics in the furthest reaches of the district are often impossible to reach by off-road vehicles or even motorbikes.

    Jon Hrusa/EPA

    Village children skip rope in the Mokhotlong district. At an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet, the district is blanketed with snow four to six months out of the year; its steep dirt roads impassable during heavy rains in the summer. It is also is one of the most remote regions in Southern Africa, located in a mountainous area some 185 miles east of Maseru.

    A vital link

    By Jonathan Woods, msnbc.com

    On a recent trip to a remote mountainous region in Lesotho, European Pressphoto Agency Photographer John Hrusa documented a man named Potso Seoete, who provides a vital courier service for his community.

    His job: Transport blood samples by horseback and motorbike to be tested for HIV.

    Three to four times a week, weather permitting, Seoete gets on a horse at 7 a.m. and rides for a half-hour to a staging area where he meets a motorbike driver, who gives him an insulated bag of samples to take to the clinic. It's a journey that takes three to four hours, depending on conditions, and it can't take much longer because if the blood samples he's transporting aren't kept at a constant temperature they will break down. During bad weather, the road to the clinic is impassable for everything except horses.

    His job is funded by a new initiative called Horse-riding for Health. It was started by the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and the Lesotho Ministry of Health. The program contracts people like Seoete to provide this vital link from remote communities to clinics.

    After dropping off the samples, he will often be sent back with medications for the people he serves. His payment is 300 Loti, or the equivalent of $42 USD, which is enough to provide his wife, two children and mother with food.

    Describing the service Seoete provides as essential, Photographer John Hrusa said, "Without these horses, the program would fall flat on its face."