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Things that are going on that you might want to know.

Click here: Officials in Rockland Question Medicaid Billings of $13 Million - New York Times

It truly sickens me when I read about people ripping off a program that is intended to help disabled, low-income people. This is why legislators always target Medicaid when talking about cuts in programs/services.

Crocodile blood may yield powerful new drugs

by Michael Perry

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Scientists in Australia's tropical north are collecting blood from crocodiles in the hope of developing a powerful antimicrobial drugs for humans, after tests showed that the reptile's immune system kills HIV.

The crocodile's immune system is much more powerful than that of humans, preventing life-threatening infections after savage territorial fights that often leave the animals with gaping wounds and missing limbs.

"They tear limbs off each other and despite the fact that they live in this environment with all these microbes, they heal up very rapidly and normally almost always without infection," said U.S. scientist Mark Merchant, who has been taking crocodile blood samples in the Northern Territory.

Initial studies of the crocodile immune system in 1998 found that several antibodies in the reptile's blood killed bacteria resistant to penicillin, such as Staphylococcus aureus, Australian scientist Adam Britton told Reuters on Tuesday. It was also a more powerful killer of HIV than the human immune system.

"If you take a test tube of HIV and add crocodile serum it will have a greater effect than human serum," Britton said from Darwin's Crocodylus Park, a tourism park and research center.

Britton said the crocodile immune system works differently from the human system by directly attacking microbes immediately an infection occurs.

"The crocodile has an immune system which attaches to bacteria and tears it apart and it explodes. It's like putting a gun to the head of the bacteria and pulling the trigger," he said.

For the past 10 days, Britton and Merchant have been carefully collecting blood from wild and captive crocodiles, both saltwater and freshwater species. After capturing a crocodile and strapping its powerful jaws closed the scientists extract blood from a large vein behind the head.

"It's called a sinus, right behind the head, and it's very easy just to put a needle in the back of the neck and hit this sinus and then you can take a large volume of blood very simply," said Britton.

The scientists hope to collect enough crocodile blood to isolate the powerful antibodies and eventually develop an antibiotic for use by humans.

"We may be able to have antibiotics that you take orally, potentially also antibiotics that you could run topically on wounds, say diabetic ulcer wound," said Merchant.

However, drugs derived from the crocodile's immune system may need to be synthesized for human consumption.

"There is a lot of work to be done. It may take years before we can get to the stage where we have something to market," said Britton.

Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

HIV/AIDS is not over! Call 1-212-807-6655 to speak to someone anonymously.

Judge Roberts on AIDS
Evidence abounds that the Reagan administration fiddled while the AIDS crisis raged out of control. It emerged last week that John G. Roberts, nominated to the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush, contributed to the problem. He urged that a 1985 memo briefing President Ronald Reagan on AIDS delete the sentence, “As far as our best scientists have been able to determine, [the] AIDS virus is not transmitted through casual or routine contact.”
Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign told PlanetOut, “That he counseled President Reagan against using sound science to reassure a fearful nation is a concerning revelation.”

Despite evidence that prevention programs instituted some time ago are beginning to have an impact in some countries, the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to grow. By 2005, the number of those infected had grown to more than 40 million, double the number in 1995. Previous success stories in Thailand and Uganda show potential to weaken as prevention programs have become less diligent. Globally, new infections among women, especially young women, continued to outpace those among men, - a stark reminder that gender inequity and violence against women fuel the epidemic. Life-saving drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV have not been available to the hundreds of thousands of infants who have become needlessly infected at birth or through breastfeeding in the last year. According to UNAIDS and WHO, stigma and discrimination, whether actual or feared, remain perhaps the most difficult obstacles to prevention of HIV.

A unified and global commitment to turning the tide on this disease is nonetheless building. This effort requires more resources and more effective use of resources devoted to research, prevention, care and treatment for those infected with and affected by the disease. Simultaneous and sustained expansion of prevention and treatment efforts are needed if the pace of the epidemic is to be slowed.

Map 1. of current HIV/AIDS infections.
This map is updated periodically at:
www.unaids.org/EN/resources/epidemiology.asp

	By the end of 2005, 40.3 million people were living with HIV/AIDS, including 17.5 million women and 2.3 million children under the age of 15.
	4.9 million people became newly infected with HIV in 2005, including 700,000 children. Of these, 3.2 million new infections occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa.
	In 2005 alone, a total of 3.1 million people died of HIV/AIDS-related causes.
	World-wide, only one in ten persons infected with HIV has been tested and knows his/her HIV status.

Global Disparity

Global trends of infection emerging from the HIV/AIDS pandemic:

	Ninety-six percent of people with HIV live in the developing world, most in sub-Saharan Africa. The epidemic continues to grow in this region, with nearly a million new infections between 2003 and 2005.
	In some African countries, three quarters of those infected are women - many of whom have not had more than one sexual partner.
	An estimated 5 to 6 million people in low- and middle-income countries will die in the next two years if they do not receive antiretroviral treatment (ART). At the end of 2005, only one in seven Asians and one in ten Africans who need ART were receiving it.
	In six African countries, (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe), more than one in five of all pregnant women have HIV/AIDS. In Swaziland, nearly 40% of pregnant women are HIV-positive.
	Without prevention efforts, 35% of children born to an HIV positive mother will become infected with HIV. At least a quarter of newborns infected with HIV die before age one, and up to 60% will die before reaching their second birthdays.
	Injecting drug use and commercial sex work are fueling the epidemic across Asia and Eastern Europe, and few countries are sufficiently reaching out to these marginalized groups or addressing the poverty that often underlies these behaviors.
	Discrimination against vulnerable groups is evident in the Russian Federation, were more than 90% of the estimated one million people living with HIV were infected through injecting drug use, but represent only 13% of those receiving antiretroviral therapy.

Women and AIDS

By the end of 2005, women accounted for nearly half of all people living with AIDS worldwide, and represent almost 60% of infections in sub-Saharan Africa. The impact of HIV on women is also growing in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and South and South-East Asia. Moreover, young women are several times more likely than young men to contract the disease through heterosexual contact. Worldwide, 62% of infected young people are girls, and that number soars to 77% in sub-Saharan Africa. A woman's vulnerability to the virus is attributable not only to biological differences, but also to deeply entrenched socio-economic inequalities that further compound her risk.

Because 70% of the world's poor are women, women have fewer economic options. They are far more vulnerable because of absolute poverty to engage in transactional sex to pay for food, school fees and other necessities. They are also vulnerable to coercive or forced sex and often unable to negotiate condom use. One in three women world-wide have been affected by gender-based violence, but poor women are even more likely to be abused.

Many women, particularly married women, cannot control the circumstances under which sex takes place. Research in several countries shows that for far too many young girls, the first sexual experience is coerced or forced. Married women are especially unable to negotiate sex or condom use with their husbands who may have extramarital partners. Some research indicates that married women are in fact more at risk for HIV than unmarried women because they are more frequently exposed to intercourse within marriage.

HIV-positive women may transmit HIV to their children during pregnancy, in childbirth or through breastfeeding. Today, mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV is the primary mode of acquisition of HIV for the more than 2 million children living with HIV. While antiretroviral therapy significantly reduces the risk of MTCT of HIV, prevention coverage in the 30 African countries with the highest HIV prevalence is only 5 percent.

As AIDS ravages families and communities, the burden of caring for ill family members rests mainly with women and girls - many of whom may be seriously ill themselves. A woman affected by HIV/AIDS is plunged further into poverty, losing the ability to provide for herself and her children. Combined with pervasive social stigma and the collapse of traditional family and support structures, HIV/AIDS is eroding the status of women in many countries.

Reasons for Hope

	The Caribbean is the region with the world's second highest HIV prevalence rate. There is some reason for optimism in this region, where overall HIV prevalence remained the same in 2005 as in 2003.
	Left untreated, AIDS is eventually fatal; however, life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs have begun to transform HIV from an inescapable death sentence into a manageable condition for those fortunate enough to have access to them. In 2005, 250,000 to 350,000 deaths were averted because of recent scale-up of treatment.
	A number of drugs such as Nevirapine are clinically proven to significantly reduce mother-to-child transmission when given to pregnant mothers and children shortly after birth. See http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/InSite.jsp?doc=ar-drugs for more information about the range of HIV/AIDS medications on the market.
	The National AIDS Program of Brazil has successfully offered universal access to treatment while conducting an aggressive HIV prevention campaign. In May 2003, the program was presented with the $1 million Gates Award for Global Health at the Global Health Conference. Treatment coverage is also now over 80% in Argentina, Chile and Cuba.
	The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, founded in 2001, illustrates a growing international commitment to address the pandemic, even though it remains well short of the $7-10 billion annual budget recommended by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. See www.theglobalfund.org/en/ for more information.
	The U.S. government's commitment of $15 billion dollars over five years (2004-8) has great promise to make a substantial contribution if fully funded. For more information, see www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/hivaids.
	Top scientists from around the world are committed to vaccine development, which remains one of the greatest hopes the world has for preventing transmission of the virus. Clinical trials are now ongoing in several countries, including the United States.
More detailed information on which this update is based can be found in the UNAIDS/WHO epidemic update 2005. www.unaids.org/en/Publications/

HIV/ AIDS

TAC welcomes Aids budget 2003-11-13 14:00:01
Cape Town - The Treatment Action Campaign has welcomed the budget announcement on HIV and Aids, saying that the R1,9-billion set aside for antiretroviral treatment is enough for a comprehensive national roll-out programme.
[Full Story...]

Hertz secures massive R70m contract from Eskom 2003-09-16 06:30:01
Pretoria - Hertz, the car rental company in which listed diversified transport and logistics group Unitrans has a 40 percent stake, has been awarded a three-year contract worth R70 million by power utility company Eskom.
[Full Story...]

JSE will not demand HIV disclosure 2003-07-04 06:30:01
Johannesburg - The JSE Securities Exchange would not make it mandatory for firms on the mooted social responsibility index to disclose the prevalence or cost of HIV/Aids, Russell Loubser, the chief executive of the bourse, said yesterday.
[Full Story...]

Expert oversight essential to prevent a roller coaster of illness 2003-06-17 06:30:01
Offering free antiretroviral drugs to HIV-positive employees is economically viable - but only if the treatment works. High-quality treatment is not just a prerequisite for ensuring that productivity costs are saved, it is essential to ensure that costs are not doubled.
[Full Story...]

Make sure you can gain from the falling price of treatment 2003-06-10 06:30:01
Drug prices will drop, and companies with HIV/Aids treatment programmes will benefit. Unless, that is, they have signed up to fixed-premium providers such as a medical aid - as most have.
[Full Story...]

Doing too little, too late is money wasted 2003-06-03 06:30:01
In week two of this series (www.FutureForesight.com), we spoke about the economic viability of treating the workforce. International and local studies have shown that treating the workforce would save the company money. Simply put, antiretroviral treatment costs less than the absenteeism, loss of productivity and disability costs that are incurred as an employee becomes ill when treatment for HIV/Aids is not available.
[Full Story...]

The more you treat the more money you save 2003-05-27 06:30:01
Company executives should be good at strategy, but the way most firms manage HIV/Aids in the workforce shows there are some things they don't understand. They allow profiteering schemes to undermine HIV/Aids treatment.
[Full Story...]

Time for savvy managers to shoulder intervention schemes 2003-05-20 06:30:01
Many companies are destroying shareholder value by implementing partial HIV/Aids programmes Employers are either holding off on treatment or implementing minimalist interventions, in the mistaken belief that they are saving money.
[Full Story...]

It is economically viable to treat your workers 2003-05-13 06:30:01
In most South African companies it is cheaper to treat than to ignore HIV/Aids in the workforce. Analysis of 70 South African companies by FutureForesight, the firm of HIV workplace economics specialist, has shown the viability of completely funding HIV treatment in most cases.
[Full Story...]

Business has lot to gain from funding treatment in workplace 2003-05-06 06:30:01
In-depth analyses of advanced workplace HIV/Aids treatment programmes reveal that even the leading proponents of workplace treatment are making catastrophic mistakes. Rather than reducing the cost of HIV/Aids to business, they may be doubling it.
[Full Story...]

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1/29/2006 mjg ^Ó2003 carmelo gonzalez webmaster@carmelogonzalez.com www.CarmeloGonzalez.com

Last updated on 07/19/2008