UNAIDS chief defines "Zero Discrimination Day"

Source: Xinhua News Agency

BEIJING, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- Michel Sidibe, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), has detailed how he hopes the first-ever "Zero Discrimination Day" will be a force for global inclusivity.

With an event in Beijing on Thursday, UNAIDS launched the initiative to be observed annually every March 1.

"Zero Discrimination Day is a call for nobody to be left behind," Sidibe said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua on Friday.

"The day will serve as a reminder that we are privileged, but many other people are not having the same luck as us. We need to bring them into the light, and let them have the same advantages as we have," he said.

ANTI-DISCRIMINATION

Sidibe stressed that anti-discrimination efforts hold the key to the fight against HIV/AIDS, even playing a bigger role than medicine.

There is no point having pills if dignity is denied, he argued. "Stigma and discrimination is killing more people today than HIV/AIDS. Even with enough pills, if people are not able to come out and ask for services, pills will remain on the desk."

Eliminating discrimination falls within UNAIDS' "three-zeroes" vision, namely "zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths." More…

25/02/2014

Number of reported HIV cases in Hong Kong increases 9pc

Source: SCMP

Some 559 new cases of HIV infections were reported in Hong Kong last year - the highest annual figure since the first case was diagnosed in 1984 and the third yearly set of record-breaking figures in a row.

Almost 80 per cent of the new cases were men. Of them, more than six in 10 caught the virus through sexual contact with other men, which remains the most common mode of transmission, the Health Department said.

The department's special preventive programme consultant Dr Wong Ka-hing said neighbouring regions like Shenzhen and Guangzhou and many Western counties were also seeing rising trends in HIV infection.

"I won't say the problem is not serious in Hong Kong ... It is worrying," he said.

The number of new cases last year represented a 9 per cent increase on the 513 cases reported in 2012. It brought the total number of reported HIV cases in the city since 1984 to 6,342.

The proportion of all new cases which were the result of sexual contact between men was 53 per cent - the highest since the 1980s - despite the government's prevention efforts focused on targeting homosexual and bisexual men. Wong said the figures suggested a change in strategy may be necessary.

Of the remaining new cases, 25 per cent caught the virus through heterosexual contact and a small number by injecting drugs. Causes of 21 per cent of cases went undetermined. More…

18/02/2014

Living with HIV - and the stigma that goes with it

Source: SCMP

People infected with HIV feel stigmatised by their illness, local researchers have found.

Chinese University and non-government organisation the Aids Concern Foundation recently interviewed 291 "people living with HIV" - people who are infected with the virus but leading a healthy life.

It found that half of them felt stigmatised, while 17 per cent of those who had told people they had HIV had been insulted or discriminated against by family and friends.

About one-third of the interviewees had not told their spouse or partner they were infected with the virus.

"They tend to internalise it when they are stigmatised by others, such as when they are discriminated against," said Mandy Cheung Hiu-wah, programme director of Aids Concern. "We find that the more they internalise the stigma, the worse their mental well-being."

Releasing the research findings yesterday, Cheung said many people were still confused about how the virus was transmitted.

The survey, which was conducted between December 2012 and September last year, found that 9 per cent of those who had told people they had HIV were denied health-care services.

Five per cent said they were fired or forced to quit their jobs because they had the virus.