********************************************************** SAATHII Electronic Newsletter HIV NEWS FROM INDIA Source: 18/01/2008 Posted on: Reuters, The Hindu, Express India and the Times of India. COMPILED BY: Jacob Boopalan, and L. Ramakrishnan SAATHII Chennai Office. Note: this compilation contains news items about HIV/AIDS published in the Indian media, as well as articles relevant to HIV/AIDS in India published internationally. Articles in this and previous newsletters may also be accessed at http://www.saathii.org/orc/elibrary =============================================================== 1. Love, hope for shunned kids in India AIDS school Reuters, January 14, 2008. http://www.reuters.com/article/africaCrisis/idUSDEL185110 2. An opportunity to erase AIDS stigma The Hindu, January 15, 2008. http://www.hindu.com/2008/01/15/stories/2008011554010500.htm 3. International training, research programme on AIDS Express India, January 16, 2008. http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/International-training-research-programme-on-AIDS/261998/ 4. Why less Indians suffer AIDS dementia The Times of India, January 17, 2008. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/HealthScience/Why_less_Indians_suffer_AIDS_dementia/articleshow/2706572.cms =============================================================== 1. Love, hope for shunned kids in India AIDS school Reuters, January 14, 2008. http://www.reuters.com/article/africaCrisis/idUSDEL185110 BHOOGAON: In a smart blue tunic and red ribbons in her hair, 12-year-old Komal's laughing eyes hide a fear of death that stalks every student in her village school. Within months or years she could be dead, but while she lives she is fulfilling a dream -- of going to school again after she was expelled from her previous one because she was infected with HIV. "They used to throw water on me and tear up my books," Komal said as she reminisced about her days at a regular school. "Still, I wanted to go to school, but one day my teacher said don't come back." At Gokul, a school for HIV-infected children in this dusty village north of India's commercial hub of Mumbai, each student has a heart-wrenching tale of discrimination and suffering. The disease orphaned all of them, some were thrown out of school for their HIV status or abandoned by families. All got the virus from their mothers. The school is among only a few across the country run by voluntary groups, where infected children expelled by "normal" schools receive education. Rights groups and HIV/AIDS workers say conservative India's fight against the disease is being undermined by ignorance and prejudice. Sufferers are often denied treatment by hospitals, thrown out by families, evicted by landlords or fired. Children remain the hidden face of this suffering. When a parent is infected, children drop out of school to care for them, or go to work to replace the lost income, until they become orphans, health workers say. Prejudice is so deep-rooted that a southern state, Kerala, failed to persuade schools to take in two infected children and was forced to bear the cost of their education at home. Children do not figure on India's estimate of 2.5 million people infected with HIV, but the government says about 50,000 children below 15 years are infected by the virus every year. BORN OUT OF REJECTION Among the students in Bhoogaon is Ramesh, whose father, his care-giver says, infected his mother because he wanted her to suffer his deadly fate. All the students are aware of the fatal nature of their ailment. Seven children have died at the school in the past few years. All of the school's 53 pupils are HIV positive, but none has AIDS yet and they are receiving expensive anti-retroviral treatment. "When one of us falls sick and is taken to hospital we keep wondering if he or she is going to come back," says Ramesh. Some of them remember cremating their parents and then being subjected to torture by their relatives and finally fleeing home. "Gokul was born out of the social rejection of these children," says Ujwala Lawate, the school's managing trustee. "Some of them were sent from government remand homes, some we picked up from villages and some were brought in by their families." The residential school, the size of half a football field, has students ranging from two to 16 years. "Villagers threatened us. They said our children were a risk," says Lawate. "In fact they said if our children bit their children they could get AIDS." The locals relented after government health workers intervened and promised to keep the children within the confines of the school's high walls. INSTITUTIONALISING STIGMA? Lawate says her school is an effort to provide dignity and purpose to the lives of HIV-infected children, but she has critics as well. "Instead of separate schools we should fight for equal rights of an HIV/AIDS child," says Meena Sheshu, whose state-based anti-AIDS group "Sangram" opposes Lawate's efforts. "No child should be thrown out of a school. But a separate school only institutionalises the stigma and discrimination." The government's stand is ambiguous. It provides financial aid to schools such as Gokul and says no school should turn away any student, but at the same time the government has yet to ban discrimination against those with HIV/AIDS. Lawate says her critics are ignoring the "practical problems". "While we debate what is right and wrong, children are being discriminated against," she says as groups of smiling students jostle around her, their "kaki" or aunt. "What would happen if these 53 children were not here? Maybe they would just be lying sick somewhere by the streets and waiting to die." =============================================================== 2. An opportunity to erase AIDS stigma The Hindu, January 15, 2008. http://www.hindu.com/2008/01/15/stories/2008011554010500.htm ?Pudiyathor Pongal? aimed at mainstreaming HIV-positive people CHENNAI: The transformation was near perfect: city had become village overnight. Pongal, farmer-style, had come to town a day early. Just as quietly as the village crept in, so did a more subtle transformation. On the campus of the Madras School of Social Work at Egmore, there were plantain festoons, freshly painted pots in which rice gurgled energetically, to the beat of drums and the joyous ululation of women. In rows, women sat on their haunches, cooking rice in earthen pots in traditional mud stoves. Behind them stood men, beating a strange pattern on fist-sized drums. If you just stumbled upon this scene, there was no way you could tell that all the men and women participating in the show were HIV-positive. ?Pudiyathor Pongal? was yet another attempt to attack the stigma that surrounds the HIV victims. Organised by the Indian Community Welfare Organisation and the Madras School of Social Work and supported by the AIDS Prevention and Control Project, the event was structured to make the invisible barriers that separated those living with HIV from those living without it. ?This will create an opportunity to talk about stigma and discrimination, marginalisation and ill treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS,? says A.J. Hariharan, founder secretary, Indian Community Welfare Organisation. A festival is an occasion for the community to come together, and there cannot be a better occasion to integrate HIV-positive people into society, he adds. More than 100 HIV-positive people had come forward to participate, along with almost double that number of students. The participants immensely enjoyed the competitions on cooking pongal and eating sugarcane. There was a rangoli contest for the women and the regular tug-of-war, but the most popular event was the traditional Pongal game: beating the ?uri.? Blindfolded men stumbled their way across to swing a rod against a clay pot swerving overhead, hoping to smash the pot. ?An event like this provides a lot of opportunities for people like us to come out into the open,? says Noorie, of the South India Positive Network. She says one of the most stigmatising acts is when people refuse to eat with the HIV-positive, or on plates used by them. ?Here, all of us are together, cooking pongal and eating it. There is love and a sense of togetherness. A positive person myself, I know it is a great tonic for survival.? =============================================================== 3. International training, research programme on AIDS Express India, January 16, 2008. http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/International-training-research-programme-on-AIDS/261998/ Vadodara: For the first time in Gujarat, a long-term AIDS International Training and Research Program (AITRP) for adolescents will be launched through a joint collaboration between the University of South Florida (USF) and Baroda Medical College (BMC). The training programme will focus on capacity building among HIV/AIDS therapeutic, and prevention and behavioural research in adolescents. BMC would be the beneficiary of the funds granted to USF through the National Institute of Health (NIH), USA, according to BMC authorities. On December 11 last year, a formal cross-continental inaugural event was held through videoconference to launch AITRP. ?NIH has awarded grant to USF, USA to create a unique state-of-the-art training infrastructure with BMC,? said Dr Y S Marfatiya, principal investigator of AITRP. He added, ?USF, USA representatives have been visiting BMC for over six years now. After observing HIV/AIDS patients coming to BMC and the involvement of medical experts in the cases, USF signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to further HIV/AIDS research in Gujarat.? Dr Marfatiya said that this is an ambitious five-year collaborative project to enhance the research infrastructure, training and funding to ?perform HIV research with focus on adolescents.? A collaborative group of faculty committees from USF and BMC will oversee the training programme here. Under this, three courses will be introduced? degree, certificate at USF and a short-term training at BMC, said Dr Marfatiya. He further said, ?All three courses are about HIV/AIDS in adolescents. It will update the medical experts, who are interested in HIV/AIDS, about the disease in adolescents.? Responding to a query about funds, he said, ?We are the beneficiary and USF is the grantee, so nothing can be said about it now.? Dr Marfatiya, who is also the Head of Dermatology Department, BMC, said, ?Research and training would be carried out in a phases. We intend to set up a committee of six departments: paediatrics, medicine, dermatology, Preventive and Social Medicine (PSM) and obstetrics and gynaecology department.? Besides, BMC is also organising a workshop on February 29 where medical experts from all over Gujarat will be invited on AITRP, he said, adding, a ?Workshop would be conducted by around four USF faculty members.? Dr Vijay Shah, who heads the city-based Indu Health Research Foundation (IHRF), will be the Co-investigator of the project. =============================================================== 4. Why less Indians suffer AIDS dementia The Times of India, January 17, 2008. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/HealthScience/Why_less_Indians_suffer_AIDS_dementia/articleshow/2706572.cms NEW DELHI: The mystery - why only 4% of Indian HIV patients suffered from AIDS-induced dementia as against 45% of those in the West (US and Europe) - may have finally been cracked. A six-member team from the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC) has found that Tat - the neuro-toxic protein in the AIDS virus that causes dementia -undergoes a natural mutation, especially in the HIV1-C type (the virus type specific to India), which reduces its neuro-toxicity by almost 100%. There are 10 strains of HIV that infect people worldwide. The Indian strain HIV1-C is the only one that undergoes this mutation, making Tat ineffective in HIV infected Indians. "This is why India records such low incidence of AIDS-induced dementia compared to the West, where the virus does not undergo this mutation," Pankaj Seth, scientist in-charge of the NeuroAIDS lab at NBRC, told TOI. For the past two years, Dr Seth's laboratory has been studying the role of Tat protein derived from HIV strains B and C to understand the neuro effects of HIV infection in the brain. "We have now, for the first time, demonstrated this natural mutation in Tat in the Indian strain of HIV, which reduced the neuro-toxicity of this HIV protein. The project was funded by the department of biotechnology," Seth said. The team has announced its findings in the January edition of 'Annals of Neurology', a prestigious international journal of clinical neurology. HIV-induced dementia or AIDS dementia complex (ADC) develops in the advanced stages of HIV infection. It is a common source of morbidity and causes memory, learning, behavioural and motor disabilities. It also interferes with a patient's ability to adhere to a regular course of ART medication. Seth, who is associate professor of molecular and cellular neuroscience at NBRC, said, "We carried out the study with the help of a novel human brain derived neural stem cell culture system that was developed at NBRC. It was earlier known that Tat destroys the neurons - an irreversible mechanism. What we did was to use cells isolated from human fetal brain material to understand how TAT affected the neurons. "Our findings suggest that HIV Tat protein from subtype C infected patients is less damaging to neurons as compared to Tat B." The team then reversed the mutation in the virus and found that Tat's tremendous neurotoxicity returned. "This confirms that the natural mutation in the Indian HIV strain C makes it less toxic to the brain and therefore does not cause dementia," Seth added. In India, HIV1-C accounts for over 95% of HIV infections. =============================================================== Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in the above articles are those of the respective newspapers, not those of SAATHII.