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Staying Healthy During the Recession The economy is in the worst recession in decades. Health care costs are soaring while incomes are shrinking. Many people living with HIV/AIDS are already feeling the financial pain. Benefits experts explain how to access the health care we need to stay healthy during these tough times.

                                                         

                                                              

                                                                         www.poz.com/articles/

 

                                                                

 

OBAMA ADDRESSES IMMIGRATION REFORM Washington D.C. - After much anticipation, President Obama finally spoke publicly about immigration reform. On July 19, 2009 the President addressed the Esperanza National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast and Conference, which is the largest Hispanic evangelical group in the United States. The president stated that he remains "committed to passing comprehensive immigration reform" and that "this promise means upholding America's tradition as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. Those things aren't contradictory; they're complementary." President Obama stated that he hopes the official debate regarding comprehensive immigration reform will begin in late 2009. Obama acknowledged that the American people are calling for a system that will control our borders and crack down on the employment of unauthorized workers, while also legalizing the undocumented workers who are currently in the country. However, many political officials feel that passing comprehensive immigration reform is a difficult task, especially the daunting mission of creating a path towards citizenship for the current illegal immigrants in the country. Some Democrats representing conservative districts do not support a path towards citizenship, citing that it rewards those who don't follow the law and is essentially "amnesty for lawbreakers." In addition, due to the recession in the United States, the economy and health care remain at the top of the President's list. Thus, officials speculate that while talks on immigration reform have ensued, it's not likely that any legislation will be passed on the issue anytime soon. Nonetheless, Obama announced upgrades to online services offered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Office (USCIS). Among the new services that will soon be launched by the USCIS include the ability to check the status of immigration applications online, as well as through text message and email. He also stated that the entire USCIS agency will become more user-friendly. The website in which applicants can check the status of their application is expected to be launched within the next 90 days.

NATIONAL WORKER ID CARDS PROPOSED Washington, D.C. - Due to the increased enforcement of fining employers who hire illegal workers, officials have proposed a national worker ID card to help ensure the work eligibility of employees. The purpose of this identification card, which would contain the individual's fingerprints and other biometric data, would be to create a fraudulent-proof ID so that employers could easily depict workers who are authorized to work in the United States. Another purpose of proposing a national worker ID card for all Americans would be to help combat future illegal immigration. According to Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y) the worker ID card has far-reaching implications: "The ID will make it easy for employers to avoid [hiring] undocumented workers, which will allow for tough sanctions against employers who break the law, which will lead to no jobs being available for illegal immigrants, which will stop illegal immigration." The idea of the national Worker ID card will most likely be presented in the summer of 2009. Opponents of the national worker ID card cite the high costs that the ID card would involve as well as the intrusive nature of requiring all Americans workers to have the ID card. Critics also cite the difficulties in monitoring the nation's 26 million employers for compliance with the system, and believe the best way to control the hiring of illegal workers is through enforcement of wage and labor laws, as well as strict fines to employers who hire those not authorized to work in the United States.

9 FLORIDA COUNTIES ABLE TO CHECK IMMIGRATION STATUS OF JAILED INMATES Tampa, FL - Hillsborough County in Florida became the ninth county in the state to be able to check the immigration status of jailed inmates. Under the Secure Communities program, some counties in Florida receive the immigration history of inmates, based upon biometrics data such as fingerprints. Other counties in Florida that have access to such information include Charlotte, Clay, Collier, Duval, Marion, Miami-Dade, St. John's, and St. Lucie county. According to a news release from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (USCIS), the process is streamlined so that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can easily depict if someone arrested has deportation orders, and if they would classify as a "deportable criminal immigrant." This program allows for inmates' fingerprints to be screened in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's immigration databases and the FBI Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Previously, inmates' fingerprints were only checked against the U.S. Department of Justice's biometric system, and wouldn't have signaled if an inmate was in the country illegally. Deportation priority is granted to illegal alien inmates who are believed to be the greatest danger to society, such as inmates with histories of major drug offenses, murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping.

OKLAHOMA TO BEGIN DEPORTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT INMATES Tulsa, OK - Effective July 1, Oklahoma will begin deporting illegal immigrant inmates who are currently jailed for committing non-violent crimes. Under a new law, current inmates in the state will be considered for deportation if they have served at least 1/3 of their sentence and have been convicted of a nonviolent crime. In order to be deported, they must receive a deportation order from federal officials, and must have no pending federal charges. Approximately 500 inmates in Oklahoma are in the country illegally, and 230 of them would be eligible for deportation. This new law is under the Oklahoma Criminal Illegal Alien Rapid Repatriation Act, and is expected to save Oklahoma taxpayers over $4 million in the first year. It costs about $20,000 annually to house an offender for one year in the state. The Oklahoma Criminal Illegal Alien Rapid Repatriation Act was popular with officials in Oklahoma, and the bill passed in the House unanimously, and only received one "no" vote in the Senate.

GREEN CARDS FOR INVESTORS PROMOTED GLOBALLY Orlando, FL - A new program aims to attract foreign investors to the United States, in exchange for a "Green Card," also known as Permanent Resident status. Under a new pilot program, different companies are coming together to offer "regional centers" in which individuals are granted an EB5 immigrant visa if they invest their money in a development. In order to be designated a regional center the entity must be approved by U.S. Immigration authorities. Once given the designation, the regional centers have at least 100 green cards available for individuals who invest at least $1 million. In order to qualify for an EB 5 (Green Card through investment visa) at least 10 jobs must be created. The U.S. Government has an annual cap of issuing only 10,000 EB5 visas. 3,000 of these are designated to approved regional centers. A resort complex near Disney World in Florida has received the most interest from foreign investors, with the majority of the inquiries are coming from China. Many immigrants desire to obtain a U.S. Green Card (Permanent Resident Status), so they can travel to and from the United States freely, and reside in the country on a permanent basis. Immigration officials remark that the funds for investment for EB 5 Visas are investigated thoroughly, and that they do not want "dirty money."

 

Submit online comment for National AIDS Strategy by Monday!

If the White House isn’t coming to your city to get your thoughts about the HIV/AIDS strategy, you can still submit a comment to the Office of National AIDS Policy. But you only have until this Monday, November 16! (note that the New York town hall is on December 4).

According to the White House, “This information will be considered and evaluated during the drafting of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy. We will summarize submissions to the “Call to Action” and the Community Discussions in a report that highlights common themes expressed by participants.”

Submit your comments now!

 

 

 

UNITED STATES:   "Boys' Use of Gardasil Is Approved"
Wall Street Journal     (10.17.09):: Jonathan D. Rockoff

On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration approved Merck & Co.'s human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil as safe and effective at protecting males from genital warts caused by HPV types 6 and 11. FDA approved the vaccine's use by males ages 9-26. Gardasil is already approved for use by females ages 9-26 to prevent cervical, vulvar and vaginal cancer, precancerous lesions, and genital warts.

Each year, about two of every 1,000 US men are newly diagnosed with genital warts, FDA said. A panel of experts is scheduled the week of Oct. 18 to discuss whether the vaccine should be routinely given to boys; CDC already recommends the vaccine for girls ages 11-12. The issue is complicated by the fact that only about 1 percent of sexually active US males develop genital warts, which - unlike cervical cancer - are not life-threatening. However, vaccinating males could help prevent HPV transmission to women.

"Are boys - or their parents, more to the point - going to be altruistic and get a vaccine so it benefits somebody else?" asked Steven Epstein, a Northwestern University sociologist who studies vaccine-related social issues.

"It may seem unfair: Should this burden be borne by only girls and women?" asked Nancy Berlinger of the Hastings Center, a nonprofit bioethics research institution

 

UNITED STATES:   "US OKs Glaxo's Cervical Cancer Shot"
Reuters     (10.16.09):: Lisa Richwine

GlaxoSmithKline announced Friday that the Food and Drug Administration has approved its Cervarix vaccine for US females ages 10 to 25.

Cervarix fights two strains of the STD human papillomavirus (HPV) linked to about 70 percent of cervical cancers. In company studies, it was 93 percent effective in preventing a pre-cancerous change associated with HPV. In addition, it was 89 percent effective in preventing pre-cancerous lesions from the third most-common cancer-causing HPV type.

Merck & Co.'s competing HPV vaccine, Gardasil, targets the same strains as Cervarix as well as two that cause genital warts. Gardasil was cleared by FDA in 2006. Also on Friday, the agency approved Gardasil for preventing genital warts in males ages nine through 26.

Cervarix contains a novel additive designed to boost the immune response. A Glaxo study showed Cervarix produced more antibodies than Gardasil, but the researchers did not study whether these higher levels provided more protection against cancer. Glaxo had sought FDA's approval of Cervarix since 2007, but the agency delayed its decision while it requested more data.

Gardasil costs roughly $360 for a three-shot series, while Glaxo has not yet announced a price for Cervarix. Some critics question whether it is cost-effective to vaccinate for cervical cancer in the United States, since the disease is often caught early through Pap smears and is largely treatable in its early stages. Still, around 4,000 US women die of the disease annually. Concerns about immunizing boys for genital warts have also been raised, since the warts often clear on their own without treatment.

Cervarix will debut on the market later this year, said Glaxo. The vaccine got another boost on Friday when Japan - the world's second-largest pharmaceutical market, after the United States - approved it, making Cervarix the first cervical cancer vaccine available there.

 

SOUTH AFRICA:   "Little Progress in TB Fight: Minister"
Independent Online (Johannesburg)     (10.12.09):: South Africa Press Association

The prevalence of tuberculosis has increased threefold in South Africa during the last decade and the country has made "little progress" in combating its spread, the deputy health minister told participants at a recent international meeting in Cape Town.

"We need a change of mind-set and more sense of urgency to confront the scourge of TB," Molefi Sefularo told the meeting of the Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS/TB Epidemic.

Sefularo called on program managers and others to focus not only on "drafting crisis plans," but to immerse themselves in achieving better outcomes. "All should work in partnership to ensure that society gets involved in our fight against TB, as we have declared this a priority disease," he said.

Thirteen of every 100 deaths in South Africa are due to TB, making it the county's leading cause of death, according to a report by Statistics South Africa. Almost 1 percent of the population, or 461,000 residents, develops TB each year, says the World Health Organization (WHO).

Sefularo compared South Africa with neighboring Mozambique, which he said had fewer resources than South Africa but was more effective in addressing TB. South Africa's TB cure rate of 65 percent is better than its 2004 rate of 51 percent, but far short of the 85 percent cure rate that WHO says is needed to control the epidemic.

Presenting a huge challenge, "possibly in a manner that this country has never faced before," is the growth of multidrug-resistant TB and extensively drug-resistant TB in combination with HIV. "Their management demands more from health workers than what they ordinarily are required to offer," Sefularo said.

To address professional and institutional shortcomings in treating TB, Sefularo said his department is pushing for more training in infection control in partnership with other organizations.

 

CANADA:   "Pap Smear Guidelines May Bring Relief"
Edmonton Journal     (10.17.09):: Jodie Sinnema

Under new clinical guidance, Alberta now advises most women who are at low risk for cervical cancer to have a Pap smear every three years rather than annually. Alberta is the last province to switch to the three-year testing recommendation, acting upon the advice of an expert committee that found no increased cervical cancer risk when Pap smears were spaced further apart. Cost savings were not weighed in making the policy decision.

Under the new guidelines, women should start having Pap smears at age 21 or three years after becoming sexually active, whichever is later. If the results of annual Pap smears are normal for three consecutive years, screening can be spaced out to once every three years. Women at risk for cervical cancer - including immunosuppressed women and women with a history of cervical cancer or high-grade abnormalities - still need annual Pap smears.

"I believe that the guideline reflects the best evidence and that over time, we will all gain comfort with the new way," said Dr. June Bergman, a family physician in Calgary who co-chaired the screening policy committee.
"It's an intervention that causes hassle for people and is not necessary more often," Bergman said. "You get the same health benefit from one every three years than one every year because it's such a slow-growing cancer."

The province will still cover the costs of annual Pap smears when physicians believe they are needed. Many doctors probably already screen less frequently, as other Canadian provinces and much of Europe transitioned years ago to testing every three years, Bergman noted.

ZIMBABWE:   "Zimbabwe Women Combat HIV Stigma"
BBC Sport     (10.13.09):: Steve Vickers

HIV-positive women in Zimbabwe are taking to the soccer pitch to fight misconceptions and stigma about HIV/AIDS. The project began in December, and enough women have joined to organize competitions among 16 teams. An attempt to organize a similar league for men has not yet succeeded, as there were not enough players to form even two teams. All the women players are public about their HIV status.

"I'd like the whole world to know about my [HIV] status, so that others can be helped," said Thandiwe Richard, goalie for the Epworth-based team ARV Swallows, which has won all three competitions to date. "But some people in our community say, 'How can these people who are dying play football?' But football has helped my fitness; I can't say I'm ill now, but I wasn't well when I joined the ARV Swallows."

"People laughed at us at first as we couldn't even kick the ball properly, but when we brought our first trophy to Epworth the community started to take us seriously," said Meriah Kabudura, who plays defense for the team. "I would want this football project to grow, and for other countries to follow what we have started in Zimbabwe. I'm so, so happy with what our team has done."

"We wanted these games to be curtain-raisers for some of the big men's games, so that more people can see what these girls are doing," said Chris Sambo, the project's coordinator and a former CEO of Zimbabwe's Premier League. "But many clubs are superstitious and they don't want women on the pitch before the game, and more so when the women are known to be HIV-positive."

However, Sambo is not deterred: "Given the prevalence of HIV in the Southern African region, I'd love to see an international competition with the final played at the opening ceremony of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa."

 

 

 

 

THAILAND:   "AIDS Vaccine Is of Modest Help, Fuller Research Says "
Wall Street Journal     (10.20.09):: Gautam Naik

A more extensive analysis of data from a Thailand-based trial indicates that an experimental AIDS vaccine may have been less effective than originally thought.

In September, researchers announced that the vaccinations - which combined two vaccines previously shown to be ineffective when given separately - had lowered HIV infection risk by about 31 percent. Calculations indicated a 4 percent likelihood the effect was due to chance - clearing the 5 percent chance threshold applied in drug and vaccine trials, and making the results statistically significant. Researchers recorded 51 HIV infections among 8,197 subjects who received the vaccine and 74 among the 8,198 control group participants.

The initial results were based on a "modified intent to treat" analysis of nearly all participants, including those who did not receive the full course of injections. Researchers subsequently performed "intention to treat" and "per protocol" analyses. Per protocol includes only those volunteers who received all the vaccine shots at the right times.

The per protocol analysis included 12,542 participants and showed efficacy of 26.2 percent. Its 16 percent chance probability was far above the 5 percent cutoff. The intention to treat analysis included all 16,402 healthy subjects and showed a 26.4 efficacy rate and an 8 percent chance probability.

"Taken together, these data are consistent with a modest protective effect of vaccines in this study," wrote the authors of the new analysis.

Raphael Dolin of Harvard Medical School stated in an accompanying editorial: "The possible vaccine efficacy observed was modest and indicates that the vaccine regimen studied is unlikely to be a public health control measure for HIV-1 infection, as the authors themselves acknowledge." Despite the mixed results, however, Dolin said the findings "raise a number of questions that have important implications for future directions in vaccine research."

The expanded analysis was presented Tuesday at AIDS Vaccine 2009 in Paris and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine: "Vaccination with ALVAC and AIDSVAX to Prevent HIV-1 Infection in Thailand" (10.20.09; doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa0908492).

 

  

 

 

 

ESTONIA:   "Estonia Has to Step Up Efforts to Combat HIV - Survey "
Baltic News Service     (10.13.09)
The treatment and quality of life of Estonian HIV/AIDS patients is fairly good but could be improved, according to the Euro Index Project of 29 European states. The country needs to address injection drug users, since most Estonians infected are either IDUs or their partners, the EU project said. The report also noted discrimination against those with HIV in schools and workplaces. In Eastern European countries more generally, people with HIV/AIDS face discrimination and stigma, and harm-reduction strategies in prisons are inadequate, the survey found. The report was based on official data, patient interviews and research by the Brussels think-tank Health Consumer Powerhouse.

PENNSYLVANIA:   "Thousands Brave the Cold for AIDS Awareness "
Philadelphia Inquirer     (10.19.09):: Maya Rao

On Sunday, about 15,000 people turned out for the 23rd annual AIDS Walk Philly, despite rain and bitter chill. The participants had raised $350,000 by the time of the event, said Cari Bender, a spokesperson for the AIDS Fund. The fund supports 30 HIV/AIDS education, prevention and service organizations in the Delaware Valley.

CALIFORNIA:   "AIDS Health Project Body Image Workshop"
Bay Area Reporter (San Francisco)     (10.15.09)
On Friday, Oct. 23, at 6:30 p.m., the University of California-San Francisco's AIDS Health Project will present "Body Image: A Workshop for Gay Men." Noting that body image can impact relationships, sex and HIV risk, the forum's organizers say it will discuss how to feel better about one's body and less concerned about others' opinions of it. Free and open to all men who have sex with men, the meeting will take place at the AHP Services Center, 1930 Market St. Registration is required: telephone 415-476-6448 ext. 1.

 

CALIFORNIA:   "AIDS Walk Is 25"
Los Angeles Times     (10.19.09):: Gerrick D. Kennedy

Sunday's 25th annual AIDS Walk Los Angeles drew some 30,000 people who walked a 6.2-mile route in West Hollywood and raised $3,146,206 for AIDS Project Los Angeles and other AIDS service organizations. Craig E. Thompson, APLA's executive director, said the funds are especially needed this year because the organization lost $1.6 million as the result of state budget cuts.