'HIV' - tagged features

Europe’s biggest story this week was the return home of a group of Bulgarians who moved abroad in the 1990’s only to find themselves facing death sentences for crimes they didn’t commit. The 6 Bulgarian medics repatriated by Libya on Tuesday captured headlines across the continent. They’d been jailed for deliberately infecting children with HIV but had always protested their innocence. There were jubilant scenes at Sofia airport as the medics landed on their French government plane. 

It's come from nowhere to being one of the world's most devastating diseases in just a quarter of a century. It's an extraordinary statistic, but 6 million people die from HIV/AIDS every year. The first case of HIV was in 1981. Network Europe spoke to Dutch AIDS ambassador Paul Beckers who's been analysing the UN's new statistics on HIV/AIDS for 2006. He told us there's good and bad news in the figures. 

Ever since scientists identified HIV, fear, denial and stigma have accompanied the AIDS epidemic. In many countries around the world the disease is closely associated with discrimination. Individuals affected by HIV have been rejected by their families, their friends and their communities. In Cyprus the official number of HIV positive persons is around 500, but AIDS support groups estimate the figure is four times higher. A significant figure for an island of less than one million people where everybody knows each other. Cypriot society believes AIDS is not a problem, but prejudice is killing HIV sufferers. Deutsche Welle reporter Barbara Gruber traveled to the Mediterranean island to investigate. 

Sweden has designated the fight against HIV/AIDS as a central focus of its development aid policy and is investing heavily on prevention in the fight against the killer disease in developing countries. But as countries around the world finally pour millions into the cause - coordination of the prevention efforts sometimes takes second place - with money being wasted - despite the best intentions. In the run-up to international aids day - and the 25th anniversary of the first confirmed case of HIV, senior representatives of aid organisations around the world gathered in Stockholm to compare notes on strategies in the international fight against HIV/AIDS. 

Almost 20.000 scientists, health care providers, educators, policy makers, community leaders and people living with HIV will be gathering at the XVIth International AIDS conference in Toronto next week. The aim is to share current knowledge on this global epidemic that has already killed more than 25 million people and infected another 40 million around the world. Here in Europe a Human Rights Watch report released last week slammed the Romanian government for failing to integrate more than 7,000 HIV infected children aged 15 to 19 - the largest such group in any European state. The report says the vast and filthy orphanages of the pre-1989 communist regime were a breeding ground for AIDS. And even though most HIV infected Romanians do have access to free anti-retroviral drugs and there are laws to protect them, Romanian society is slow to accept these rights. Ignorance about AIDS remains widespread and so is discrimination, preventing children and teenagers from attending school, getting healthcare or jobs.