HIV Commission approves priorities for AIDS services
--TPAC asked to withdraw as state planning coalition
FDA approves new, quick TB test
CDC says risk of HIV Infection low in transfusions
Rendell inaugural to benefit AIDS Walk
Biaxin gets formal FDA approval
Vatican publishes sex guide for good Catholics
NAPWA launches program on CMV prevention
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HIV Commission approves priorities for AIDS services
At its December 11th meeting, the Philadelphia Commission on HIV, the region's new Ryan White Title I Planning Council, agreed on priorities for spending federal 1996 Ryan White money for care of people living with HIV disease and AIDS.
These priorities are the first major planning decision made by the new Commission, which was formed by Health Commissioner Estelle Richman this last fall to replace the much-criticized Philadelphia AIDS Consortium.
The priorities which were agreed upon are, in order, the following:
1) Strategically enhance, expand and maximize the array of appropriate and culturally relevant community-based and regional HIV services to improve systemwide access to CARE funded and other HIV-related services for all consumer populations, and to ensure meeting immediate and long term consumer needs.
2) Continue to develop, test and implement systemwide, multi-level evaluations, quality assurance measures and standards that are: 1) jointly monitored, coordinated and consistent; 2) linguistically appropriate and sensitive to gender and culture; 3) supported by centralized data collection; 4) emphasize consumer input and feedback; and 5) promote programmatic effectiveness and accountability.
3) Promote systemwide coordination and training within and among service categories (particularly case management), service providers and consumers (including peer counselors). This coordination and training will emphasize technical assistance, education, development of standards of care, and linking varying service components (e.g. OASIS: On-Line AIDS Information Services) within the EMA.
4) Develop new resources for supporting the continuum of care and advocacy.
TPAC asked to withdraw as state planning coalition
The Philadelphia AIDS Consortium -- relieved of its duties in planning priorities and allocating funding under Title I of the Ryan White CARE Act last summer -- is now considering a proposal to withdraw from its remaining role in the allocation of Title II Ryan White CARE Act funds.
Title I funds are allocated through the City of Philadelphia Department of Public Health, which has created the new Philadelphia Commission on HIV to develop priorities for the expenditure of not only those funds, by other federal and city funding as well. Title II funds are allocated through the Pennsylvania Department of Health, and TPAC has held on to its role in developing priorities for the expenditure of those as well as other state AIDS funding.
TPAC's board of directors canceled its regularly scheduled December board meeting after numerous complaints and protests about what has been called "bias" and "conflict of interest" in how it spent new state and Title II funding in a recent allocations process. The group canceled its regular board elections earlier this fall, and is currently operating without a president or an executive director.
ActionAIDS executive director Ennes Littrell, a member of TPAC's executive committee, proposed at an early December meeting of the committee that TPAC formally discharge itself of the state planning and allocations function. Her formal motion to that effect was seconded by Joe Cronauer, who represents We The People Living with AIDS/HIV on the TPAC board.
Littrell's motion was scheduled for consideration at the canceled December meeting of the full board of directors, and will likely be brought up for consideration at that meeting when it is re-scheduled.
Meanwhile, TPAC's HIV+ Caucus has sent a letter to TPAC "acting co-presidents" Audrey Tucker and Rashidah Hassan condemning the cancellation of the December meeting, and calling for a new meeting to be held immediately.
FDA approves new, quick TB test
The Food and Drug Administration has approved a new test for the rapid diagnosis of tuberculosis.
The FDA said it gave the test an expedited review because of the importance to public health in the continued control of TB, a disease once on the decline but rising in the past years in the United States and worldwide.
The FDA said the new test provides reliable, specific results in four to five hours, compared with the conventional culture methods that require one to eight weeks.
Because it gives results more quickly, the FDA said, the new test will enable doctors to begin treatment with antibiotics earlier.
The FDA said it approved the test for use only on specimens of sputum that an acid fast stain had already shown are likely to be positive for the TB bacteria.
The test, called the Amplified Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Test, is made by Gen-Probe Inc., San Diego, a company owned by the Japanese firm Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.
Gen-Probe said TB is a growing health threat, with more than 10 million Americans infected with the bacteria and 10 percent expected to develop an active case during their lifetimes. It added that in New York City, TB had increased by more than 140 percent in the past 10 years.
The problem of TB management and control has been compounded with the emergence of multi-drug resistant TB and a growing population of highly susceptible HIV-positive hosts, the company said.
CDC says risk of HIV Infection low in transfusions
A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals that only some 24 of the 12 million pints of blood used in transfusions every year are tainted with HIV.
This risk is about half as great as previous estimates.
HIV-infected individuals produce antibodies that circulate in their blood, but the body does not produce these antibodies in the first few weeks after infection. CDC officials say that about one in every 360,000 blood donations made during this roughly 25-day window when infected blood can evade detection. Still, up to 42 percent of this blood is thrown away because it does not pass other tests. Furthermore, because donations are divided, the average blood recipient gets blood from more than 5 donors and the risk that a patient getting blood will become HIV-infected is between one in 83,000 and one in 122,000, according to the CDC.
Rendell inaugural to benefit AIDS Walk
Philadelphia Mayor Rendell announced Wednesday that he will throw two parties on Jan. 5, four days after his second mayoral inauguration. One of the parties will be a $2,500-per-ticket dinner for his campaign fund, and the other is a $100-per-person charity ball, called the "AIDS/Arts Inaugural Gala." The AIDS event is hoped to raise some $100,000.
The proceeds will be divided equally between From All Walks of Life, an umbrella fund-raising group for 60 AIDS organizations, and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, a nonprofit organization that donates money to local arts and cultural societies.
Rendell's first inaugural also included an AIDS benefit, with the proceeds going to the Philadelphia AIDS Consortium. TPAC has been severely criticized in recent years for bias in its allocations of funding, and is currently involved in yet another controversy over its allocation of over $1 million in state funds last month.
FAWOL currently provides funding to over sixty AIDS service groups in the Delaware Valley area.
Biaxin gets formal FDA approval
Abbott Laboratories has announced that it has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market a drug that fights a bacterial infection common in patients with advanced AIDS.
The company says that studies show the drug, trade-named "Biaxin," extends the lives of people with AIDS, reducing mortality by 20 percent at 18 months after the beginning of treatment.
Vatican publishes sex guide for good Catholics
The Vatican, seeking to lead adolescents not into temptation, has issued a sex education guide to help Roman Catholics save their children from sin.
"Without wanting to take away from them their rightful autonomy, parents must know how to say "no' to their children when it is necessary," the handbook said.
"It is enough just to think of some of the abuses that often go on in some discotheques between children under 16 years old."
The handbook, compiled by the Pontifical Council for the Family after several years' study, urges parents to steer children away from society's "negative influences" and a secular "banalisation of sex" by teaching the facts of life at home.
"They must be able to give their children...a positive and calm explanation of Christian morality," it said.
It cited "the indissolubility of marriage, the relationship between love and procreation as well as the immorality of sex before marriage, abortion, contraception and masturbation."
The Vatican reiterated Pope John Paul's hard line on AIDS.
"Parents must refute the promotion of so-called "safe sex' or "safer sex', a dangerous and immoral policy, based on the illusory theory that a condom can provide sufficient protection against AIDS," the Vatican said.
"Parents must insist on abstinence outside marriage and fidelity inside marriage as the only true and sure education to avoid infection."
The 60-page handbook was published in Italian but the Vatican said it would also be available in other languages.
It singled out masturbation as a particular sin, calling it a "grave disorder," characteristic of immaturity, for which there was no moral justification. It gave parents no tips about what to say to teenagers on the subject.
On homosexuality, it advised parents not to raise the issue at all before adolescence and to seek expert advice if necessary. It reiterated a Church blanket ban on homosexual sex, which it said was "against the laws of nature."
The Vatican put the onus on parents to act as role models for their children, echoing the Pope's recent defense of women's roles as mothers and their right to remain at home.
"Mothers who value their vocation as mothers and their place in the home help enormously in developing in their daughters the qualities of femininity and maternity and in giving their sons a clear, strong and noble example of womanhood," the guide said.
"Fathers who conduct themselves with virile dignity, without machismo, will be an attractive model for their sons and will inspire respect, admiration and security in their daughters."
The Vatican's sex education tips for parents included advice on when to broach the subject, how to teach children gradually about sex and what to do in the face of "deviant tendencies."
It said parents should not let their children come into contact too early with realistic and graphic scenes of childbirth in case they frighten girls off having children.
Before adolescence, parents may gradually explain the "immoral character of abortion, either surgical or chemical," the guide said. By late adolescence, they can move onto natural birth control and "God's plan for procreation," the guide said.
Erotic material should be kept well out of reach, it added.
NAPWA launches program on CMV prevention
The National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA) has launched an education and prevention program to provide information about HIV-related cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease for health care providers and people living with HIV disease.
NAPWA's CMV education and prevention program will include a confidential 24-hour toll-free "CMV Prevention Hotline," 1-800-838-9990, which will operate through June 14, 1996. The hotline will be staffed between the hours of 9 a.m. - 9 p.m. EST, Monday-Friday.
NAPWA's staff are trained to answer a wide variety of questions about prevention and treatment of CMV disease. The staff will direct callers to additional resources when necessary. A pre-recorded message about CMV disease, prevention and treatment will be available 24-hours-a-day, and individuals may leave their name and address to receive additional information.
In addition, NAPWA in collaboration with the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care will host a symposium on Thursday, January 11, 1996 (1:00 - 2:30 p.m. PST, 4:00 - 5:30 p.m. EST) to highlight successes and challenges in preventing and treating CMV and other opportunistic infections. The symposium will be broadcast by satellite to health care providers and patients at sites in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
"Progress in preventing and treating opportunistic infections, including CMV, has been one of the bright spots in the caring of people living with HIV," said William J. Freeman, Executive Director of NAPWA. "It is important for people infected with HIV and their physicians to be aware of the increasing number of therapeutic options available to them."
CMV infects more than 50 percent of U.S. adults. In people with healthy immune systems, the disease remains dormant in the body. However, for individuals with compromised immune systems, such as people with HIV disease, CMV causes serious sight-threatening and/or life-threatening illness. Approximately 40 percent of people with HIV disease develop CMV retinitis (inflammation of the retina of the eye which can cause blindness) in the later stages of the disease.
NAPWA's CMV education and prevention program is being supported by a grant from Roche Laboratories.
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One of the nation's longest-running AIDS vigils, a tent encampment on San Francisco's UN Plaza, has come to an end after more than a decade, organizers have announced.
Jim McAfee, one of the remaining three protesters, said the encampment that once housed more than 20 people was a victim of stormy weather and a dwindling of interest.
"Even ACT UP doesn't act up anymore," said McAfee of a decline in activism in fighting AIDS. Others said that the declining interest in AIDS in the gay community, as the epidemic spreads more widely among the historically disenfranchised, undermined the viability of the vigil.
The encampment came into being Oct. 27, 1985, when two protesters chained themselves to the door of a building that at the time housed federal offices. After federal police made no effort to remove the two men, their friends set up tents to keep the protesters company and show support.
Eventually, the men unchained themselves, but the camp remained and grew to where it eventually housed as many as 20 AIDS and homeless activists.
The encampment endured many challenges over the decade as nearby merchants sprayed campers with hoses and the federal government attempted to remove them.
They were ordered to move after the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building as security was tightened and told again to move so the area could be spruced up for the 50th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations charter last summer.
But the campers endured.
However, Mother Nature was not so kind. Last week's hurricane-like winds ripped apart the encampment and its remains were removed without ceremony on the Friday before Christmas.
"What man couldn't do, an act of God did," McAfee said.
The Names Project Foundation AIDS Memorial Quilt, a hand-sown reminder of the human toll of HIV disease, has entered a new dimension -- an on-line site that allows universal access to the unique tribute.
The site, which went on-line Dec. 1 -- World AIDS Day -- will soon include an art gallery of electronic quilts created by friends, family members and partners of people with AIDS using graphics programs rather than needles and thread.
"We're exploring various mechanisms so people can be co-creative and create things on their computer and submit them over the Internet," said Henri Poole, president of Vivid Studios, the San Francisco company that put the Names Project on the Web. "The Quilt is a piece of art a lot of people contribute to, and we want people to have the same opportunities on-line."
For now, the site includes an ever-growing gallery of panels from the existing quilt, information on donating time to host the quilt in one's community and how to submit panels, and links to AIDS sites and resources.
The electronic gallery, as well as bulletin boards and a page for poetry and short story submissions, will be added in mid-1996, Poole said.
The Quilt consists of more than 32,000 handmade, fabric panels each featuring a unique design to memorialize the life of a person who died from AIDS.