Thousands of AIDS experts, activists and politicians streamed into Toronto for the world's largest conference devoted to combating the disease -- many of them determined to speak for the world's 2.3 million infected children who are often forgotten.
Experts say that drugs exist to prevent infected mothers from transmitting the disease to children at birth, but many women don't have access to such medication and their babies don't live longer than five years.
"It's such an indictment of the international community and of multilateral agencies, I don't know how they can hold their heads up," said Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Lewis blamed drug companies and apathetic governments, noting that drugs are used successfully in the West to treat and prevent the disease from birth.
"Why is the life of a Western child worth so much more than the life of an African child? We can begin saving lives tomorrow morning," he said.
These sensitive cultural issues, funding debates and hopeful new drug and scientific research will be on the table for some 24,000 delegates from 132 countries at the 16th International AIDS Conference, which opened yesterday and runs through Friday.
Bill and Melinda Gates -- with their US$30 billion commitment from Warren Buffet to fight such diseases as AIDS -- and former US president Bill Clinton are among the conference's speakers.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the first cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Since the beginning of the pandemic, nearly 65 million people worldwide have been infected with HIV and AIDS has killed more than 25 million people.
Officials say there are still an estimated 11,000 new HIV infections and 8,000 deaths every day, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly 64 percent of those infected worldwide live.
On the eve of the summit, details emerged about the first test of a pill to prevent HIV infection. The experiment in Africa mainly showed that the drug Viread is safe when used for prevention.
The new approach involves Viread -- known generically as tenofovir -- a drug already used to treat AIDS. A study by Family Health International, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, tested it on HIV-negative women, many of whom were prostitutes at high risk. After an average of six months, only two HIV cases developed among the 427 women on Viread, compared with six infections among the 432 given a dummy drug.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not