Date: Wed, 22 Jun 1994 09:24:06 -0400 (EDT) From: "ANNE WILSON, CDC NAC" AIDS Daily Summary June 22, 1994 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National AIDS Clearinghouse makes available the following information as a public service only. Providing this information does not constitute endorsement by the CDC, the CDC Clearinghouse, or any other organization. Reproduction of this text is encouraged; however, copies may not be sold, and the CDC Clearinghouse should be cited as the source of this information. Copyright 1994, Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD ************************************************************ "Ebb Tide for Gebbie" "Athlete May Be Deported for Falsifying HIV Status" "French Firm Offers Home Delivery Condoms" "Harvard Professor Raps US Global AIDS Plan" "Children's Project Failing, Unicef Says" "Biopharmaceutics Announces HIV Pact and Test Results" "Ex-Communist States See Major Surge in TB--WHO" "Caesarean Section and Risk of Vertical Transmission of HIV-1" "Circumcision as a Safer Sex Intervention?" ************************************************************ "Ebb Tide for Gebbie" Washington Post (06/22/94) P. A19; Kamen, Al AIDS policy director Kristine Gebbie, who is constantly plagued with criticism from some AIDS activists, may also be losing favor within the Clinton administration. The latest hint of this surfaced with word that the State Department was not happy with Gebbie's performance at an international political AIDS meeting in France last week. The White House has been talking with senior officials at the Department of Health and Human Services about options for changing the mandate for Gebbie and the AIDS office. John Gurrola, the AIDS czar's press secretary, dismissed the meetings as logical, saying that it was only natural to "make a report card of how things are going and how to do better." "Athlete May Be Deported for Falsifying HIV Status" Washington Post (06/22/94) P. C2 Shaun Mellors, a 28-year-old swimmer from South Africa, said he lied about his positive HIV status to protest the "stupidity" of a 1987 U.S. policy prohibiting people with HIV or AIDS from entering the country. Mellors said that because the ban is not based on public health policy and discriminates against homosexuals and AIDS patients, and because he feared harassment by U.S. immigration officials, he did not apply for the special Immigration and Naturalization Service waiver for infected athletes attending the Gay Games in New York City. Mellors now faces deportation, however, because he acquired his visa fraudulently, according to an INS spokesperson. "French Firm Offers Home Delivery Condoms" Reuters (06/21/94) French communications company A2E Interactif now offers home delivery of condoms to customers who are embarrassed to request them at local drugstores. Four condoms will be delivered within 48 hours of placing the order through Minitel, France's international computer network. Calls are $1.00 per minute, and A2E Interactif says it will contribute 18 cents from each call to either AIDS research or an awareness campaign. "Harvard Professor Raps US Global AIDS Plan" Boston Globe (06/21/94) P. 7; Hohler, Bob The United States is distributing condoms to Rwandan refugees and family planning assistance to Croatians as part of its new plan to battle the global AIDS epidemic, a senior State Department official announced on Monday. But Dr. Jonathan Mann, director of the Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, says this strategy will not do the job. Officials have failed to support international programs designed to modify high-risk social behavior in AIDS-ravaged nations, criticizes Mann, who called the U.S. ban on HIV-positive immigrants "an embarrassment." Mann, who was the first director of the World Health Organization's AIDS program, also argues that prejudice and socioeconomic ills are some of the more severe threats to controlling the epidemic in many developing countries. "Children's Project Failing, Unicef Says" Toronto Globe and Mail (06/21/94) P. A1; Stackhouse, John According to a new report by the UN Children's Fund, many of the goals set in 1990 for safer, healthier, and more productive lives for children will not be met by the end of 1995. Other factors, such as AIDS, are making life even worse for the world's children, it says. Even as children conquer ancient scourges such as polio and guinea-worm disease, they are confronted with a new wave of health and social crises, none so powerful as AIDS. In 16 Third World nations--mostly in Africa--HIV will by the year 2010 account for the deaths of 848,000 children under five years old, according to Census Bureau estimates. "Biopharmaceutics Announces HIV Pact and Test Results" Business Wire (06/20/94) Biopharmaceutics Inc. has signed a final agreement with the Central Research Institute for Chemistry of the Hungarian Academy of Science (CRIC), and acquired a 50 percent interest in CRIC's anti-HIV compound KKKI-538. Under the pact, Biopharm made a $300,000 down-payment, and will make additional payments over the next two years. CRIC informed Biopharm that it has already invested about $5 million in the project, and will invest as much as $2.5 million more in the next two years. CRIC also told Biopharm that a recent acute toxicity test of the compound yielded favorable results. When KKKI-538 was added to HIV-contaminated human cell cultures, the virus was completely inhibited over the following 27 days, and new cells developed in the cultures exhibited no traces of virus or cell toxicity associated with KKKI-538. "Ex-Communist States See Major Surge in TB--WHO" Reuters (06/20/94) Former Soviet bloc nations are experiencing an alarming surge in tuberculosis that has sent death rates through the ceiling, according to World Health Organization experts. The U.N. agency issued a report indicating that about 29,000 people in the former communist states died last year from TB, which kills some three million people around the globe each year--especially in developing countries. In major industrialized nations, including the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, the resurgence of TB has been associated with the HIV/AIDS epidemic and immigration. "Caesarean Section and Risk of Vertical Transmission of HIV-1" Lancet (06/11/94) Vol. 343, No. 8911, P. 1464; Giaquinto, C.; Truscia, D.; De Rossi, A. et al. Because a significant proportion of vertical HIV transmission seems to occur in the late stages of pregnancy or during labor, it is possible that cesarean section may protect the fetus from infection by avoiding direct contact with contaminated blood and cervical secretions. Researchers from the European Collaborative Study examined 1254 HIV-positive women and their children, examining the effects of different modes of delivery on transmission risk. They found that women who underwent cesarean sections had more advanced disease progression, which may cause the protective effect of this type of delivery to be underestimated. With this and other potential confounding factors considered, the researchers calculated that cesarean section cut in half the rate of HIV transmission. "Circumcision as a Safer Sex Intervention?" Volunteer (05/94-06/94) P. 6 Sexually active, but uncircumcised gay men have a two-fold risk of HIV infection, according to a study by researchers at the University of Washington. The scientists surveyed more than 500 homosexual men, 85 percent of whom were circumcised. The findings suggested that "the role of circumcision as an intervention strategy to reduce sexual transmission of HIV warrants consideration."