>Don't be so stupid and blind: -
>
>Are you really trying to tell me you believe that African Americans have
>200 TIMES MORE SEX THAN Caucasians.
No. And never claimed any such ridiculous thing. It's not the amount
of sex or number of partners....it's whether people have sex and one
is HIV+ and one is not and transmission occurs. Vulnerable
populations, such as married women for example, may have little
recourse to demand protection in the form of using condoms.
Communities are not all isolated from each other but then they are
sometimes more insular for a time. African Americans face horrific
problems for example the fact that so many young black men are
incarcerated (over 2 million in prisons in the United States--a truly
racist, classist situation). Drug use may not only act as a vector
(needle sharing) but also may lower inhibitions or be a cause for
negotiated sex. Obviously, not all African Americans are drug users,
of course--but these are the vectors for transmission of HIV.
George M. Carter
**
Alarm after blood donors test HIV-positive in India's Tripura
state
Agence France-Presse - September 8, 2004
http://www.aegis.org/news/afp/2004/AF040921.html
-------------------------------------------------
GUWAHATI, India, Sept 8 (AFP) - Almost 280 blood donors in
India's northeastern state of Tripura have been found to be
HIV-positive, raising fears that supplies from blood banks in the
region could be infected, a government report said.
"Appropriate methods of testing are not followed and so blood
supplied from blood banks is not considered fully safe against
HIV infection," said the Comptroller and Auditor General report,
received here Wednesday.
"Of the 40 items of equipment required by blood banks, the
available items at the time of the audit ranged from four to 12."
The report follows the detection of some 278 donors, among them
189 security personnel, whose blood tested HIV-positive during
laboratory tests.
According to state health authorities, they were not informed of
their HIV-positive status but their blood was destroyed.
"The infected persons were not informed of their HIV infection.
As a result, 278 such persons in the state have been unknowingly
spreading the deadly disease among the state's population," the
report said.
Health officials said they only inform those who ask about their
tests.
The report has sparked alarm among healthcare groups in the
region.
"If blood banks do not have adequate infrastructure for
conducting tests ... it could have dangerous implications and
pose a serious threat to the entire population at large," S.I.
Ahmed, chairman of the Assam AIDS Prevention Society, a frontline
community healthcare group in the adjoining state of Assam, told
AFP.
India's northeast borders the heroin-producing "Golden Triangle"
of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand and has high rates of intravenous
drug use -- a key cause of HIV infection here.
The seven states account for less than three per cent of India's
one billion-plus population but are home to more than 30 percent
of the country's intravenous drug users, according to various
estimates.
040908
AF040921
----------------------------------------------------
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