<CU86475@student.redbridge-college.ac.uk> wrote in message

Vietnam finds HIV carrier infected with bird flu
Thu Apr 14,
By Ho Binh Minh

HANOI (Reuters) - A 21-year-old woman has been infected by both the deadly
HIV/AIDS virus and bird flu, the first such case in Vietnam, health
officials said Thursday.

The Health Ministry said two other patients have been diagnosed with the
H5N1 virus in the northern provinces of Ha Tay and Hung Yen between April 2
and 8 but no deaths were reported.

The latest findings brought to 41 the total number of patients with bird flu
in Vietnam since December 2004, 16 of whom have died, the ministry said in a
statement.

Nguyen Van Thich, head of the Center for Preventive Medicine in the northern
province of Quang Ninh, said the woman, the first to be diagnosed with both
bird flu and HIV in Vietnam, used to work at a hairdressor's shop. She was
hospitalized in late March with fever and coughing.

"She is still very weak," he told Reuters, adding that the woman has been
treated at a provincial hospital.

Quang Ninh province bordering China has one of the highest number of HIV
carriers in Vietnam, most of them drug addicts and prostitutes.

Vietnam has reported 68 human infections of the H5N1 virus since the disease
first hit Asia in late 2003, killing 36 Vietnamese.

Twelve Thais and three Cambodians have also died of the virus that the World
Health Organization says has the potential to mutate into a form that could
pass easily between humans and cause a pandemic in which millions could die.

Doctor Nguyen Tran Hien, director of the National Institute of Hygiene and
Epidemiology, was quoted Thursday by state media as saying Vietnam has taken
nearly 1,000 blood samples from the patients, birds and water fowl infected
by bird flu to help identify the map of the virus allocation.

Hien said the H5N1 virus tested this year showed it has changed slightly
from the type that struck in 2004, its virulence was less but the speed of
its spread was higher, reported the state-run Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper.

Some samples had been sent for further testing in the United States and the
final results to confirm the difference would be available later this month,
Hien said.

The Agriculture Ministry said poultry outbreaks have now been reported only
in the southern province of Tra Vinh in the Mekong Delta where the virus
broke anew last December and spread to 35 of Vietnam's 64 provinces.

Doctor Hoang Thuy Long, former head of the institute, told a government
meeting Wednesday that most of the infected people in Vietnam, including
several family clusters, had contact with sick birds.

"Even though so far the transmission mechanism of the disease remains
unclear, the avian influenza H5N1 type in Vietnam shows no sign of being
spread directly between human and human," Long was quoted by state-run Quan
Doi Nhan Dan daily as saying.

<CU86475@student.redbridge-college.ac.uk> wrote in message...

Polygamy may be part of it, but from what I've seen of African culture,
promiscuous premarital sex is considered normal.  A man may go through
thousands of female sex partners before marrying one or more wife, and
even after they are married he will still continue to have sex outside
their marriage.  But yes, the man will catch HIV and will give it to
all his wives plus everyone else he is having an affair with.  And they
wonder why some areas in Africa have an adult HIV rate approaching 50%
(hint: it's George W. Bush's fault).

The Bangui Definition

In 1985, the World Health Organization called a meeting in Bangui, the
capital of the Central African Republic, to define African AIDS. The
meeting was presided over by CDC official Joseph McCormick. He wrote
about it in his book "Level 4 Virus Hunters of the CDC," saying, "If I
could get everyone at the WHO meeting in Bangui to agree on a single,
simple definition of what an AIDS case was in Africa, then, imperfect as
the
definition might be, we could actually start counting the cases..." The
result was that African AIDS would be defined by physical symptoms:
fever, diarrhea, weight loss and coughing or itching. ("AIDS in Africa: an

epidemiological paradigm." Science, 1986).

In Sub-Saharan Africa, about 60 percent of the population lives and
dies without safe drinking water, adequate food or basic sanitation. A
September, 2003 report in the Ugandan Daily "New Vision" outlined the
situation in Kampala, a city of approximately 1.3 million inhabitants,
which, like most tropical countries, experiences seasonal flooding. The
report describes "heaps of unclaimed garbage" among the crowded houses in

the flood zones and "countless pools of water [that] provide a breeding
ground for mosquitoes and create a dirty environment that favors
cholera."

"Latrines are built above water streams. During rains the area
residents usually open a hole to release feces from the latrines. The rain
then
washes away the feces to streams, from where the [area residents] fetch
water. However, not many people have access to toilet facilities. Some
defecate in polythene bags, which they throw into the stream." They
call these, "flying toilets."

The state-run Ugandan National Water and Sewerage Corporation states
that currently 55 percent of Kampala is provided with treated water, and
only 8 percent with sewage reclamation.

Most rural villages are without any sanitary water source. People wash
clothes, bathe and dump untreated waste up and down stream from where
water is drawn. Watering holes are shared with animal populations, which
drink, bathe, urinate and defecate at the water source. Unmanaged human
waste pollutes water with infectious and often deadly bacteria.
Stagnant water breeds mosquitoes, which bring malaria. Infectious
diarrhea,
dysentery, cholera, TB, malaria and famine are the top killer in Africa.
But in 1985, these conditions defined AIDS.