“I am delighted that the UN Secretary-General has appointed Hilde Frafjord Johnson as his new special representative for South Sudan. Norway has actively promoted this important appointment,” said Minister of Foreign Affairs Jonas Gahr Støre.

“With her broad experience of development issues and her insight into Sudan and the peace process, she is the right person to lead the UN’s efforts to help resolve the major challenges facing South Sudan in the time ahead,” said Mr Støre.

Former Development Minister Hilde Frafjord Johnson was appointed Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for South Sudan on 8 July. Her candidature was actively supported by the Norwegian Government. On the same day the Security Council adopted a mandate for a new UN operation in South Sudan. Ms Johnson will lead the UN’s work in what, from today, will become Africa’s 54th state and soon the UN’s 193rd member.

During her term as Norwegian Development Minister, Hilde Frafjord Johnson helped to put the fight against poverty and the specific challenges of fragile states high up on the international agenda. She was a key player in the peace negotiations between North and South Sudan, and knows the region well. Since August 2007, she has been Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF.

“The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for South Sudan and the UN will have a key role to play in the efforts to bring about stability, peace and sustainable development, in addition to helping the authorities to build a new state. I congratulate Hilde Frafjord Johnson on her appointment. She has the support of Norway and the Government as she starts her work. Norway will continue to give high priority to Sudan both bilaterally and through the UN, and we will continue to support the efforts to establish a new state in South Sudan,” said Mr Støre.

By the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway

KENYA: More cervical cancer screening for HIV-positive women urged

Photo: Kate Holt/IRIN

Cervical cancer is one of the biggest killers of women in he developing world

KISUMU, 12 July 2011 (PlusNews) – The Kenyan government is taking steps to incorporate screening for cervical cancer – one of the biggest killers of women of child-bearing age – into HIV care, but health workers say low awareness means the uptake of this vital service is low.

Studies show that HIV infection increases women’s risk of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, a leading cause of cervical cancer.

“When we as health workers talk to many women, you realize that HIV-negative women believe cervical cancer only affects those who are HIV-positive and they miss the opportunity for screening because they believe they are not at risk, while HIV-positive women will at times decline screening because they fear they will be found to be positive for the disease,” Collins Wambasa, a clinical officer at western Kenya’s Nyanza Provincial General Hospital, told IRIN/PlusNews.

Cervical cancer screening is included as part of routine care for HIV-positive women under the country’s national guidelines for HIV care. However, screening levels remain low; according to the UN World Health Organization, just 3.2 percent of Kenyan women aged 18-69 are screened for cervical cancer every three years, compared with 70 percent of women in the developed world.

In 2007, the government began rolling out cervical cancer screening at selected HIV care centres using a method known as visual inspection with acetic acid, which studies say is an efficient and cost-effective method of screening. The test is performed by a trained health worker who washes a woman’s cervix with acetic acid – a key ingredient in vinegar – and gauze; any pre-cancerous lesions turn white and can be seen with the naked eye under a halogen lamp.

The more common Pap smear test requires more highly trained health providers, access to equipment and supplies, a cytology laboratory, arrangements for communicating results to screened women and a facility for confirming diagnosis.

Joyce Ndisi, a 33-year-old HIV-positive mother of two, recently visited the Nyanza Provincial Hospital for her routine care, where clinicians told her she would require another cervical cancer screening. “It was very simple – I didn’t even feel any pain because they didn’t put that metal spoon [spatula] inside me… Now I won’t fear coming for it because it is very easy,” she said.

Awareness issues

“The main limitation to cervical cancer screening is the lack of awareness of cervical cancer as a significant health threat to women in the general public and in the healthcare sector,” said Elizabeth Bukusi, a senior research officer at the Kenya Medical Research Institute and co-author of a 2011 article on cervical cancer screening for HIV-positive Kenyan women.

The main limitation to cervical cancer screening is the lack of awareness of cervical cancer as a significant health threat to women

According to a 2011 study conducted in Eldoret, in Kenya’s Rift Valley Province, on the perceptions of risk and barriers to cervical cancer screening, 35 percent of the participants did not think they were at risk of cervical cancer and felt no need to screen for the condition. In this study, 22.1 percent of the respondents mentioned fear of abnormal results as the reason they would not want to be screened for cancer while 11.4 percent mentioned cost. Just 12.3 percent of the participants reported having been screened at least once before.

Bukusi cautioned that health workers needed to emphasize the importance of repeat screening. “No currently available screening technique is 100 percent sensitive, and women are at risk of cervical cancer throughout their lives, so screening at regular intervals is necessary,” she said.

Charles Okal, the Provincial AIDS and STI Coordinator in Nyanza, says the use of simple techniques for cancer screening and the integration of screening in HIV care settings had seen the number of women screened and treated rise over time.

“Making cervical cancer screening part of routine HIV care for women has made it easy to get more women to screen and get treated for the disease,” he said. “But it is also important to note that HPV prevalence within the population will decline over time so long as we step up our efforts to make people take up such prevention methods such as condom use, male circumcision and reduction in sexual partners.”

According to WHO, cervical cancer ranks as the second most frequent cancer among women in Kenya; about 39 percent of women in the general population are estimated to harbour a cervical HPV infection at any given time.

ko/kr/mw source www.irinnews.org

HIV/AIDS: Gilead first to join medicines patent pool

Photo: US Department of Health and Human Services

The antiretroviral, Truvada, manufactured by Gilead

NAIROBI, 12 July 2011 (PlusNews) – Gilead Sciences has become the first pharmaceutical company to sign a licensing agreement with the Medicines Patent Pool to increase access to HIV and Hepatitis B treatment in developing countries.

“Today marks a milestone in managing patents for public health. The licence agreement with Gilead Sciences will help make medicines available at a lower cost and in easier-to-use formulations without delays,” Ellen ‘t Hoen, executive director of the Medicines Patent Pool, said in a statement.

The agreement allows for the production of several of Gilead’s HIV medicines, including tenofovir and emtricitabine, as well as two integrase inhibitors, which block retroviral replication, cobicistat and elvitegravir (both still in development), and combinations that include these medicines. Tenofovir is also licensed to treat Hepatitis B.

“People in developing countries often have to wait for years before they can access new health technologies. Today’s agreement changed that,” Hoen said.

The licences will allow for the supply of tenofovir and emtricitabine in 111 countries, for cobicistat in 102 countries, and for elvitegravir and the combination drug, Quad, in 99 countries.

The Medicines Patent Pool, established in 2010 by the international health financing mechanism, UNITAID, aims to stimulate innovation and improve access to HIV medicines through the negotiation of voluntary licences on medicine patents that enable generic competition and facilitate the development of new formulations. The US National Institutes of Health was the first patent holder to join the pool when it licensed the life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV), darunavir, in October 2010.

An estimated 6.6 million people have access to ARV treatment; 1.6 million of these are taking generic or branded Gilead HIV medicines.

“Reservations”

“The licensing agreement is a positive step but we have some reservations; it excludes middle-income countries like Brazil and China, which will now have to issue compulsory licences if they want to manufacture the drugs still in development,” Tido von Schoen-Angerer, executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières’ Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, told IRIN/PlusNews.

In addition, MSF says the licensing agreement limits “price-busting competition” by confining manufacturing to India, meaning narrow supply options for active pharmaceutical ingredients needed to make the drugs.

“This is a more managed form of competition where countries with the ability to produce drugs – such as Brazil – have been left out,” Von Schoen-Angerer said. “We hope that in the future, the patent pool will be able to improve the agreements to allow for production and sourcing of raw materials from different countries.”

Certainly some of these issues can be improved… Today’s licence should be seen as a floor and not a ceiling

According to Chan Park, general counsel of the Medicines Patent Pool, while the agreement is not perfect, it is an exciting and encouraging start for the pool.

“Certainly some of these issues can be improved, and during our negotiations we ensured that those countries excluded from the agreement would be able to use non-voluntary methods – such as compulsory licences – to access the drugs,” he told IRIN/PlusNews. “Regarding the choice of India for manufacture, India already manufactures about 90 percent of the world’s generic drugs; its generic industry is very competitive.

“We are actively involved in negotiations with other pharmaceutical companies and hope to see progressive improvements in the terms and conditions of the licences in effect,” he added. “Today’s licence should be seen as a floor and not a ceiling.”

kr/mw source www.irinnews.org

By F. Jones, USA

Religion has been the greatest tool used to conquer and convert the minds of Black people. When you connect a belief system to a religion its affects can be so much more profound and longer lasting. An example of this can be seen wherein which during slavery Black people were given a religion that taught them to believe in white deities- a white God, white messiah, white angels and white prophets. These depictions of “white only” deities were deliberately done to subconsciously indoctrinate the false belief of white divinity [and therefore superiority] upon the minds of the African slaves. In making the slaves believe in white deities it made them subconsciously believe that their slave masters- also being white- were closer to God—or god like. Moreover, during this process the African slaves were also taught to believe that this white God had ordained them to be slaves and that their Black skin color was the result of a curse. 

This white  idolizing Black mortifying religious indoctrination process was used to make the African slaves more loyal to their masters. From the perspective of the slave masters, it made them better slaves. This conditioning has been left uncorrected and un-removed for generations.
The effects of that brain washing scheme initially implemented more than four hundred years ago still continues upon the mind of millions of African Americans today. It is for this reason why it is not uncommon to visit a church with an entire Black congregation and find its walls stubbornly adorned with only pictures of white deities. The effects of that mental conditioning program have continued through many generational lines. These white deities are now so indoctrinated upon the minds, souls, and hearts of Black people that most will now angrily defend preferring them saying that the color of their deities are of no matter nor relevance. But given that this same group is often psychologically incapable of accepting Black depictions of their deities proves that color is of relevance-just as long as it remains white. For some Blacks it is so immense that they literally feel offended and a disdain towards Black depiction of their sacred deities.

This  behavior is among the severest remaining effect of that black mortifying religious indoctrination process. To take the standpoint that the preferentiality for white deities among so many black people, over Black ones -that look like themselves- as being normal is ludicrous. For many Black people God is revered as being the [most] highest entity within their lives. Therefore it is logical that the continued perpetuated myth of God’s whiteness would psychological ingrain feelings of white superiority and divinity while subsequently causing self-contemptuous mortifying feelings within the Black psyche. It is also for this reason why many Black people often feel greater sympathy towards the white Jewish holocaust -that resulted in an estimated twelve millions deaths- over their own Black Holocaust that resulted in an estimated fifty million deaths.

 These behaviors among so many African Americans are the direct resulted legacy of that slavery process where of which they were indoctrinated to believe in the divinity of whites only. I am well aware that thousands of Black people that will read this article are very sincere in their devotion to Christianity—and totally accept its depictions of white deities. They are however totally unaware that these false depictions of white deities were [and still is] used to subconsciously ingrain feelings of inferiority within the Black psyche.
Today this white venerating religious indoctrination process is continued when black parents teach their children to believe and pray to white deities.  It also continues every time that a Black child enters a church and sees white deities upon its walls, or read an illustrated Bible that depicts all the biblical heroes as white; and also when watching movies or television shows depicting Biblical characters as white.
Millions of Black people have lived and died without ever studying the true origin of their Christian religion or of how their enslaved ancestors became Christians. Many hold the belief that to merely present such a question is to commit a sin. Some even believe that those who would question it are under the influence of Satan himself. These sentiments are often also echoed by many Black ministers.  Subsequently, as a result of these norms, the majority of African Americans therefore go from the cradle to the grave never—at any time—knowing this truth.

Do you know this origin of Black Christianity?
Most African Americans are unaware that their spiritual experiences of trance shaking when feeling a spiritual connection with their creator, and speaking in tongue has nothing to do with Christianity. In fact when such behavior was displayed by the early African slaves, their masters often expressed feelings of shock because they found the displayed behavior as being hedonist and alien to the Christian religion they were teaching their slaves. They also often shared these stories of their slaves’ behaviors with their house guest believing that it proved that their slaves somehow lacked mental capacity. This is because these expressions of spirituality that we now perceive as Christianity are in fact totally African expressions.
This truth has been suppressed for many centuries, but it is information that every Black person need to know! This truth is astounding and vitally important to the mental liberation of black people. This preceding article is an excerpt from the third chapter of the book entitled the Black Matrix: the modern social suppression of Black people. This book contains genuinely shocking information for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. It has profound implications for the future of our civilization. Yet the facts contained herein are not based on some “pie in the sky” theory or concept.

This is a matter of finding the genuine Truth regarding the purpose of our human existence, and finding the true way to fulfill that magnificent purpose.
The astounding message in this book will affect you in the years just ahead, and it will also affect your eternal future! It is vitally important.
This explosive revelation is not just for “religious people”—it is for everyone. It affects all of our lives.

End