Health

Unsafe Sex is Being Blamed for the alarming Rise in HIV

Published

12 years ago

December 21, 2012

Bchcomber

Campaign … Mechai Viravaidya blows up condoms for schoolchildren. He believes people have stopped practicing safe sex because they have stopped talking about it. Photo: Craig Skehan

BANGKOK – Thailand’s ”Mr Condom”, Mechai Viravaidya, who has saved millions of lives by raising awareness of HIV/AIDS, says his country is facing a new crisis from the infection.

”I innocently thought I had done the job … but the government has fallen asleep at the wheel. There is a total indifference to a war we have to fight,” says the Australian-educated former politician whose 20-year campaign popularized condoms and led to a revolution in family planning and AIDS awareness in many developing countries.

Safe Sex Sign in Chiangrai

”With a new campaign we can prevent a lot of early deaths,” he says at his Birds and Bees Resort on a secluded beach near Pattaya, where restaurant diners are given free condoms.

Three hours’ drive away in central Thailand, the celebrated monk Alongkot Dikkapanyo, who has seen 30,000 AIDS victims die at his hillside temple, warns that a new wave of mainly young Thais face infection. ”A big problem facing our country now is that young boys and young girls – 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 – are having sex and not protecting themselves,” says Alongkot, who was also educated in Australia.

At least one person becomes HIV-positive every hour in Thailand, joining more than a million Thais who have been infected since the first case was reported here in 1984.

The United Nations says Mechai’s campaign caused a decline of 90 per cent in new HIV infections over 12 years from 1991, which the World Bank estimates saved 7.7 million lives.

But the infection rate is again steadily rising, with 9470 new cases a year being reported, 80 per cent of them caused by unsafe sex.

About 62 per cent of the 464,414 people known to be infected with the virus in the country are male, the Thai Ministry of Health says.

Mechai warns that an estimated 250,000 Thais are unaware they are carrying the HIV virus. ”They are not going for testing and they are having sex around the place,” he says. ”Getting them to be tested should be a priority.”

Mechai calls on the Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, to take charge immediately of a campaign blitz on sex.

”The Prime Minister could stand up and declare there is again a problem that is sending Thais to early graves,” he says. ”The campaign should involve everyone, from religious institutions to schools and businesses.”

There were few things Mechai has not done to erase the stigma of talking about sex in Buddhist Thailand, first in the 1970s when Thailand’s population growth needed reining in and then in the 1990s when HIV was spreading rapidly.

There were condom-blowing contests, police handing out condoms in traffic, taxi drivers playing cassettes urging customers going to red-light areas to have safe sex. Millions of condoms were handed out free, monks blessed batches of condoms and farmers painted illustrations of condoms on their cows.

Born in 1941 to a Scottish mother and Thai father, both of whom were doctors who instilled in him the importance of public service, Mechai opened a restaurant in Bangkok where he raised money for AIDS prevention projects and called it Cabbages and Condoms, saying condoms should be as easily available as cabbages, a Thai staple.

”Raising sex matters like this is nothing to be ashamed of. I was made when my mother and father had sex. Where did you come from?” he says.

Mechai says a new campaign needs to include AIDS messages on radio, television and ATM screens as well as putting complimentary condoms in hotel rooms.

A Ministry of Health campaign centred on a ”zero new infections” slogan has had little impact, he says. ”Nobody in government is pushing this. It’s pathetic. If you stopped advertising Coca-Cola people would stop drinking it. We have to do the same … talk condoms, condoms and condoms.”

Mechai, a former minister who was educated at Geelong Grammar and Melbourne University where he studied economics, uses profits from his five-star hotel resort to fund an adjacent model farm and school for 200 poor students.

He also runs the Population and Community Development Association, which aims to empower Thailand’s rural poor and promote better use of the environment.

Mechai, 73, says many young people don’t think enough about safe sex and contraception. ”We now have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in the world. We used to have one of the lowest,” he says. ”Young Thais don’t realise how easy it is to become infected with HIV. They allow their erections to rule their lives rather than their brains.”

World Aids Day was marked on the streets of Pattaya earlier this month with a parade of bands, vintage cars and sex workers, some of them transgender people or ”lady boys”, several wearing little more than body paint and holding signs such as ”getting to zero” and ”free condoms and lubricants”. Lew, a 30 year-old transsexual, says some of Pattaya’s 5000 transgender sex workers do not use condoms regularly.

”There is more that can be done to make people more aware about HIV,” she says.

As multi-coloured condoms were handed to spectators in the city with Asia’s biggest brothel area, Mechai said such one-off events needed to be followed by an all-year-round campaign.

”A lot of people in Pattaya are like the frontline troops … they know they are in the line of fire so they wear a crash helmet, compared to many other Thais who don’t quite realise they are also in a war zone.”

Alongkot, the 57-year-old monk who has been caring for HIV suffers since 1992 when most of his compatriots still shunned them, says anti-retroviral drugs now allow AIDS victims to live longer and stay at home to be looked after by their families.

Thailand has pioneered the widespread distribution of the medicines. But many AIDS sufferers still come to Alongkot’s Wat Phra Baht Nam Phu temple, on a parched hillside near the town of Lopburi, to die.

Thai students are encouraged to go there to be made aware of the risk of the disease.

In a single-storey ward, men lie on beds in nappies, women stare unmoving at walls while others curl up, lost in pain and torpor.

Waan, 47, who has no family after her husband died from AIDS, said she worries that young Thais are having sex without condoms. ”They do [it] too much. It’s scary, real scary,” she said.

Nearby in the sprawling complex, thousands of teenagers each week are led into a museum where dozens of mummified corpses of AIDS patients are displayed in cabinets, two of them children who were infected by their mothers.

Max, 42, a worker at the temple who is HIV-positive, says most teenagers who file past the haunting images feel sad. ”They change their behaviour for one or two months but then they go back to their own ways.”

Health

Report Causes Pfizer Stock to Climb Approximately $1 Billion Acquired by Starboard

Published

3 months ago

October 7, 2024

Salman

(VOR News) – According to a rumor that activist investor Pfizer Starboard Value has taken a holding in the struggling pharmaceutical business that is expected to be worth around one billion dollars, the stock of Pfizer (PFE) is on the increase in premarket trading on Monday.

This comes after the report was made public. The report was made available to the general public following this. Starboard Value was successful in moving forward with the acquisition of the position.

Starboard is said to have approached Ian Read, a former chief executive officer of Pfizer, and Frank D’Amelio, a former chief financial officer, in order to seek assistance with its goals of boosting the performance of the company, according to the Wall Street Journal. Read and D’Amelio are both former Pfizer executives.

The purpose of this is to facilitate the accomplishment of its objectives, which include enhancing the overall performance of the firm.

In their previous jobs, D’Amelio and Read were chief financial officers.

It is stated in the report that the hedge fund is of the opinion that Pfizer, which is currently being managed by Albert Bourla, who succeeded Read as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in 2019, does not demonstrate the same level of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) discipline that Read did. Bourla took over for Read in 2019. Read was succeeded by Bourla in the year 2019.

Pfizer, a multinational pharmaceutical conglomerate, has made substantial investments in the acquisition of more companies that are involved in the research and development of cancer medicines.

These businesses have been acquired for billions of dollars. The biotechnology company Seagen, which was acquired by Pfizer in the previous year for a price of $43 billion, is included in this category. One of the businesses that can be classified as belonging to this category is Seagen.

In spite of the fact that the S&P 500 Index experienced a 21% increase in 2024.

No major trading occurred in Pfizer stock that year.

Due to the fact that the demand for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines fell after the firm reached its pandemic peak in 2021, the share price of the corporation has decreased by over fifty percent since that time.

This drop has occurred ever since the company’s shares reached their maximum peak, which was during the time that this decline occurred. Not only have they not changed at all, but they have also remained essentially stable. This is in contrast to the S&P 500, which has gained 21% since the beginning of this year.

Recently, the corporation was forced to take a hit when it decided to recall all of the sickle cell illness medications that it had distributed all over the world.

Fears that the prescription could lead patients to experience severe agony and possibly even death were the impetus for the decision to recall the product. In spite of the fact that Pfizer’s stock is increasing by almost three percent as a result of the news that followed the company’s decision, this is the circumstance that has come about.

SOURCE: IPN

Health

New Study Reveals Drinking Soda Pop Increases the Risk of Stroke

Published

3 months ago

October 6, 2024

VORNews

If you drink too much soda, fruit juice and coffee, beware!

A recent report from global research indicates that excessive consumption of coffee or soda pop is associated with an increased risk of stroke, although the intake of black and green tea is correlated with a reduced risk. Excessive consumption of soda pop or coffee warrants caution!

Recent research indicates that it may substantially elevate the risk of stroke.

Consuming four cups of coffee daily elevates the risk of stroke, according to studies, although ingesting 3-4 cups of black or green tea daily typically offers protection against stroke. Additionally, consume more coffee; it may reduce your risk of mortality.

Recent findings from global research studies co-led by the University of Galway and McMaster University, alongside an international consortium of stroke researchers, indicate that soda, encompassing both sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened variants such as diet or zero sugar, is associated with a 22 percent heightened risk of stroke. The risk escalated significantly with the consumption of two or more of these beverages daily.

Stroke Risk Fizzy Drinks and Soda Pop

The correlation between fizzy drinks consumption and stroke risk was most pronounced in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Women exhibit the most elevated risk of stroke from bleeding (intracranial hemorrhage) associated with fruit juice beverages. Consuming over 7 cups of water daily diminishes the likelihood of stroke due to a clot.

Researchers observed that numerous items advertised as fruit juice are derived from concentrates and have added sugars and preservatives, potentially negating the advantages often associated with fresh fruit and instead elevating stroke risk.

Fruit juice beverages were associated with a 37 percent heightened risk of stroke resulting from bleeding (intracranial hemorrhage). Consuming two of these beverages daily increases the risk thrice.

Consuming over four cups of coffee daily elevates the risk of stroke by 37 percent, although lower consumption levels do not correlate with stroke risk. Conversely, tea consumption was associated with an 18-20 percent reduction in stroke risk. Additionally, consuming 3-4 cups daily of black tea, such as Breakfast and Earl Grey varieties, excluding green and herbal teas, was associated with a 29 percent reduced risk of stroke.

Consuming 3-4 cups of green tea daily was associated with a 27 percent reduction in stroke risk. Notably, the addition of milk may diminish or inhibit the advantageous effects of antioxidants present in tea. The lower risk of stroke associated with tea consumption was negated for individuals who added milk.

Disclaimer: This article is intended solely for informational reasons and should not be considered a replacement for professional medical counsel. Consistently consult your physician regarding any inquiries pertaining to a medical problem.

Starbucks Faces Sales Decline Amid Price Fatigue and Rising Competition

Starbucks Faces Sales Decline Amid Price Fatigue and Rising Competition

Health

Following a Diagnosis of Breast Cancer, What Else Should You Know?

Published

3 months ago

October 5, 2024

Salman

(VOR News) – Even though breast cancer affects one in eight American women, receiving a diagnosis can make a woman feel isolated.

Experts in breast cancer from the American College of Physicians (ACS) advise patients on how to manage their disease so that they may better cope with this awful information.

First, the kind and stage of breast cancer dictates the course of your care.

In addition to immunotherapy and chemotherapy, there are various surgical options available for the treatment of breast cancer.

Women of African descent are disproportionately affected by triple-negative breast cancer, an extremely aggressive form of the disease that has never proven easy to treat.

According to the American Cancer Society, pembrolizumab (Keytruda), an immunotherapy, has been shown to be helpful when combined with chemotherapy and is currently the recommended course of treatment for certain combinations of triple-negative breast cancer.

In her presentation, Dr. Katharine Yao said, “It’s really important that the patient and physician discuss the patient’s preferences and values when deciding what type of treatment to pursue and that they have an honest, individualized discussion with their care team.”

She is currently responsible for developing breast cancer treatment recommendations for more than 575 hospitals and institutions nationwide in her role as chair of the American College of Surgeons’ National Accreditation Program for Breast Institutions (NAPBC).

Yao, vice chair of research at Endeavor Health NorthShore Hospitals in New York, pointed out that each decision made about a patient’s treatment plan should take her preferences and diagnosis into consideration.

She ought to think about whether she would prefer a mastectomy—a surgical procedure that involves removing the entire breast with or without reconstruction—or a lumpectomy, which involves a surgical procedure that spares part of the breast tissue.

She stated that “the breast cancer you have may be very different from the breast cancer you hear about in your neighbor, colleague, or friend” in a press release issued by the American Cancer Society (ACS).

“Consider that while discussing breast cancer with others.”

Throughout your journey, it is critical that you look after your emotional health because having breast cancer may have a detrimental impact on your mental health.

“Getting a cancer diagnosis does not mean that everything in your life stops to be normal.” Director of the Fellowship in the Diseases of the Breast program at the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute at the University of Arkansas and state head of the American Cancer Society Commission on Cancer for Arkansas, Dr. Daniela Ochoa She thinks adding the burden of a cancer diagnosis and treatment to all the other pressures in life may be taxing.

“Managing stress and emotional health is vital component of a treatment plan.”

Ochoa recommends clinically trained psychologists and social workers who have assisted people in coping with cancer to anyone receiving treatment. Learning coping techniques might also be facilitated by joining cancer support groups or cancer wellness initiatives.

Breast cancer specialists say your care team is crucial.

The American Cancer Society (ACS) defines comprehensive care as having support at every stage of the procedure from surgeons, oncologists, patient navigators, nurses, social workers, psychologists, and other specialists.

After receiving a breast cancer diagnosis, women should see a surgeon or medical oncologist to explore their options; nevertheless, treatment shouldn’t be discontinued after just one appointment or after surgery is over.

Additionally, you can ask trustworthy friends or family members to accompany you to appointments and aid you with research or notes. They could serve as a network of support for you.

Yao stated in his talk that “one of the most important things is that patients should search out a team they have confidence in, that they trust will have their back when they need it, and a team they feel they can get access to and that will help them when they are in need.”

SOURCE: MP