Your daily Selection of IRIN Africa PlusNews reports, 7/2/2004

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U N I T E D N A T I O N S

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Integrated Regional Information Network

[These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

CONTENT:

1 - NIGERIA: Journalism student says expelled for having HIV

2 - TANZANIA: Multivitamins retard HIV progression, study finds

1 - NIGERIA: Journalism student says expelled for having HIV

LAGOS, 2 July (PLUSNEWS) - A Nigerian student said on Friday he had been

booted out of a Lagos journalism school after he told the director he was

infected with the virus that causes AIDS and would need to miss classes

one day a month to get treatment.

Fredrick Adegboye, 45, said he planned to take the Nigerian Institute of

Journalism (NIJ) to court if he was not readmitted by the end of next

week.

" It was clear to me they were hostile to my HIV status, " he told PlusNews

on Friday. " It's a quite reprehensible way to treat a human being. "

Neither the director nor the registrar of the institute returned PlusNews'

calls. An NIJ official said the institute would issue a statement but did

not say when and declined further comment.

Widespread stigmatisation remains a major concern of people living with

HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with more than 126

million people.

According to government figures infection rates dropped to 5.0 percent of

the population in 2003 from 5.8 percent a year earlier but Nigeria remains

among the top five countries worldwide in terms of the size of it's

HIV-infected population.

In May, one of Nigeria's leading human rights activists Femi Soyinka took

a public stand against the discrimination suffered by Nigerians with AIDS,

warning that their marginalistion was a major factor in the continued

spread of the epidemic.

" The effort of promoting the rights of people living with HIV and AIDS has

been ineffective in Nigeria. The criminalisation of HIV is always an

issue, " said the former professor of medicine who now runs a

non-governmental organisation called Healthcare and Support.

" We are worrying because the lack of respect for human rights increases

the impact of the HIV epidemic. "

Adegboye, who discovered he had the HIV virus two years ago, said he was

offered a place on a two-year diploma course at NIJ in May.

On 18 June, the Friday before classes began, he went to see the

institute's director Lizzy Ikem to ask for permission to be excused from

lectures one day every month so he could go to collect his antiretroviral

(ARVs) drugs from the hospital. ARVs can improve the health and extend the

lives of people living with AIDS.

He said the director " seemed to understand my situation " on the Friday but

on Monday she advised the journalism student to write a letter withdrawing

from the institute.

" I told her I couldn't possibly do that voluntarily and she said if at the

end of the day I didn't write, she would take action, " he said.

The next morning security men prevented Adegboye from stepping onto the

premises, he said. After a five-hour wait by the gates the NIJ registrar

Busola Eniola handed him a letter, saying the institute’s academic board

had decided to cancel his admission without stating any specific reasons.

Adegboye said his admission letter clearly stated the conditions under

which a student's place could be withdrawn and health grounds was not

among them.

[ENDS]

2 - TANZANIA: Multivitamins retard HIV progression, study finds

NAIROBI, 2 July (PLUSNEWS) - A daily intake of multivitamins can

significantly delay the progress of the HIV/AIDS virus, according to the

results of a study of HIV-infected women in Tanzania, the Harvard School

of Public Health reported on Wednesday.

" Our findings should encourage the use of multivitamin supplements as

supportive care to those infected with HIV, " the Harvard School of Public

Health said in a statement issued from Boston, Massachusetts.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and Tanzania's

Muhimbili University College of Health Services in Dar es Salaam found

that women taking multivitamins (vitamins B-complex, C and E)

significantly delayed the progression of the HIV disease compared to those

in the study who received a placebo instead.

The study's results appear in the 1 July issue of The New England Journal

of Medicine.

The Harvard School of Public Health reported that by the end of 2003, 40

million people worldwide had been infected with HIV, with fewer than 8

percent of the six million patients with advanced symptoms of the disease

who were eligible for anti-retroviral drug therapy receiving it.

It said the " Treat 3 million by 2005 " initiative by the World Health

Organisation (WHO) was designed to increase access to treatment.

" According to this plan, and country-specific standards of care,

individuals with advanced disease will receive anti-retroviral therapy,

while those in earlier stages will be monitored and provided supportive

care, " the school reported.

During the study in Tanzania, researchers randomly assigned 1,078

HIV-infected pregnant women to receive a daily dose of one of four

regimens: vitamin A alone; multivitamins excluding A (with vitamin B

complex and vitamins C and E); multivitamins containing vitamin A; or a

placebo.

The women were enrolled over a two-year period beginning in April 1995 and

were followed until the end of the study in August 2003.

" All women received standard doses of antenatal folic acid and iron, and

all children received six-monthly doses of vitamin A, as per standard of

care in Tanzania, " the school reported. It added that anti-retroviral

therapy was unavailable at the time of the study to the majority of women

in Tanzania, including those who were eligible for participation in the

study.

During the course of the study, 299 of the 1,078 women either died from

AIDS-related causes or progressed to WHO stage 4 (equivalent to AIDS):

Among the 271 women who received multivitamins, 67 (24.7 percent)

progressed to WHO stage 4 or died of AIDS-related causes; among women who

received multivitamins with vitamin A, the total was 70 (26.1 (percent) of

the 268; for those who received vitamin A alone, it was 79 (29 percent);

and of 272 who received the placebo, it was 83 (31.1 percent) who

progressed to WHO stage 4 or died from AIDS-related causes.

Moreover, the school reported, women in the study who took multivitamins

had " higher CD4 immune cell counts, lower viral loads, and reduced

complications of HIV infection, including oral thrush, oral ulcers,

difficulty in swallowing, diarrhoea and fatigue " .

" Our data suggest that multivitamins delay the onset of disease

progression and thus extend the time until such therapy is necessary, "

Wafaie Fawzi, the lead author of the study and associate professor of

nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, was

quoted as saying.

He added: " Multivitamin supplementation is inexpensive: [uS] $15 per

person per year. Introducing these supplements would enhance compliance

with monitoring prior to clinical eligibility for anti-retroviral drugs,

preserve these drugs for later stages of the disease, avert adverse events

associated with them, and result in better quality of life among

HIV-infected persons, and significant treatment-related cost savings. "

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the

Fogarty International Centre at the National Institutes of Health

supported the study.

[ENDS]

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