Latest news with #AIDS-related
The Star
4 days ago
- Health
- The Star
Uganda launches HIV survey to assess progress, guide future interventions
KAMPALA, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Uganda's Ministry of Health on Thursday launched a nationwide HIV survey to assess progress in the fight against the virus and shape future interventions. Health Minister Ruth Aceng officially unveiled the third round of the Uganda Population-Based HIV Impact Assessment (UPHIA) 2025 in Kampala, the capital. The survey seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of current national HIV programs, identify gaps, and inform upcoming strategies. Conducted in partnership with Makerere University School of Public Health and the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, the voluntary and randomly sampled survey will involve around 15,000 participants aged 15 and above, selected from 6,685 households nationwide. "The last UPHIA revealed significant gaps in HIV case finding, particularly among men and youth, which have influenced our programming priorities over the past five years," Aceng said in a statement. Uganda is among five countries rolling out the third round of UPHIA, following earlier rounds in 2016 and 2020. For the first time, the 2025 survey will also assess the burden of non-communicable diseases, which health authorities have identified as an emerging public health concern. "Field teams will assess the prevalence of high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and obesity among the general population and people living with HIV," the ministry said. "This information is important for developing health policies that are responsive to the changing health challenges and strengthening the health system." Of the 15,000 participants surveyed, 14,980 are expected to undergo blood draws and HIV testing to assess viral suppression and other health indicators. In addition, 1,300 children and adolescents aged 10 to 14 will be interviewed, though they will not undergo blood tests. Government data indicate that an estimated 1.3 million Ugandans are currently living with HIV, with 1.1 million on treatment. The country has recorded roughly two million AIDS-related deaths over the past three decades.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Trump cuts will cause a spike in HIV cases in L.A. and across the country, warn Democrats and public health advocates
A growing coalition of HIV prevention organizations, health experts and Democrats in Congress are sounding the alarm over sweeping Trump administration cuts to HIV/AIDS prevention and surveillance programs nationally, warning they will reverse years of progress combating the disease and cause spikes in new cases — especially in California and among the LGBTQ+ community. In a letter addressed Friday to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) and 22 of her House colleagues demanded the release of HIV funding allocated by Congress but withheld by the Trump administration. They cited estimates from the Foundation for AIDS Research, known as amfAR, that the cuts could lead to 143,000 additional HIV infections nationwide and 127,000 additional deaths from AIDS-related causes within five years. Friedman said the effects would be felt in communities small and large across the country but that California would be hit the hardest. She said L.A. County — which stands to lose nearly $20 million in annual federal HIV prevention funding — is being forced to terminate contracts with 39 providers and could see as many as 650 new cases per year as a result. According to amfAR, that would mark a huge increase, pushing the total number of new infections per year in the county to roughly 2,000. "South L.A. and communities across California are already feeling the devastating impacts of these withheld HIV prevention funds. These cuts aren't just numbers — they're shuttered clinics, canceled programs, and lives lost," Friedman said in a statement to The Times. As one example, she said, the Los Angeles LGBT Center — which is headquartered in her district — would likely have to eliminate a range of services including HIV testing, STD screening, community education and assistance for patients using pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a medicine taken by pill or shot that can greatly reduce a person's risk of becoming infected from sex or injection drug use. A list reviewed by The Times of L.A. County providers facing funding cuts included large and small organizations and medical institutions in a diverse set of communities, from major hospitals and nonprofits to small clinics. The list was provided by a source on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid about the funding of organizations that have not all publicly announced the cuts. The affected organizations serve a host of communities that already struggle with relatively high rates of HIV infection, including low-income, Spanish speaking, Black and brown and LGBTQ+ communities. According to L.A. County, the Trump administration's budget blueprint eliminates or reduces a number of congressionally authorized public health programs, including funding cuts to the domestic HIV prevention program and the Ryan White program, which supports critical care and treatment services for uninsured and underinsured people living with HIV. The county said the cuts would have "an immediate and long-lasting impact" on community health. Dozens of organizations and hospitals, such as Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, are bracing for the disruption and potential vacuum of preventative services they've been providing to the community since the 1980s, according to Claudia Borzutzky, the hospital's Chief of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine. Borzutzky said without the funding, programs that provide screening, education, patient navigation and community outreach — especially for at-risk adolescents and young adults — will evaporate. So, too, will free services that help patients enroll in insurance and access HIV prevention medications. Patients who "face a variety of health barriers" and are often stigmatized will bear the brunt, she said, losing the "role models [and] peer educators that they can relate to and help [them] build confidence to come into a doctor's office and seek testing and treatment." "We are having to sunset these programs really, really quickly, which impacts our patients and staff in really dramatic ways," she said. Answers to queries sent to other southern California health departments suggested they are trying to figure out how to cope with budget shortfalls, too. Health officials from Kern, San Bernardino and Riverside counties all said the situation is uncertain, and that they don't yet know how they will respond. Friedman and her colleagues — including fellow California representatives Nancy Pelosi, Judy Chu, Gilbert Cisneros Jr., Robert Garcia, Sam Liccardo, Kevin Mullin, Mark Takano, Derek Tran and George Whitesides — said they were concerned not only about funding for programs nationwide being cut, but also about the wholesale dismantling or defunding of important divisions working on HIV prevention within the federal government. They questioned in their letter staffing cuts to the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as "the reported elimination" of the Division of HIV Prevention within that center. In addition to demanding the release of funds already allocated by Congress, the representatives called on Kennedy — and Dr. Debra Houry, deputy director of the CDC — to better communicate the status of ongoing grant funding, and to release "a list of personnel within CDC who can provide timely responses" when those groups to whom Congress had already allocated funding have questions moving forward. "Although Congress has appropriated funding for HIV prevention in Fiscal Year 2025, several grant recipients have failed to receive adequate communication from CDC regarding the status of their awards," Friedman and her colleagues wrote. "This ambiguity has caused health departments across the country to pre-emptively terminate HIV and STD prevention contracts with local organizations due to an anticipated lack of funding." The letter is just the latest challenge to the Trump administration's sweeping cuts to federal agencies and to federal funding allocated by Congress to organizations around the country. Through a series of executive orders and with the help of his billionaire adviser Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" and other agency heads, Trump in the first months of his second term has radically altered the federal government's footprint, laying off thousands of federal workers and attempting to claw back trillions of dollars in federal spending — to be reallocated to projects more aligned with his political agenda, or used to pay for tax cuts that Democrats and independent reviewers have said will disproportionately help wealthy Americans. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta's office has repeatedly sued the Trump administration over such moves, including cuts and layoffs within Health and Human Services broadly and cuts to grants intended to make states more resistant to infectious disease specifically — calling them unwise, legally unjustifiable and a threat to the health of average Americans. LGBTQ+ organizations also have sued the Trump administration over orders to preclude health and other organizations from spending federal funding on diversity, equity and inclusion programs geared toward LGBTQ+ populations, including programs designed to decrease new HIV infections and increase healthy management of the disease among transgender people and other vulnerable groups. "The orders seek to erase transgender people from public life; dismantle diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives; and strip funding from nonprofits providing life-saving health care, housing, and support services," said Jose Abrigo, the HIV Project Director of Lambda Legal, in a statement. The legal group has filed a number of lawsuits challenging the Trump administration cuts, including one on behalf of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and other nonprofits. Trump has defended his cuts to the federal government as necessary to implement his agenda. He and his agency leaders have consistently said that the cuts target waste, fraud and abuse in the government, and that average Americans will be better served following the reshuffling. Kennedy has consistently defended the changes within Health and Human Services, as well. Agency spokespeople have said the substantial cuts would help it focus on Kennedy's priorities of "ending America's epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins." "We aren't just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic," Kennedy has said. "This Department will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer." Kennedy has repeatedly spread misinformation about HIV and AIDS in the past, including by giving credence to the false claim that HIV does not cause AIDS. As recently as June 2023, Kennedy told a reporter for New York Magazine that there "are much better candidates than H.I.V. for what causes AIDS," and he has previously suggested that environmental toxins and "poppers" — an inhalant drug popular in the gay community — could be causes of AIDS instead. None of that is supported by science or medicine. Studies from around the world have proven the link between HIV and AIDS, and found it — not drug use or sexual behavior — to be the only common factor in AIDS cases. Officials in L.A. County said they remained hopeful that the Trump administration would reverse course after considering the effects of the cuts — and the "detrimental impacts on the health and well-being of residents and workers across" the county if they are allowed to stand. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Express Tribune
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Did Freddie Mercury really have a secret daughter? Book Love, Freddie explores
A new biography has revealed that Freddie Mercury, iconic frontman of Queen, allegedly had a secret daughter with whom he maintained a close relationship until his death in 1991. The revelation comes from Love, Freddie, a new book by rock biographer Lesley-Ann Jones. According to the biography, the child—known only as B—is a 48-year-old medical professional living in Europe. She claims she was conceived during an affair between Mercury and the wife of a close friend in 1976. Despite the unusual circumstances of her birth, B says Mercury was deeply devoted to her. In a handwritten letter featured in the book, B states: 'Freddie Mercury was and is my father. We had a very close and loving relationship from the moment I was born and throughout the final 15 years of his life.' B has remained anonymous and was previously known only to Mercury's inner circle. She has now chosen to speak out and share 17 volumes of private diaries Mercury gifted her—detailing his thoughts, memories, and feelings. The journals span from June 20, 1976, shortly after he learned of the pregnancy, to July 31, 1991, just months before his death from AIDS-related complications. Biographer Jones, who was first contacted by B three years ago, stated she initially doubted the claims but is now convinced of their authenticity, citing the detailed records and B's consistent cooperation. The book sheds new light on Mercury's private life and the emotional depth of his final years.
Los Angeles Times
23-05-2025
- Health
- Los Angeles Times
Trump cuts will cause a spike in HIV cases in L.A. and across the country, warn Democrats and public health advocates
A growing coalition of HIV prevention organizations, health experts and Democrats in Congress are sounding the alarm over sweeping Trump administration cuts to HIV/AIDS prevention and surveillance programs nationally, warning they will reverse years of progress combating the disease and cause spikes in new cases — especially in California and among the LGBTQ+ community. In a letter addressed Friday to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) and 22 of her House colleagues demanded the release of HIV funding allocated by Congress but withheld by the Trump administration. They cited estimates from the Foundation for AIDS Research, known as amfAR, that the cuts could lead to 143,000 additional HIV infections nationwide and 127,000 additional deaths from AIDS-related causes within five years. Friedman said the effects would be felt in communities small and large across the country but that California would be hit the hardest. She said L.A. County — which stands to lose nearly $20 million in annual federal HIV prevention funding — is being forced to terminate contracts with 39 providers and could see as many as 650 new cases per year as a result. According to amfAR, that would mark a huge increase, pushing the total number of new infections per year in the county to roughly 2,000. 'South L.A. and communities across California are already feeling the devastating impacts of these withheld HIV prevention funds. These cuts aren't just numbers — they're shuttered clinics, canceled programs, and lives lost,' Friedman said in a statement to The Times. As one example, she said, the Los Angeles LGBT Center — which is headquartered in her district — would likely have to eliminate a range of services including HIV testing, STD screening, community education and assistance for patients using pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a medicine taken by pill or shot that can greatly reduce a person's risk of becoming infected from sex or injection drug use. A list reviewed by The Times of L.A. County providers facing funding cuts included large and small organizations and medical institutions in a diverse set of communities, from major hospitals and nonprofits to small clinics. The list was provided by a source on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid about the funding of organizations that have not all publicly announced the cuts. The affected organizations serve a host of communities that already struggle with relatively high rates of HIV infection, including low-income, Spanish speaking, Black and brown and LGBTQ+ communities. According to L.A. County, the Trump administration's budget blueprint eliminates or reduces a number of Congressionally authorized public health programs, including funding cuts to the domestic HIV prevention program and the Ryan White program, which supports critical care and treatment services for uninsured and underinsured people living with HIV. The county said the cuts would have 'an immediate and long-lasting impact' on community health. Dozens of organizations and hospitals, such as Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, are bracing for the disruption and potential vacuum of preventative services they've been providing to the community since the 1980s, according to Claudia Borzutzky, the hospital's Chief of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine. Borzutzky said without the funding, programs that provide screening, education, patient navigation and community outreach — especially for at-risk adolescents and young adults — will evaporate. So, too, will free services that help patients enroll in insurance and access HIV prevention medications. Patients who 'face a variety of health barriers' and are often stigmatized will bear the brunt, she said, losing the 'role models [and] peer educators that they can relate to and help [them] build confidence to come into a doctor's office and seek testing and treatment.' 'We are having to sunset these programs really, really quickly, which impacts our patients and staff in really dramatic ways,' she said. Answers to queries sent to other southern California health departments suggested they are trying to figure out how to cope with budget shortfalls, too. Health officials from Kern, San Bernardino and Riverside counties all said the situation is uncertain, and that they don't yet know how they will respond. Friedman and her colleagues — including fellow California representatives Nancy Pelosi, Judy Chu, Gilbert Cisneros Jr., Robert Garcia, Sam Liccardo, Kevin Mullin, Mark Takano, Derek Tran and George Whitesides — said they were concerned not only about funding for programs nationwide being cut, but also about the wholesale dismantling or defunding of important divisions working on HIV prevention within the federal government. They questioned in their letter staffing cuts to the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as 'the reported elimination' of the Division of HIV Prevention within that center. In addition to demanding the release of funds already allocated by Congress, the representatives called on Kennedy — and Dr. Debra Houry, deputy director of the CDC — to better communicate the status of ongoing grant funding, and to release 'a list of personnel within CDC who can provide timely responses' when those groups to whom Congress had already allocated funding have questions moving forward. 'Although Congress has appropriated funding for HIV prevention in Fiscal Year 2025, several grant recipients have failed to receive adequate communication from CDC regarding the status of their awards,' Friedman and her colleagues wrote. 'This ambiguity has caused health departments across the country to pre-emptively terminate HIV and STD prevention contracts with local organizations due to an anticipated lack of funding.' The letter is just the latest challenge to the Trump administration's sweeping cuts to federal agencies and to federal funding allocated by Congress to organizations around the country. Through a series of executive orders and with the help of his billionaire adviser Elon Musk's 'Department of Government Efficiency' and other agency heads, Trump in the first months of his second term has radically altered the federal government's footprint, laying off thousands of federal workers and attempting to claw back trillions of dollars in federal spending — to be reallocated to projects more aligned with his political agenda, or used to pay for tax cuts that Democrats and independent reviewers have said will disproportionately help wealthy Americans. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta's office has repeatedly sued the Trump administration over such moves, including cuts and layoffs within Health and Human Services broadly and cuts to grants intended to make states more resistant to infectious disease specifically — calling them unwise, legally unjustifiable and a threat to the health of average Americans. LGBTQ+ organizations also have sued the Trump administration over orders to preclude health and other organizations from spending federal funding on diversity, equity and inclusion programs geared toward LGBTQ+ populations, including programs designed to decrease new HIV infections and increase healthy management of the disease among transgender people and other vulnerable groups. 'The orders seek to erase transgender people from public life; dismantle diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives; and strip funding from nonprofits providing life-saving health care, housing, and support services,' said Jose Abrigo, the HIV Project Director of Lambda Legal, in a statement. The legal group has filed a number of lawsuits challenging the Trump administration cuts, including one on behalf of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and other nonprofits. Trump has defended his cuts to the federal government as necessary to implement his agenda. He and his agency leaders have consistently said that the cuts target waste, fraud and abuse in the government, and that average Americans will be better served following the reshuffling. Kennedy has consistently defended the changes within Health and Human Services, as well. Agency spokespeople have said the substantial cuts would help it focus on Kennedy's priorities of 'ending America's epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins.' 'We aren't just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,' Kennedy has said. 'This Department will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.' Kennedy has repeatedly spread misinformation about HIV and AIDS in the past, including by giving credence to the false claim that HIV does not cause AIDS. As recently as June 2023, Kennedy told a reporter for New York Magazine that there 'are much better candidates than H.I.V. for what causes AIDS,' and he has previously suggested that environmental toxins and 'poppers' — an inhalant drug popular in the gay community — could be causes of AIDS instead. None of that is supported by science or medicine. Studies from around the world have proven the link between HIV and AIDS, and found it — not drug use or sexual behavior — to be the only common factor in AIDS cases. Officials in L.A. County said they remained hopeful that the Trump administration would reverse course after considering the effects of the cuts — and the 'detrimental impacts on the health and well-being of residents and workers across' the county if they are allowed to stand.
Hindustan Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Freddie Mercury has a secret daughter from a fling; first details revealed
A new biography on Freddie Mercury, leader of Queen, promises to startle the world by revealing a secret daughter. The book, Love, Freddie, penned by renowned rock biographer Lesley-Ann Jones, shares the story of a woman, B, who claims to be the late singer's only child. Now 48 and living in Europe, B is a medical professional and a mother herself. 'His only child was conceived accidentally with the wife of one of his closest friends, while his friend was away on an extended business trip. For the Roman Catholic mother, abortion was out of the question,' Jones told the Daily Mail. Just a year after Queen's legendary hit Bohemian Rhapsody. ALSO READ| Freddie Mercury's Yamaha Baby grand piano to be auctioned, along with belongings, at Sotheby's The affair and the child that came from it were kept under wraps, known only to Mercury's closest inner circle, including his parents, sister, his Queen bandmates, and Mary Austin, the love of his life. Mary and Freddie were once engaged and lived together before he came out as gay. Though they never had children. 'Freddie Mercury was and is my father. We had a very close and loving relationship from the moment I was born and throughout the final 15 years of his life,' she claims in a handwritten letter published in the book. 'He adored me and was devoted to me. The circumstances of my birth may seem, by most people's standards, unusual and even outrageous. That should come as no surprise. It never detracted from his commitment to love and look after me. He cherished me like a treasured possession.' 'The three friends raised B together, and Freddie spoke to his daughter every day when he was on tour,' Jones explained to the Daily Mail. Before his death from AIDS-related pneumonia in 1991, Mercury entrusted B with 17 volumes of his personal journals, which she kept private until now. Jones, who was approached by B three years ago, admits, 'My instinct was to doubt everything, but I am absolutely sure she is not a fantasist,' adding that B never asked for money or fame. ALSO READ| Freddie Mercury treasure trove on show before auction So why is B speaking out now? 'After more than three decades of lies, speculation and distortion, it is time to let Freddie speak.' 'That I choose to reveal myself in my own midlife is my decision and mine alone,' B said.
