Community Service for HIV+ Popstar

posted: 26/08/2010

Updated 27 August

The HIV-positive German popstar accused of infecting her former partner was given a two-year suspended sentence and is required to do 300 hours of community service work, if possible working with an organisation that helps people with HIV.
 

Nadja Benaissa, 28, admitted having unprotected sex and not telling her partner she has HIV, as German law requires. The law is different in the UK.
 

The No Angels singer was found guilty of causing bodily harm to one man, and of two cases of attempted bodily harm.
 

Benaissa admitted she had sex with three partners without telling them she has HIV. One of them later tested HIV positive.

Virus evidence unchallenged

The court ruled that she had "in all probability" infected one of her lovers, who contracted HIV at the time of their relationship and that she had endangered the life of another, who remains free of the virus. Similar accusations towards the singer made by a third former lover, which were originally included in evidence, were not heard in order to speed up the trial.

The prosecution evidence given by the expert German virologist, Professor Josef Eberle of Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, said there was little doubt that Benaissa had infected the man, because they both had a very similar strain of the virus, a rare form which was first discovered in West Africa.

However this evidence went unchallenged (because she pleaded guilty) and it is notable that the judge only said that 'in all probability' she infected him. In a criminal case in Britain 'in all probability' is not good enough - she has to be proved the source of his infection 'beyond reasonable doubt'.

Having a similar strain of HIV, even if this is rare in Germany, doesn't prove he could not have been infected by someone else with the same strain. Until a few years ago the Crown Prosecution Service in Britain made the same sweeping claims about people who shared the same rare strain of HIV. Then expert virologists for the defence here demonstrated that this proves nothing except that two people have the same strain of HIV. The man could have got that same strain from someone else.   

She could have faced up to 10 years in jail, but prosecutors sought a lenient sentence because she confessed and expressed remorse.
Benaissa was arrested very publicly in Frankfurt last year, shortly before she was due to perform a solo concert, and spent 10 days in custody.
 

Pressures and a hard life 

The five-day trial, which took place in a youth court in Darmstadt as Benaissa was just 16 when the first offences took place, heard detailed evidence of the pop star's troubled youth. Benaissa spent time living on the street, where she developed a drug addiction. She had a child when she was 16.

Stop and Think

For those of us who are quick to say: how could she? I would like to ask a few questions: could you imagine finding out you are pregnant, and that you also have HIV, at 17? Can you imagine the fear that you could possibly infect the baby, and the anxiety that the medications you need to take in order to prevent the transmission may harm you and the baby? Can you imagine fearing for your own future? How would you tell your partner, or your ex, or the person you are hoping to have a relationship with? And what could the consequences be?
 

Source BBC

Update Source The Guardian 
Stop and Think from HIV Policy Speak Up blog
Statement by German HIV organisation Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe (in English) on HIV and the Criminal Law
HIV criminalisation blog

Microbicides - Women Wait

posted: 18/05/2010

Next week’s International Microbicides Conference in Pittsburgh, USA will hear about the progress made in producing microbicides, that will help protect women and gay men from HIV.
 

Numerous past attempts at microbicides have failed. Using an anti-HIV drug in a microbicide is one of the attempts now being made to find some method of HIV prevention that women can use themselves. Women face problems protecting themselves from HIV, especially when their partners refuse to use condoms, or when simply suggesting condoms may put the woman in danger.
 

Is tenofovir part of the answer?

Tests are underway to see if tenofovir, one of the commonly used anti-HIV drugs, would work in vaginal gels and contraceptive-style rings. Experiments are also underway with quick-dissolving anti-HIV films, like those used for breath-fresheners or allergy medicines, but these are made for vaginal use.
In July we should have the results from the first study to see if tenofovir works in a microbicide — South African women are testing a gel made with it.
 

Cautious Hope
"Frankly, blocking transmission of the virus appears to be a lot harder than anyone understood it would be at the beginning," says co-chair Dr. Sharon Hillier of the University of Pittsburgh and a principal investigator of the Microbicide Trials Network. "The reason we're not depressed in the microbicide world? We actually have learned a lot and moved on to think about potent drugs and really cool delivery methods."
 

Pills for Prevention?
More than half a dozen studies of ‘pre-exposure prophylaxis’ (taking pills as treatment to prevent HIV infection happening) are also under way, and these mainly use tenofovir, because the side effects are more limited than with some other anti-HIV drugs. But even if pills for prevention works, taking HIV pills daily has drawbacks. There are the side effects, the risk of drug resistance, and people may miss doses or share the tablets with others so they wouldn’t be effective. It’s more expensive protection than condoms and the risks make it controversial.
 

Microbicide action
Microbicides are needed too. Women already make up half of the more than 33 million people worldwide living with HIV, and most of the new infections in hardest-hit sub-Saharan Africa are among young women.
"I have in fact so little to offer women in terms of HIV prevention that I sort of tear my hair out," says Dr. Salim Abdool Karim of the Centre for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He’s leading the tenofovir gel study, his ninth microbicide study since 1994. "It must take a certain level of perseverance to want to stay in this field." Much more of the tenofovir reaches the vaginal tissue from a gel than any pill, and it doesn’t seem to move elsewhere into the body, so side effects may be minimal. He’s studying 900 HIV-negative heterosexual women to test whether tenofovir gel, applied up to 12 hours before intercourse and again within 12 hours afterward, lowers the risk of infection.
 

Next step soon
While awaiting his results in July, the U.S. National Institutes of Health is funding the next step: Researchers are already looking for 5,000 healthy women in several African countries to try two other approaches - vaginal tenofovir gel used daily rather than before and after sex, or or daily tenofovir pills. Which way is best?
 

Contraception teaches us that offering more choice about method leads to more women using something. So researchers are looking at other methods, too: a quick-dissolving tenofovir vaginal film, which should be completely invisible to the partner. Vaginal rings might be used to trickle-dose the vagina over a month. And for gay men ways to protect the rectum with tenofovir are in prospect.
Health promotion workers should get themselves ready to deal with the challenges should any of these attempts work, Dr. Regina Osih of the University of Witwatersrand will advise next week's microbicide conference.
 

Anti-HIV Gel Failure

posted: 05/12/2008

The attempts to produce a gel that offers some protection from the risk of HIV infection have failed once more. A new gel designed to protect women from HIV infection has been checked and it does not work.

The anti-HIV gel Carraguard, made from seaweed extract, was tested in a two-year study of over 6,000 sexually active HIV-negative women in South Africa.

Women who were given Carraguard had a HIV infection rate of 3.3 per 100 woman-years (134 infections), while women in the control group who were given a non-working placebo, had a slightly higher HIV infection rate of 3.8 per 100 woman-years (151 infections).

Search must go on

While this gel failed, the study's authors say that urgent efforts to create an effective female-controlled HIV-prevention method should continue.

Researchers Stephanie Skoler-Karpoff and Barbara Friedland say: "This study did not show Carraguard's efficacy in prevention of male-to-female transmission of HIV, although no safety concerns were recorded. Low levels of gel use could have compromised the potential to detect a significant protective effect. Although the results from this and other completed microbicides efficacy trials have been disappointing, the search for female-controlled HIV-prevention methods must continue."

source

More than 33 million people worldwide are living with HIV, with more than two thirds of those in sub-Saharan Africa where women and girls account for 61% of all infections.