A french TV ad promoting condoms.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

Two important articles have appeared in The Bangkok Post newspaper since last week’s cancellation of the 2nd Chiang Mai Gay Pride Parade because a small group of red-shirted pro-Thaksin demonstrators objected to the event taking place in a public space.
The first was an announcement by Pairote Boonsirikamchai, assistant secretary-general of the Medical Council of Thailand that under 18 now could receive a free HIV test and counselling at clinics without their parents’ consent.
This is definitively a step forward. By making counselling accessible to the most vulnerable people in society, that …

Bangkok World AIDS Day 2006 © peripheries

According to the Bangkok Post, Thailand Deputy Public Health Minister Manit Nopamornbode said that “about 11,700 people were expected to become new [HIV/AIDS] sufferers”.
Amongst these new sufferers, Manit identified “women who will get HIV from their lovers [...] gay men who have unprotected sex [..] men who get HIV from sex workers [and] will infect their wives, intravenous drug users, those having casual sex and prostitutes”
Children excluded, that is pretty much everybody.
Depending on the sources, there are between 516,000 t0 610,000 people living with …

The BBC reports on South African Children as young as 15 shooting up with grounded HIV anti-retrovirals sometimes mixed with painkillers and marijuana.
“I couldn’t believe it. I was shocked at first, these were school boys in their school uniforms,” documentary-maker Tooli Nhlapo told the BBC World Service’s Outlook programme.
“They take a pill and grind it, until it is a powder. Some also mix it with painkillers and others mix it with marijuana,” said Ms Nhlapo. “They showed me how they roll it and smoke it.”
The pills are either bought …

Three snippets of information selected from today’s news.
Snippet I
Clinical trials are often controversial when they take place in developing countries where there is a risk that participants do not always understand what they are taking part in or where there is a danger that once the trial is over, they will be left alone to deal with possible side effects.

Rating 3.00 out of 5