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Cambodian HIV tragedy: Investigate to treat, protect, and prevent HIV

Comments Off on Cambodian HIV tragedy: Investigate to treat, protect, and prevent HIV Posted by on December 22, 2014

On 16 December, newspapers reported more than 80 residents of a Cambodian village had tested HIV-positive in recent weeks. As of 20 December the reported number testing positive reached 140. Testing is continuing, so that number will likely increase further.

“The crisis began in late November, when a 74-year-old man from Roka tested positive for HIV at the Roka Health Center, according to a statement from Cambodia’s Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization. After receiving the result, the man then sent his granddaughter and son-in-law for testing. They also tested positive for the virus. The man then informed other villagers who had been treated by [an unregistered doctor] to get tested for HIV. After that, the number of cases steadily rose” (quote from: http://www.wsj.com/articles/worries-mount-that-hiv-infections-in-cambodian-village-could-rise-1419062070).

Outbreaks such as this are not unusual (see: http://dontgetstuck.org/cases-unexpected-hiv-infections/). What is unusual is that this one is recognized. It will be even more unusual if it is thoroughly investigated and reported.

An investigation can limit health damage.
1. Limit damage to the victims. Test widely to find as many victims as possible. Then ensure they get good treatment so they can look forward to a near-normal life.
2. Limit damage to others. Investigate to find the specific risks so they can be stopped, not only in this village but in thousands of similar situations in Asia and Africa. Did HIV go through saline infusions, intra-muscular injections, vaccinations, what? When the routes are identified in this outbreak, tell the public at risk in Cambodia and elsewhere so they can help to develop responses to protect themselves and others.

These two challenges can be satisfied with a no-fault investigation. The investigation could be modeled on a truth commission. People who might have been involved in transmission can be asked to cooperate – to report (confess) procedures that might have been unsafe and to report who they treated – in return for a promise not to prosecute.

What can be distracting in an investigation are efforts to pin the blame on one or more people, to put them in prison or sue them. Fear closes doors – what we need are open doors to find what went wrong and fix it. Yes, there is a lot of careless behavior in clinics and hospital – but many who are careless do not realize the risks because they have been confused by lies, eg, that HIV dies in seconds outside the body.

If careless people are to be prosecuted, should we start at the top? Leaders of the health aid industry know health care is often unsafe in much of Asia and Africa and yet support the delivery of invasive procedures without warning the public and without insisting on outbreak investigations to find and stop careless errors. Since it’s unlikely anyone will try to prosecute people at the top, let’s not scapegoat people at the bottom for careless behavior.

A good example of a failed investigation is what happened in Jalalpur Jattan, Pakistan, six years ago (see: http://dontgetstuck.org/pakistan-cases-and-investigations/). In 2008, a local NGO tested 246 people in the community, finding 88 to be infected. This got the attention of Pakistan’s National Institute of Health, which assigned Pakistan’s Field Epidemiology & Laboratory Training Program (FELTP) to investigate, with assistance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Government charged FELTP to: “determine the extent and chain of transmission” and to “identify…sites of potential transmission.”

FELPT’s investigators did neither. They began with a list of 20 HIV-positive people provided by the government hospital, traced relatives, and looked for people with stigmatized behaviors (sex work, male-male sex, injection drug use). Because the “investigation” did not test the general population it could not determine the extent of transmission or sites of transmission. The report added insult to injury with stigmatizing sexual fantasies: “there may be hidden extramarital and unsafe sexual practices in the community which were difficult to unveil” (see p 51 in: https://bloodbornehiv.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/feltp-investigation.pdf).

In Cambodia, let’s hope for an investigation that prioritizes finding and caring for victims (see: https://en-maktoob.news.yahoo.com/families-devastated-cambodia-hiv-outbreak-100523638.html) and preventing more victims – and that does not insult victims with accusations of stigmatized behaviors.

HIV

Cambodia’s Hun Sen in the Dark about HIV/AIDS

1 Comment Posted by on December 20, 2014

Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia is probably not the only national leader totally confused about HIV/AIDS. The news that over 100 people may have been infected with HIV as a result of an “unlicensed” doctor reusing skin piercing equipment, such as syringes, needles, intravenous drips and possibly others, underlined the leader’s complete ignorance about HIV transmission.

The prime ministers first response was to doubt if the HIV tests were accurate. But he seems to believe that HIV is exclusively transmitted through sex (and perhaps from mother to child or through injecting drug use). He doesn’t seem aware of transmission through blood exposure as a result of unsafe health, cosmetic or traditional practices. He also seems to believe that the quack arrested for performing these unsafe procedures must himself have been infected with HIV, which is not the case.

If one of the quack’s patients was HIV positive, reusing equipment that pierces the skin, or even is inserted into the mouth or other orifices, runs the risk of transmitting HIV and various other pathogens.

It wasn’t that long ago that Cambodia was predicted to be the first country to eliminate HIV transmission altogether, perhaps in the next few years. The epidemic is very small there and most transmission is likely to be through male to male sex and intravenous drug use.

But the outbreak in Roka Commune, Battambang Province shows that there are other risks. This kind of outbreak is likely to have happened many times in many countries over the past few decades. What makes this outbreak different is that it was noticed and (hopefully) investigated. Many quacks, perhaps even legitimate healthcare practitioners, may be reusing equipment, completely unaware that this could be exposing their patients to HIV, hepatitis and other bloodborne diseases.

A survey in Kenya and several other African countries found that people who have had injections in the past 12 months are far more likely to be HIV positive than those who have not. Babies in Mozambique and Swaziland have been found to be infected with HIV even though their mothers are negative (or the mothers have been infected by their babies). Women who only have sex with other women, which is extremely low risk, have been infected.

But in African countries this kind of outbreak remains uninvestigated. The women in Mozambique have never been told how their babies may have been infected, and have been allowed to believe that it was their (the mother’s) fault. The women who have sex only with other women have been told that such sexual behavior must be, after all, risky. And the many people who have probably been infected through unsafe healthcare have never been given any explanation.

So it’s not surprising that PM Hun Sen doesn’t believe the results: he, like most people in most countries, rarely hear anything about non-sexual transmission of HIV, through unsafe healthcare, cosmetic and traditional practices. This is in a country where healthcare conditions are poor and a lot of people resort to self medication, quacks or other people with few or no healthcare skills.

Hun Sen asks if an 80 year old person or a child are likely to be infected with HIV; and the answer is yes, anyone can be infected through any skin piercing practice where the equipment is reused and conditions are unsterile. They are also likely to be infected with hepatitis and any other bloodborne pathogen that is going around. Hospitals, dental surgeries, tattoo parlors, hairdressers and many other settings may be similarly risky.

So it’s time for UNAIDS and the WHO to come clean, because if national leaders are so confused about HIV modes of transmission, how clear can members of the public be? If we are constantly bombarded with misleading statements about sexual risks, but rarely told about serious non-sexual risks, everyone could be as confused as the Cambodian Prime Minister.

HIV

Religion, Former Colonial Powers; Fighting Prejudice with Prejudice?

1 Comment Posted by on December 5, 2014

In a paper entitled ‘Religious and Cultural Traits in HIV/AIDS Epidemics in Sub-Saharan Africa‘, the authors conclude that the Islamic faith is protective against HIV. Their conclusions about the role of colonial powers is not quite so clear, except to the extent that former British colonies (FBC) tend to be predominantly Protestant (or non-Catholic) and most of the countries that are predominantly Catholic are former non-British colonies (FNBC).

Making associations between HIV and religion, high prevalence and Christianity, low prevalence and Islam, high prevalence and FBCs, lower prevalence and FNBCs, etc, are very tempting. All the predominantly Muslim countries in Africa have low HIV prevalence, with Guinea-Bissau (3.9%) being the only one with a figure higher than 2% (and it is only 45% Muslim). Prevalence in countries with 90% or more Muslims only reaches a high of 1.1% in Sudan.

All the countries with prevalence above 4% are predominantly Christian; out of these, only four are FNBCs. There are nine countries with over 1 million people living with HIV. Only one is an FNBC (Mozambique) and only one is roughly evenly split into Christians and Muslims (Nigeria). All the highest prevalence figures are in the Christian dominated Southern region, and the four with prevalence below .4% are in the predominantly Muslim North.

But things come apart a bit when you look at countries that are Christian, but not predominantly Protestant. There are six predominantly Catholic countries, all FNBCs, where the highest prevalence figure is 2.9%; all these countries are in Central Africa. Yet, a number of countries made up of between 20% and almost 50% Catholic populations have some of the highest prevalence figures, too.

While Muslims and Catholics (ostensibly) oppose extra-marital sex, homosexuality and various other phenomena, so do Protestants and other non-Catholic Christian churches. Suggesting that such opposition is stronger or more active in countries with lower HIV prevalence risks arguing in a circle.

Some useful generalizations can be made, such as very high prevalence in Southern Africa, very low prevalence in North Africa, mainly low prevalence in West and Central Africa and high prevalence in East Africa. It is also broadly true that most predominantly Christian FBCs are Protestant dominated, rather than Catholic dominated. With the exception of Mozambique, prevalence in all FNBCs is never higher than 5%; but these countries can be predominantly Muslim, Christian, mixed, or Catholic.

There are two major objections to the analysis given or implied in this paper. The first is is that patterns and generalizations that can be made at the regional level, or even at the country level, do not always hold within countries; the second objection is to the assumption that HIV is almost always sexually transmitted.

The authors find some broad correlations but they do not discuss causality. They claim that the populations of countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria, for example, were protected from HIV because of their Muslim faith and the practices that go with that. But those countries, and others in the North, might have been ‘protected’ by one of the largest desert areas in the world, the Sahara.

In addition, HIV in those countries is mainly subtype B, which is generally associated with male to male sex (and to a lesser extent injected drug use). Subtype B is rare in other parts of Africa, with the exception of South Africa (where it mainly seems to infect men who have sex with men). HIV epidemics appear to form different patterns across regions and countries. But it also forms different patterns within countries.

High HIV prevalence in the Southern region may be facilitated, to some extent at least, by the well developed infrastructure there, infrastructure that would have been built by the British Colonial power. The same colonial power built far fewer roads or other infrastructure in East Africa, and none at all in Central Africa, where they had very little control.

However, they had control of a number of West African countries, where there is generally a strong infrastructure. Why did HIV not spread around West Africa to the extent it did in Southern Africa? Well developed infrastructure may partly explain variation in HIV prevalence between some countries and some regions, but it doesn’t explain enough. There are clearly factors operating within each country that account for some variation in HIV prevalence.

Regarding the second objection, the authors link the Muslim faith with certain moral precepts which they feel protect people from HIV. However, the majority of people in non-Muslim countries were not infected because they engaged in ‘immoral’ behavior. Even ‘official’ figures show that the bulk of people infected in many high prevalence countries have only one sexual partner, and most of those partners are HIV negative.

The ‘promiscuous African’ stereotype can not be used to explain HIV transmission because it is a prejudice, not an empirical fact about people with HIV, or about people from countries with high HIV prevalence. But similarly, the ‘non-promiscuous Muslim’ is also a stereotype, however positive. If you can not discern a person’s sexual behavior from their HIV status, nor discern a person’s HIV status from their sexual behavior, the conclusion that being a Muslim is protective against HIV is unwarranted.

Religion and former colonial power may be two important influences in HIV epidemics, but the authors fail to show convincingly how they operate on HIV transmission. Arguing that those and all other relevant factors relate exclusively to indivicual sexual behavior fails to explain the spread of HIV within countries. Heterogeneity between and within African countries suggests that HIV prevalence is not all about sex, and that not all factors operate at the individual level.

AIDS, blood, HIV, iatrogenic, nosocomial , , , , , ,

Depo Provera Hormonal Contraceptive, ‘Sayana Press’ and the Population Control Bruderbond

2 Comments Posted by on November 17, 2014

In developing countries “the risk for maternal death during childbirth can be as high as 1 in 15“. One might expect this horrifying statistic to be used as an argument for adequate and safe maternal healthcare. Instead, it is being used to sell Depo Provera hormonal contraceptive for Pfizer, administered via a device claimed to be ‘innovative’.

The device in question, the ‘Sayana Press’, may reduce the risks of needles and syringes being reused, and (hopefully) of single doses being split between two people. But calling something ‘innovative’ does not guarantee its safety, and the hope is that the drug can also be self-administered, in addition to being administered by community based health teams.

However, Depo Provera has been found to double the risk of HIV negative women being infected with the virus through sex with an infected partner, and double the risk of HIV positive women transmitting it to a HIV negative sexual partner. In the case of Depo Provera, population control, reducing the number of births in developing countries, is being prioritized over protecting women from being infected with and with transmitting HIV.

The citation above from one of PATH’s blogs starts off talking about the long walk some women have to ‘access’ contraception, the long queue they have to wait in, the use of a smaller needle, etc. But dressing this up as an exercise in ‘enabling’ women or genuine service provision is pure humbug.

The Don’t Get Stuck with HIV Collective is in favor of access to healthcare, especially reproductive healthcare, as long as that healthcare is safe. Depo Provera is not safe. The World Health Organization has accepted that it is not safe, but has decided that reducing birth is more important than safety, and even than reducing HIV transmission.

The blog goes on about reaching women in remote areas. Women in remote areas are far less likely to be infected with HIV than women in urban areas, or women living close to major roads, health facilities and other modern amenities. But the use of Depo Provera may be the very factor that increases risk under such circumstances.

‘Getting health services out to people’ is only desirable when those health services are safe. True, many women want to limit the size of their families, presumably many men do, too. But giving people options must include knowledge about healthcare safety and awareness about non-sexual risks from unsafe healthcare, dangerous pharmaceutical products like Depo Provera, and even the many vested interests that various parties in the population control bruderbond may prefer to keep to themselves.

Insidious use of words like ‘innovative’, ‘community’, ‘village’ and the like are great when raising funds or carrying out PR activities, but it doesn’t get away from the fact that, in the case of a dangerous drug like Depo Provera, it is not the method of delivery that presents the increased risk of HIV transmission, but the drug itself.

Healthcare is a human right, and an inherently good thing; but unsafe healthcare is the complete opposite of what people in developing countries with serious HIV (also hepatitis, TB, ebola, MRSA, etc) epidemics need. Depo Provera has been found to be unsafe. Creating demand for it, therefore, is not in the interest of people living in poor countries; it only benefits Pfizer, and the many organizations and institutions that have been attracted to the potential funding it represents.

AIDS, HIV, iatrogenic, nosocomial , , , , ,

We do them in Black for 14.99

1 Comment Posted by on November 12, 2014

I was recently sent an article which stated that “Novel strategies are needed to increase the uptake of voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) in sub-Saharan Africa and enhance the effectiveness of male circumcision as an HIV prevention strategy.”

The operation is provided free of charge. But this ‘intervention’ randomized participants into three groups, the first receiving about $2.50 in food vouchers, the second receiving about $8.75 and the third about $15, conditional on getting circumcised within two months. There was also a control group of men who received no compensation.

You may wonder why an operation said to be so highly beneficial requires a financial incentive; your wonder may (or may not) be assuaged by the assurance that some men face certain “economic barriers to VMMC and behavioral factors such as present-biased decision making”.

‘Present-biased’ suggesting that people will not spend money now on something that promises a future benefit only. However, perhaps these men don’t see any benefit; perhaps they use condoms, have only one, HIV negative, sexual partner, don’t have sex at all, live in a place where HIV prevalence is extremely low (there are many in Africa, far more than places where prevalence is high), etc. It’s also unclear what proportion of HIV is transmitted through heterosexual sex, which is the only mode of transmission circumcision enthusiasts even claim to reduce.

So those providing the operation propose ‘compensating’ each man for some of the costs involved in having the operation, possibly including the opportunity costs of missing work for a few days. You could argue that there will be no net financial benefit, and that this is nothing like bribing people to conform to a practice that some western donors from rich countries see as beneficial, but that the majority of people, even in rich countries, consider useless, perhaps even harmful.

The claimed future ‘benefit’ comes to this: one person out of every one hundred or more men who are circumcised (we don’t know the number because mass male circumcision trials have been biased towards showing the effectiveness of the operation) may be ‘protected’ from infection with HIV; ‘protected’ if it really is the circumcision that protects the man; no causal protective mechanism has ever been convincingly demonstrated.

The upshot of the trial will not surprise anyone. Hardly any of those in the control group went on to avail of their free circumcision. Slightly more of the men receiving $2.50 did so. The same goes for those receiving $8.50 and those receiving $15. But the overall impact was “a modest increase in the prevalence of circumcision after 2 months”.

The several hundred thousand Kenyans claimed to have already agreed to be circumcised under these mass male circumcision programs (many of whom would have been circumcised anyway in accordance with tribal practice), and the millions claimed to have been circumcised under similar programs in other African countries, may be disappointed that they will not receive anything at all to reflect “a portion of transportation costs and lost wages associated with getting circumcised”.

Depending on whose figures you use, circumcisions in African countries are claimed to cost as little as $60. Other figures suggest that the cost is at least twice that, and NGOs profiting from these programs would have an interest in claiming costs as high as possible. All the figures are puny compared to what the operation would cost in a rich country. But with an estimated 22 million men said to be currently eligible in Africa, and several tens of millions more boys not counted in the original estimate, just how much money is available?

Much of the literature about mass male circumcision is about notional economic benefits and quite superficial issues, such as assumed cleanliness and hygiene (for which there is no evidence), aesthetic aspects, improved sexual experience, and the like. Very little is about ethics, politics or, god forbid, human rights.

The ‘benefits’ of circumcision are easy enough to exaggerate and any disbenefits can be discounted because the ‘beneficiaries’ are male Africans, whose ‘unsafe’ sexual behavior is said to be responsible for the bulk of HIV transmissions.

To those promoting mass male circumcision, the useless piece of flesh on the end of a penis is a man, an African man, at that. Whereas the foreskin represents a vast funding opportunity and permits unbridled expression of a pathological belief in the multiple virtues of genital mutilation. The right to bodily integrity has, apparently, been suspended.

AIDS, circumcision, female genital mutilation, FGM, HIV, iatrogenic, male genital mutilation, mass male circumcision, MGM, nosocomial, VMMC

Unsafe Sex and Unsafe Healthcare are Mutually Exclusive HIV Risks in African Countries?

1 Comment Posted by on November 10, 2014

Recently, I blogged about a series of investigations that took place in various US states over a period of 10 years because of 86 cases of hepatitis C infection (HCV) being discovered, which could not be explained by the usual risks for this virus in a wealthy country, namely intravenous drug use and the like.

This extremely comprehensive investigation revealed that the 86 infections resulted from the actions of just six health personnel, who all had an addiction to controlled drugs. Over the course of 10 years they had put the safety of an estimated 30,000 patients at risk.

When a young woman in Brazil was found to be infected with HIV and no obvious sexual risks were established, rigorous research was carried out to discover a possible mode of transmission. The research found that the woman may have been exposed to contaminated manicure instruments many years before.

The manicure instruments belonged to the patient’s cousin, who had been on antiretroviral drugs, but whose treatment had lapsed. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the patient had very likely been infected by this cousin, and that sharing contaminated manicure instruments was the most likely mode of infection.

Worryingly, the paper finds that “In a recent case of transmission among women, the CDC lists, along[side] classical transmission routes, potential alternative sources that must be ruled out, such as tattooing, acupuncture, piercing, the use of shared sex toys between the partners and other persons, and exposure to body fluids, but does not include manicure instruments.”

The use of shared sex toys but not other shared instruments? Forgive me for thinking that people working for the CDC and other normative agencies may have some unresolved issues relating to assumed sexual practices, and perhaps an aversion to discussing non-sexual risks; or maybe that’s just when it relates to African countries?

Although an estimated 70% of HIV positive people live in sub-Saharan Africa, the kinds of investigation that were carried out in the US and Brazil do not appear to have been carried out in any African country. At least, if they have been carried out, they have not been written up in peer-reviewed papers.

Anyone who has visited Kampala in Uganda or Moshi in Tanzania may have seen people with basins of manicure equipment being used in the open, in shops and other premises, on women waiting for buses, working, shopping or just taking some time for a manicure or pedicure.

In Dar es Salaam and other places you may see men shaving another man’s head with a hand held, double edged razor. When one has finished, they swap around. Little nicks and cuts are usually treated with a piece of tissue, or possibly with a bit of antiseptic.

However, when people are diagnosed with HIV in African countries they are generally not asked about their possible non-sexual exposures, through unsafe cosmetic, traditional or healthcare practices. When people say they have not had sex, that they have not had sex with a HIV positive person, or that they have only had protected sex, these matters are generally dismissed.

HIV is not the only pathogen that is possibly fairly frequently transmitted in cosmetic, traditional and healthcare contexts, where skin-piercing is involved. Other pathogens include hepatitis, various bacterial infections, scabies, even ebola. Where skin-piercing is not involved, also, several serious diseases can be transmitted in these environments, for example TB.

It seems that, because it’s Africa, sex is always imputed, even when the patient makes it clear that this may not be, perhaps even cannot be, the mode of transmission. Because it’s Africa, unsafe healthcare, it seems that cosmetic and traditional practices can not explain otherwise inexplicable HIV infections.

According to normative agencies such as UNAIDS, healthcare and other environments are unsafe enough to explain high prevalence of hepatitis C in several low HIV prevalence countries, such as Egypt, but can’t explain high HIV prevalence in a low HCV prevalence country, such as South Africa.

Why should healthcare be unsafe and sexual behavior safe in all and only the countries with high HCV prevalence in Africa, while healthcare is safe and sexual behavior unsafe in all and only the countries with high HIV epidemics? Also, if sexual behavior is so unsafe in sub-Saharan Africa, shouldn’t HCV prevalence also be high all high HIV prevalence countries?

AIDS, ebola, HIV, iatrogenic, nosocomial , ,

Hepatitis, TB, HIV and Ebola: Healthcare Associated Epidemics?

1 Comment Posted by on November 6, 2014

It is sometimes claimed (by UNAIDS and others) that if HIV was frequently transmitted through unsafe healthcare in sub-Saharan countries, then hepatitis C (HCV) would also be common in the same countries, because HCV is usually transmitted through unsafe healthcare (dental procedures, surgery, stitches, etc). Indeed, HIV prevalence is often higher in countries that have low prevalence of HCV; and the high HCV countries tend to have low HIV prevalence.

However, given that it is well established that both viruses can be transmitted through unsafe healthcare, and that unsafe healthcare practices are probably very common in most (all?) African countries, the non-correlation between HIV and HCV prevalence seems like a very weak and unappealing argument. Because we don’t know the relative contribution of HIV transmission through unsafe healthcare, neither do we know how much transmission is a result of heterosexual sex.

Blaming high rates of HIV transmission almost exclusively on ‘unsafe’ heterosexual behavior has a number of dangerous consequences. For a start, it stigmatizes those who are already infected. It also results in people who don’t engage in ‘unsafe’ sexual practices failing to recognize their risk of being infected. More serious still, it means that public health programs aiming to influence sexual behavior will be relatively ineffective.

HCV prevalence in Egypt is the highest in the world and HIV prevalence is low. But a recent survey concludes that “Invasive medical procedures are still a major risk for acquiring new HCV infections in Egypt“. It sounds like measures to reduce transmission have not yet been completely successful. More worryingly, another paper finds that “there could be opportunities for localized HIV outbreaks and transmission of other blood-borne infections in some settings such as healthcare facilities“.

What about countries where HIV prevalence is extremely high, such as South Africa? HCV prevalence is very low, so the UNAIDS argument above would suggest that unsafe healthcare does not play a significant role in HIV transmission. But does that mean unsafe healthcare is unimportant? After all, resistant strains of TB have been transmitted in hospitals in South Africa and this has even spread beyond South Africa, to surrounding countries, and even to another continent.

In reality, we don’t know that much about HCV in the Africa region. A review of research on the subject concludes that “Africa has the highest WHO estimated regional HCV prevalence (5.3%)” in the world. That’s a striking figure, because HIV prevalence across the whole sub-Saharan African region is also around 5%. There are two serious viral pandemics on the continent that may both be driven to a large extent by unsafe healthcare.

HCV concentrates in certain countries and in parts of certain countries. But so does HIV. Prevalence is relatively low in most of Kenya, for example, only a few percent. It’s high in the two large cities, Nairobi and Mombasa, and highest in three (out of 47) counties around Lake Victoria. The situation in Tanzania is similar, with three high prevalence areas. In Burundi and Rwanda prevalence is also low, except in the capital cities.

So the fact that most high HIV prevalence areas do not overlap much with high HCV prevalence rates is not a very convincing argument that the two viruses are transmitted in completely different ways, the former being mainly transmitted through heterosexual sex and the latter through unsafe healthcare. Comparing HCV and HIV patterns only makes the contention that HIV is mostly sexually transmitted look all the more infantile.

The good news, then, is that improving healthcare safety would reduce transmission of both HCV and HIV, and even a range of other diseases that don’t get anywhere near as much attention as HIV. Good healthcare is also safe healthcare, whereas indifferent healthcare, with low standards of infection control, results in alarmingly high rates of transmission of serious diseases.

Journalists have recently had their attention drawn to the potential drawbacks of neglecting healthcare; ebola is difficult to control in a healthcare environment (as opposed to a rural village, where it appears to die out quite quickly). But it has been shown that it is difficult to control in healthcare facilities because of unsafe practices, such as reuse of skin-piercing instruments, gloves and other disposable supplies, lack of infection control procedures, a shortage of skilled personnel, etc.

One newspaper article even made a connection between ebola and HIV, suggesting that because many West African countries had relatively low HIV epidemics, investment in healthcare was lower, hence the weakness of the response to ebola.

Their analysis is not very perceptive. HIV-related investment in Sierra Leone and Liberia has been high enough to ensure that more than 80% of HIV positive people are provided with antiretroviral treatment. Guinea is way behind them in this respect, with less than 50% of people receving treatment. But spending money on preventing supposedly sexually transmitted HIV, and on treatment, does nothing to address unsafe healthcare.

HCV, HIV, ebola, TB and various other diseases can be transmitted through unsafe healthcare, so this is an argument for strengthening all health facilities in all developing countries. A human right to health does not make any sense if healthcare is so unsafe that patients risk being infected with a deadly disease when they visit a health facility. So ‘strengthening’ healthcare must include making health facilities safer.

It is hardly surprising that people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia run from health authorities and hide family members who are sick. The prospect of having your house searched by people in hazmat suits, sometimes backed up by people with guns, is frightening enough. But if your property is dragged outside in broad daylight and burned in public, and your sick relatives are hauled off to a ramshackle, understaffed, undersupplied health facility, these must extremely traumatic experiences.

If health facilities are unsafe, healthcare associated transmission of serious diseases will only increase as more people are admitted to them. Transmission rates will not go down until safety is made a priority; this applies as much to HIV as it does to HCV, ebola, TB and other diseases. The additional assurance that people will not be exposed to life-threatening diseases through unsafe healthcare should also increase demand for healthcare.

AIDS, blood, ebola, HIV, iatrogenic, nosocomial , , , , , , ,

Good news from Liberia: Why?

Comments Off on Good news from Liberia: Why? Posted by on October 28, 2014

Reported deaths from Ebola peaked in Liberia in the week ending 2 September,[1] falling to 35 per day during 12-18 October (see WHO Situation Reports for 15 and 25 October[2]). As early as 9 October, National Public Radio in the US noted that reported Ebola cases in Liberia had fallen by “about 160 cases each week” from end-September.[3] According to a 23 October news report,[4] “Virtually everyone in Liberia agrees on a new, stunning fact: Ebola cases in Liberia are dropping.”

Why has the outbreak apparently peaked and fallen back in Liberia, while the outbreak in Sierra Leone has stampeded ahead for at least another month? The answer to that question is relevant to ongoing and anticipated well-funded public health interventions aimed at the outbreak.

Gene studies suggest Ebola has been around for at least 1,200 years[5] and possibly much, much longer.[6] Presumably thousands of Africans over the centuries have gotten Ebola from the wild, eg, by getting blood into cuts while butchering infected chimpanzees. The absence of recognized outbreaks before 1976 is strong evidence transmission during home-based care and funerals is not enough to sustain, much less amplify, outbreaks. Before 1976, people that were somehow infected with Ebola on average infected less than one other person.

Similarly, in well-documented Ebola outbreaks beginning in 1976, transmission within the household and during funerals has not been enough to sustain outbreaks. Amplification of infections in health care settings – transmission from patients to care-givers and to other patients – has multiplied otherwise rare infections to the point that outbreaks are recognized.

Once recognized, most of the more than 20 outbreaks to date ended within 1-3 months.
Only one continued beyond 4 months – an outbreak, in Gabon in 2001-2, continued 5 months and 5 days.[5] The common pattern of interventions ending outbreaks to date has been to somehow stop health facilities from amplifying infections – to prevent Ebola transmission to health care workers and other patients.

A mission hospital near the Ebola River in Zaire amplified the eponymous Ebola outbreak in 1976. Injections with reused and unsterile syringes and needles infected at least 85 of the 280 who died[7] and – through secondary infections among contacts – were directly or indirectly responsible for most deaths. The hospital closed after Ebola sickened or killed most of its staff. Although this was a sorry way to stop the hospital from further amplifying the outbreak, it was effective. After the hospital closed, the outbreak ended with home-based care before an international health aid team even began to search for cases.

During the ongoing West Africa outbreak, the health aid community has acknowledged that hospitals are dangerous places for health care workers. WHO’s Situation Report for 22 October[2] reports 440 cases and 244 deaths among health care workers in West Africa and Nigeria through 19 October. The health aid community has commendably committed hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment and training to stop transmissions to health care staff.

However, to stop hospitals from amplifying infections, patients and not only health care workers must be protected – eg, instruments must be sterilized and gloves changed between patients. If anything is being done along these lines, there is no news. The health aid community has said next to nothing about transmissions to patients in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone – has any account been made but not reported? – and Ebola prevention messages for the general public have been silent about patients’ risks. Better reporting from Nigeria very clearly shows hospital amplification to health staff and patients: An index case flying in from Liberia started a mini-outbreak that infected 19 Nigerians – 16 acquired Ebola during health care (12 health staff and 4 patients) and 3 of these 16 infected one relative each.[8]

Even if public health authorities are silent about patients’ risks to get Ebola during health care, people will learn of such infections through friends and rumors. When people avoid health facilities because they fear to get Ebola, or don’t want to be cremated or buried in unmarked graves, this reduces amplification of infections in health facilities. When doctors and nurses stay home or refuse to treat patients out of fear, this also protects patients. Some anecdotal reports suggest that such behaviors have been common in Liberia.

Previous Ebola outbreaks warn that health care in hospitals, not home-based care, is the biggest risk to sustain and amplify outbreaks. How much has public avoidance of health care facilities contributed to reducing Ebola transmission in Liberia? Conversely, how much did public health efforts to bring suspected and confirmed cases into hospitals beginning in March contribute to outbreak amplification in Liberia through August?

Maybe the current outbreak in West Africa is different – maybe patients cared for at home are responsible for outbreak amplification, while hospitals have been dampening the outbreak. Maybe. On the other hand, if transmission during this outbreak is similar to previous outbreaks, the massive funds provided to stem the epidemic present a promise and a threat. If patients are protected, aid-financed expansion of health facilities could save lives. On the other hand, if patients are not protected, bringing more suspected and confirmed cases into hospitals could impede rather than speed the end of the outbreak.

1. http://www.kdnuggets.com/2014/10/ebola-analytics-data-science-lessons.html
2. http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/situation-reports/en/
3. http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/09/354754602/could-ebola-be-slowing-down-in-liberia
4. http://www.buzzfeed.com/jinamoore/ebola-cases-in-liberia-are-dropping
5. Chippaux, Outbreaks of Ebola virus disease in Africa…, available at: http://www.jvat.org/content/20/1/44
6. Taylor et al, Evidence that ebolaviruses…Miocene, available at: https://peerj.com/articles/556.pdf
7. International Commission, Ebola haemorrhagic fever in Zaire, 1976, available at: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/bulletin/1978/Vol56-No2/bulletin_1978_56%282%29_271-293.pdf
8. Fasina et al, Transmission dynamics…Nigeria, available at: http://www.eurosurveillance.org/images/dynamic/EE/V19N40/art20920.pdf

HIV

Uganda’s HIV Prevention and Control Act May Fall Foul of Itself

1 Comment Posted by on October 25, 2014

The Ugandan HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control Act, 2014, has been rightly criticized for potentially criminalizing certain kinds of HIV transmission and for compelling pregnant women (and their partners) to be tested for HIV.

It is felt that the law will result in people avoiding testing in order that they cannot be accused of attempted or intentional transmission of the virus. However, pregnant women who are not tested are unlikely to receive prevention of mother to transmission treatment or treatment for their own infection.

But there are other flaws in the act, which appears to have been put together in a hurry and without any proof reading. For a start, it seems to be assumed that HIV is almost always transmitted through sexual intercourse, aside from transmission from mother to child.

In Uganda, this is ridiculous. Children with HIV negative mothers were found to be HIV positive in three separate published studies, in the 80s, the 90s and the 2000s. More recently, several men taking part in the Rakai circumcision trial were infected even though they did not have sexual intercourse, and several more were infected despite always using condoms. (There are links to all the studies on the Don’t Get Stuck With HIV site.)

The act makes no explicit mention of non-sexual transmission through healthcare, cosmetic and/or traditional skin-piercing practices, though tattooing and a handful of other practices are mentioned. But there is no mention of circumcision (or genital mutilation), male or female, whether carried out in medical or traditional settings.

The above incidents raise questions about the act’s definition of ‘informed consent’, which requires that people be given “adequate information including risks and benefits of and alternatives to the proposed intervention”. Were mothers informed about all of  the risks that their infants faced? Were they even made aware of risks to themselves, through unsafe healthcare?

Were the men in the Rakai trial informed about unsafe healthcare risks? Trials should not endanger the health of those taking part, and participants should be adequately informed about the risks. But where people appear to have been infected with HIV as a result of taking part in the trials, this possibility has not even been investigated.

The act does not include transmission as a result of infection control procedures not being followed (or not being implemented). Nor does it include careless transmission, as a result of not following (or implementing) procedures, not training personnel adequately, not providing health facilities with the equipment and supplies needed, etc. The Ugandan state itself has an obligation to prevent and control HIV transmission, according to the act.

Curiously, the act states that there will be no conviction if transmission is through sexual intercourse but protective measures were used (also if the victim knew the accused was infected and accepted the risk). Protective measures probably include condoms, but do they also include antiretroviral treatment? Vast claims are made about reductions in HIV transmission when the infected party is on treatment. Yet people have been convicted of intentional transmission in countries other than Uganda; being in antiretroviral treatment didn’t always protect them from conviction.

Part one of section 45 reads: “All statements or information regarding the cure, prevention and control of HIV infection shall be subjected to scientific verification”; part three reads: “A person who makes, causes to be made or publishes any misleading statements or information regarding cure, prevention or control of HIV contrary to this section commits an offence and shall be liable on conviction…”.

So it’s not just pregnant mothers and other parties who may fall foul of the HIV Prevention Act. Those who wrote the act may have contravened it themselves in a number of ways. Even those running drug and other health related trials, health practitioners and traditional and cosmetic practitioners may also risk contravening the act.

AIDS, blood, circumcision, female genital mutilation, FGM, HIV, iatrogenic, male genital mutilation, mass male circumcision, MGM, nosocomial, VMMC

CDC: Ebola Characterized by ‘Amplification in Health Care Settings’

Comments Off on CDC: Ebola Characterized by ‘Amplification in Health Care Settings’ Posted by on October 17, 2014

When Peter Piot, the ‘Virus Detective Who Discovered Ebola‘, went to one of the first identified outbreaks in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he reported that “it was clear that the outbreak was closely related to areas served by the local hospital”.

Piot says: “The team found that more women than men caught the disease and particularly women between 18 and 30 years old – it turned out that many of the women in this age group were pregnant and many had attended an antenatal clinic at the hospital.”

He goes on: “The team then discovered that the women who attended the antenatal clinic all received a routine injection. Each morning, just five syringes would be distributed, the needles would be reused and so the virus was spread between the patients.”

What he has to say about people getting ill after attending funerals is repeated in contemporary reports on ebola in West Africa, ad nauseam. But the comments about visits to the hospital, women attending antenatal care and reuse of syringes (and possibly other medical instruments) are no longer mentioned so much.

The CDC does write that ebola “has been characterized by amplification in health care settings and increased risk for health care workers (HCWs), who often do not have access to appropriate personal protective equipment“, but they are not as expansive as Piot about exactly what that means on the ground.

There was a whole rash of recent reports about women being more likely to be infected with ebola than men in the current outbreak and a rather narrow set of speculative explanations about why this might be so, one being that women are more likely to be involved in giving care than men.

While women may well more often be the ‘caregivers’, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine summarizes available data on every reported case. However, it finds that there is very little difference in the numbers of men and women infected, and even the number of men who die from ebola.

There are also far fewer children infected than adults, despite claims that ‘women and children’ are more likely to be infected than men.

As far as I can see, media speculation into why women may be more likely to be infected than men (because they may have been more likely in some instances) did not question the possibility that women are often more likely to access healthcare, especially when pregnant.

Piot makes this connection during the first investigated ebola epidemic and goes on to connect women’s elevated risk with the use of unsterile syringes, not just casual contact in healthcare facilities.

It is to be hoped that clinics are no longer issued with five syringes a day, though clear data about supplies of syringes and needles is hard to come by. But what about other infection control equipment and supplies; especially equipment and supplies in facilities that are experiencing extreme shortages?

What about facilities that are understaffed, where an adequate number of workers may be able to take certain precautions to protect themselves and their patients, but an inadequate number may only be able to think about their own safety, or not even that?

In the case of HIV there are many reasons why a woman might be more likely to be infected through unsafe healthcare. They are expected to attend antenatal care during pregnancy, give birth in a health facility, attend post-natal care, and perhaps several other reasons.

But since western countries, especially the US, have started taking an interest in ebola, they have reinforced efforts to round up people who look in the least bit like they have a fever and sticking them in an already overcrowded health facility, where conditions are appalling.

So if women were more likely to be infected with ebola earlier on in the current epidemic, and in some of the earlier outbreaks in other parts of Africa, perhaps the current approach is influencing the gender balance somewhat. One result possibly being that men are no longer less likely than women to go to a health facility (especially if they are given no option).

Piot says: “The closure of the hospital, the use of quarantine and making sure the community had all the necessary information eventually brought an end to the epidemic – but nearly 300 people died.” Most people were quarantined in their own homes, not in an overcrowded and filthy ward.

How things have changed. Far from trying to persuade people to stay in their homes and supporting family members to look after them, US soldiers are helping to send people to what could be the very epicenter of the epidemic.

There are now far more confirmed and suspected ebola cases than there is hospital capacity to care for them. So a strategy that aims to strengthen and make hospitals safer, in combination with strengthening communities to care for people at home might now be the only option left.

AIDS, blood, ebola, HIV, iatrogenic, nosocomial , , , , , ,

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