In this week’s press release:
- HIV care can be successfully delivered to Thai prisoners
- Road traffic injury is an escalating burden in Africa
Please mention PLoS Medicine in your report and use the links below to take your readers straight to the online articles:
FROM THE PLoS MEDICINE MAGAZINE SECTION:
HIV care can be successfully delivered to Thai prisoners
In this week's PLoS Medicine, Nathan Ford and colleagues from the humanitarian agency Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF; Doctors Without Borders) describe their experience of providing HIV prevention and treatment in two prisons in Thailand.
HIV is more common among prisoners than among the general population of Thailand—one study, for example, in Klong Prem Central Prison, Bangkok, found that 25% of prisoners who agreed to be tested were HIV positive compared with a general prevalence of 1.5% in the national population. But Thailand’s prisons, say Ford and colleagues, suffer from a lack of health staff and severe budgetary constraints that impede the effective delivery of HIV care and prevention programs.
In June 2003, at the invitation of the prison health services, MSF began providing clinical support in two prisons in Bangkok—Minburi, a remand prison, and Bangkwang, a maximum-security prison. In their PLoS Medicine paper, Ford and colleagues describe running workshops in these prisons on HIV prevention, offering HIV tests to prisoners, and treating prisoners with HIV infection with anti-retroviral and other drug therapies. The authors present data that suggest that the clinical outcomes of patients with HIV treated in these prisons is comparable with treatment programmes in other settings.
"The attitude of the prison health care staff towards the rights of prisoners to access antiretroviral therapy is very positive," say the authors. "The fact that none have questioned that three prisoners facing the death sentence receive antiretroviral treatment is a clear indication of the staff’s commitment to treatment as a basic human right."
Citation: Wilson D, Ford N, Ngammee V, Chua A, Kyaw MK (2007) HIV prevention, care, and treatment in two prisons in Thailand. PLoS Med 4(6): e204.
IN YOUR ARTICLE, PLEASE LINK TO THIS URL, WHICH WILL PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE PUBLISHED PAPER:
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/"request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040204
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-04-06-ford.pdf
CONTACT:
Nathan Ford
Médecins Sans Frontières
Plantage Middenlaan
Amsterdam, 1018 DD
Netherlands
+27 82 852 1886
nathan.ford@london.msf.org
Road traffic injury is an escalating burden in Africa
The death rate from traffic injuries is higher in Africa than in any other region of the world, and yet research into improving road safety in Africa is scarce, argues Emmanuel Lagarde (French National Institute for Health and Medical Research) in an Essay in PLoS Medicine.
The road traffic injury mortality rate in Africa is 28.3 per 100,000 of the population when corrected for under-reporting, compared with 11.0 per 100,000 in Europe. But while many results on road injury prevention are available from developed countries, says Lagarde, we must now “scale up surveillance and research efforts in developing countries in order to determine how to build on these results, taking regional specificities into account."
Documented success stories in road safety in Africa are needed, says the author, to demonstrate that road traffic accidents need not be inevitable and unpredictable, but are avoidable.
Citation: Lagarde E (2007) Road traffic injury is an escalating burden in Africa and deserves proportionate research efforts. PLoS Med 4(6): e170.
IN YOUR ARTICLE, PLEASE LINK TO THIS URL, WHICH WILL PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE PUBLISHED PAPER:
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/"request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040170
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-04-06-lagarde.pdf
Related images for press use: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-04-06-lagarde.jpg
Caption: Number of References Related to Road Traffi c Injury and HIV/AIDS, from the PubMed Database (Figure: A. Flores) RTIs, road traffic injuries
CONTACT:
Emmanuel Lagarde
INSERM U593
Equipe Avenir Santé et Insécurité Routière
Université Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2, Case 11
146 rue Léo Saignat
Bordeaux, Gironde 33076
France
+ 33 5 57 57 15 04
+ 33 5 57 57 45 28 (fax)
emmanuel.lagarde@isped.u-bordeaux2.fr
EMBARGO: MONDAY, 25 June, 5 P.M. PDT
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PLoS Medicine is an open access, freely available international medical journal. It publishes original research that enhances our understanding of human health and disease, together with commentary and analysis of important global health issues. For more information, visit http://www.plosmedicine.org
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