Dessalines Is Rising!!
Ayisyen: You Are Not Alone!

HLLN Links on Failed or Contaminated Vaccines
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Media Lies and Real Haiti News
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U.S. Patterns in Haiti
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Dessalines' Law
Jean Jacques Dessalines

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"I urge drug companies and the TB Alliance to stop lying to these people and to above all, stop using the African continent as one gigantic human laboratory. Africa isn't Auschwitz. ...." ( "Stop using S.Africa as a human laboratory" by Adriana Stuijt Reports

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Formation d'un task force de médecins pour démonter la thèse d'un professeur américain selon laquelle le sida aurait ete introduit aux etas-Uuis par des haïtiens

Port-au-Prince, le 19 novembre 2007 (AHP) Le Directeur général du Ministère de la santé publique, le Dr Gabriel Timothée a annoncé lundi la formation d'un Task-Force , composé d'experts ayant pour mission de faire des recherches en vue d'aboutir à des éléments susceptibles de permettre d'opposer un démenti aux résultats d'une étude que le professeur américain Michaël Worobey affirme avoir menée et selon lesquels, le Sida serait introduit aux Etats-Unis par des haïtiens venus de l'Afrique Centrale.

Le Task-Force se compose de médecins de l'Association Médicale Haïtienne, de médecins haïtiens vivant à l'étranger, et de ceux issus de plusieurs institutions partenaires du ministère, a-t-il précisé.

Seules des données scientifiques peuvent aider à répondre à une étude scientifique, a dit le Dr Timothée, soulignant que certains arguments mettent en cause les données de M. Worobey.

Selon lui, l'échantillon de 5% d'haïtiens utilisé par l'expert dans le cadre de son étude de 1982 à 1983, n'est pas fiable et ses déclarations ne tiennent pas sur les plans historique et migratoire .

Worobey affirme que les haïtiens incriminés revenaient d'exil après la chute des Duvaliers en 1986.

Le docteur Thimothée, a souligné que des cas de Sida avaient déjà été enregistrés presque partout dans le monde et un nombre considérable d'africains vivaient déjà aux Etats-Unis. au cours la période évoquée par Worobey.

Il a également fait remarquer que les haïtiens en question, avant de rentrer en Haïti, s'étaient rendus d'abord en Europe, un continent infecté par le Sida, bien longtemps après les Etats-Unis.

Une lettre sera adressée sous peu à des experts américains avec qui le MSPP entretient de bons rapports en vue d'un certain soutien à l'équipe locale, dans le cadre de ses recherches, a fait savoir Dr Timothée.

Au cas où les données du scientifique américain se révèlent fausses, le gouvernement haïtien intentera une poursuite judiciaire contre lui, a annoncé le ddirecteur géneral du ministère de la santé publique.

L'un des experts mondiaux dans la recherche sur la pandémie du sida, le pofesseur Luc Montagnier avait affirmé la semaine dernière que le virus du syndrome immuno déficience acquise pourrait avoir été introduit en Haïti par le biais de touristes.

Participant à une conférence à l'Université de Granada en Espagne, le professeur avait rejeté ainsi la thèse avancée par le professeur Michael Worobey de l'Université d'Arizona.

" Il est probable qu'un touriste américain de passage en Haïti ait contaminé des membres de la population, au lieu du phénomène inverse", avait-il encore souligné Luc Montagnier.

Les premiers cas de personnes infectées du Sida ont été détectées aux Etats-Unis en 1981 parmi la comunauuté homosexuelle.

AHP 19 novembre 2007 1:20 PM
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Ouverture d'un seminaire de formation à l'intention des étudiants de différentes facultés du pays dans le cadre d'une prise en charge complète des malades du Sida
Port-au-Prince, le 19 novembre 2007 (AHP)

Le ministère haïtien de la Santé Publique de concert avec d'autres partenaires, a ouvert lundi un séminaire de formation de 7 jours, à l'intention des étudiants finissants des différentes facultés privées de médecine du pays, dans le cadre des efforts visant une prise en charge complète des malades du Sida.

Selon le directeur général dudit ministère, le Dr Gabriel Timothée, cette même activité organisée, il y a deux mois en faveur des jeunes professionnels du secteur public, envisage une formation uniforme et une augmentation du nombre de ces professionnels.

Le Dr Timothée a fait savoir qu'une amélioration considérable a été enregistrée au niveau du taux de séroprévalence en Haïti passé de 6,5 à 3,1.

Ces progrès ont été rendus possibles grâce au partenariat entre les secteurs public et privé, a-t-il souligné.

Il en a profité pour annoncer l'organisation de plusieurs activités de sensibilisation et d'orientation à l'occasion de la journée mondiale du Sida, le 1er décembre prochain.

38 institutions s'occupent actuellement en Haïtide la prise en charge des malades du Sida.

AHP 19 novembre 2007 1:20 PM
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L'Honorable professeur Montagnier rejette les resultats de "l'étude" de Michael Worobey selon lesquels la propagation de la pandémie du sida aux Etats-Unis serait liée à la migration haïtienne (See HLLN's brief English summary of this AHP article)

Port-au-Prince, le 14 novembre 2007 (AHP)- L'un des experts mondiaux dans la recherche sur la pandémie du sida, le pofesseur Luc Montagnier a affirmé mardi que le virus du syndrome d'immuno déficience acquise pourrait avoir été introduit en Haïti par le biais de touristes.

Participant à l'Université de Granada en Espagne, le professeur dont les propos ont été cités dans la dernière édition de l'hebdomadaire haïtien "Haïti en Marche" a rejeté ainsi la thèse avancée par le professeur Michael Worobey de l'Université d'Arizona, qui a tenté récemment de lier la migration haïtienne aux Etats-Unis à la propagation du VIH.

" Il est probable qu'un touriste américain de passage en Haïti ait contaminé des membres de la population, au lieu du phénomène inverse", a souligné Luc Montagnier.

Le chercheur et scientifique français a également fait savoir qu'il n'y avait pas d'haitiens contaminés au sein de la première vague haïtienne ayant émigré au Canada.

Les premiers cas de personnes infectées du Sida ont été détectées aux Etats-Unis en 1981 parmi la comunauuté homosexuelloe.

Le malade séropositif qui a pu introduire ce terrible fléau dans ce pays, a été identifié comme étant un marin canadien repondant au nom de Gaetan Dugas, avant que M. Norobey ait présenté les résultats de ses pseudo recherches rejetées par Luc Montagnier.

Le profeseur français l'un des premiers à avoir découvert le virus du sida, a assuré par ailleurs qu'un taitement sera bientiot trouvé.

" C'est une question de temps et d'argent, a-t-il expliqué.

AHP 14 novembre 2007 2:00 PM

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Ezili Danto's Note: A world wide expert on the Aid/HIV virus, the honorable professor, Luc Montagnier, rejects the results of "the study" of Michael Worobey according to which the Aids pandemic arrived in the United States through a Haitian migrant (AHP - in French)

HLLN ‘s English summary of this AHP article:

"It is probable that an American tourist in Haiti contaminated members of the population, instead of the inverse phenomenon", underlined Luc Montagnier.
The researcher and French scientist equally made known that there was no contaminated Haitians within the first Haitian wave who immigrated to Canada.
The first cases of AIDs infected persons were detected in the United States in 1981 within the homosexual community.

Before Mr. Worobey presented the results of his pseudo research, rejected by Luc Montagnier, the patient zero thought to have introduced this terrible blight to the U.S., was identified as being a Canadian sailor, named Gaetan Dugas.
The French professor, Luc Montagnier, is credited with being one of the primary discoverers of the causative virus that causes AIDs. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier )

Haitian-Americans fault report on spreading of AIDS
Many feel stigmatized again by new research tracing spread
By Ruth Morris | South Florida Sun-Sentinel, South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
December 1, 2007 sun-sentinel.com

Haitian-Americans are calling for an independent review of an AIDS study they say again stigmatizes them in the spread of HIV.

Activists, lawyers and health workers say the new research, based on genetic analysis of blood samples from three early Haitian patients in South Florida, could bring back discrimination they endured in the early 1980s. At that time, health officials singled out Haitians as being at increased risk for the virus that causes AIDS and banned them from donating blood.

The controversy around the new study — by evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona — overlaps with the good news last week that HIV is actually less prevalent globally than originally thought, and with World AIDS Day, which is observed around the world today.

But Haitian-Americans in South Florida say the Worobey report reopens an old wound.

"My initial reaction: This is just more of the same," said Jeff Cazeau, president of the Haitian Lawyers Association, of the Worobey study.

By comparing analysis of the three 25-year-old blood samples to others from around the world, the report asserts today's most widespread subtype of HIV emerged in Haiti in the 1960s, then spread to the United States a few years later. The timeline suggests to many that Haiti was a stepping-stone for the infection on its journey from Africa to the United States, but it does not conclude a Haitian immigrant brought the disease to the United States.

Cazeau said his group is seeking records from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to determine whether Worobey's team were authorized to use the blood samples at the root of the research.

Haitian physicians, meanwhile, have been encouraging scientists to take a second look at the data.

"Haitians historically have been used as scapegoats," said Marleine Bastien, a Haitian-American activist who cared for Haitian immigrant patients in South Florida in the 1980s as a clinical social worker.

The current sharp response to the study derives from abuses from that time, she said, when Haitians were tested for HIV at higher rates than other people, and then blamed for bringing the disease to South Florida shores.

"This had a devastating impact. Haitians were fired from employment. They were denied access to housing," she said.

"Calling someone Haitian became the worst curse."

Creole radio host Ancy Louis, of Greenacres, said he doubted the findings would bring a new stigma on his community, however, since people are better educated on AIDS today.

"We're becoming more mature. Everything is about education," he said.

The study, published a month ago in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also notes a "high prevalence" of AIDS in Haitian immigrants in the United States soon after the infection was identified.

Eventually health officials came up with the "four H club" to denote risk factors: hemophilia, homosexuality, heroin use and being Haitian.

Dr. Art Fournier, associate dean of community health at the University of Miami, noted many Americans traveled to Haiti as sex tourists in the 1960s and '70s, and could easily have brought HIV back with them.

"We have to move beyond medical 'detectivism,'" said Fournier, author of The Zombie Curse on HIV in Haiti. "It's not about nationality. It's that the people who were infected were poor, therefore exploited, therefore infected."

Ruth Morris can be reached at rmorris@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5012.
Copyright © 2007, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

AIDS spreads unchecked among poverty and prisons

Millions of US dollars are given to the Dominican Republic and Haiti to help in the fight against AIDS, yet restrictions like requiring the condemnation of sex work keep the money off the streets and away from the people who need it most
By Antigone Barton

NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, SANTO DOMINGO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Sunday, Dec 02, 2007

In the glow of casino lights around the Dominican Republic's tourist districts, streetwalkers wait for customers.

Behind the walls of Haiti's grossly overcrowded National Penitentiary, infectious diseases go uncounted and untreated.

On the island these countries share, two hours from American shores, the rates of the virus that leads to AIDS are the highest in this hemisphere.

But while the US has sent more than US$100 million dollars to fight HIV and AIDS on the island of Hispaniola in the last three years, those tackling the epidemic among sex workers and prison inmates there do it without US help.

Working with limited resources against seemingly insurmountable odds, those fighters on the frontlines of the epidemic contend that if AIDS is not confronted in these settings, the battle against it won't be won.

A tourist looking for sex in Santo Domingo can walk to a brothel behind the priciest hotel where a night with a stranger costs about US$85, or save money and walk in the other direction to pick up one of the streetwalkers lining the seawall strip.

Dr Sonia Ramez, left, tells a defiant woman that she is HIV positive.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE AND AP

This impoverished island is a buyers' market where women sell sex to tourists, businessmen, sailors and prison inmates - and where HIV rates among sex workers are estimated to be at least triple the general population's nearly 2 percent rate.

Commercial sex is essentially legal here, where law requires hotel rooms rented by the hour be supplied with two condoms.

It is also entrenched enough in life here that sex workers organized a group - Movimiento de Mujeres Unida (MODEMU) - more than a dozen years ago to help each other.

This man who is dying in the Dominican Republic says his clinic does not know his illness, but a health worker says he has AIDS.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE AND AP

Among those at the highest risk in the HIV epidemic, they have taken a role in a search of solutions, participating in vaccine trials and teaching condom use, with support from drug companies, nonprofit organizations and their own government. They don't get money from the US, which last year sent US$6.4 million through the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to fight the epidemic here.

That is because a stipulation written into the terms of US foreign aid says anyone who doesn't condemn sex work can't get any of the money.

Critics call the policy the "anti-prostitution pledge" and say it keeps help from those who need it most.

"It's widely misunderstood," US global AIDS coordinator Ambassador Mark Dybul responded recently.

PEPFAR funds 120 programs that help sex workers, offering care and vocational training, he said.

Critics counter the language of the pledge is so vaguely worded that it scares organizations away from providing services to sex workers.

The pledge would be a difficult one for the retired and still active sex workers who make up MODEMU to take.

"We talk with the women equal to equal to get across our message. I say 'us' to a sex worker," said Juliana, a retired sex worker who preaches condom use to friends still working at brothels.

She is one of the founders of MODEMU and has recruited friends who are still active for vaccine trials and outreach work. One of her friends is a woman named Jocelyn who supports three children by serving sailors who arrive on ships from around the world. She also goes from town to town, demonstrating condom use to fellow sex workers and emphasizing sex workers must never negotiate whether to use them.

"Not for US$200, not for US$500!" she says.

Another friend brings extra condoms to the prison on visiting days, when she goes to serve inmates herself, and where HIV rates are estimated to be five times higher than those outside the walls. There, prisoners will pay about US$5 for a sex act and women try to serve enough inmates to leave with US$50.

Many women who visit the prison also work the streets serving tourists. It is an international issue that can't be solved by condemnation, say some working here, including doctors, social agency staff and sex workers themselves. They emphasize that options for poor women in this country are limited to housekeeping and factory work, when such jobs can be found.

Even some of those few options are closed to many women, says Sonia Pierre, founder of an organization fighting for the rights of Dominican women of Haitian descent. Discrimination against Haitian immigrants is a barrier to education, work and housing for those forced by even more crushing poverty to cross the border from the poorer country to the west.

Where the bright lights of the Dominican Republic's tourist strips might blind visitors to poverty and disease in that country, Haiti has no such facade.

But, according to many fighting the epidemic here, the country is doing better than its wealthier neighbor in getting antiretroviral medicine to those who need it. Haiti is one of PEPFAR's 15 focus countries, and officials say two long-standing programs now receiving PEPFAR money - GHESKIO, a Port-au-Prince clinic and the rural Zanmi Lasante - have set a standard that is part of a growing success story.

Still, while US$55 million in flowed into agencies and organizations in Haiti last year alone under PEPFAR, none of it went to the National Penitentiary, where infectious diseases flourish with few checks.

Prisons' HIV rates are estimated to run from three to 10 times higher than rates outside the walls, under better conditions than these.

Here, men awaiting trials that can be years in coming live packed so closely that some have no place to sit or lie down. Even cell blocks built in recent years with international money have no plumbing. And since a spring crime crackdown, overcrowding that long exceeded international standards has more than doubled to nearly 4,000 inmates in a place made to hold roughly 1,000.

"When I first came here, it was a desperate, desperate place," said John May, head of Health Through Walls, a nonprofit that brings supplies and health care systems to prisons in developing countries. May, who is also chief medical officer for the private South Florida-based Armor Correctional Health Services, started coming to this prison to help six years ago.

"It is still a desperate, desperate place," he said.

He discovered how bad the overcrowding had gotten in an April trip, when four men were brought to him with legs swollen from standing for weeks.

The virus that leads to AIDS spread through sexual assaults in cells meant to hold no more than a dozen inmates, now caging 60. Packed cells serve as incubators for drug-resistant tuberculosis.

The diseases kill some and give others a contagious keepsake to take with them when they get out.

And most of these prisoners will get out, May said.

Rioting in 2004 emptied the prison of all 1,500 inmates that it held then, and in escapes since, from a dozen to 600 prisoners at a time have disappeared into the general population. Many prisoners have tattoos, indicating they have spent time in the US, where they can then return.

With the prison filled beyond capacity, overworked and skeletal staff can't keep track of illness here, May said.

"The first priority is to deliver the care that's needed to those who are going to die unnecessarily," he said. "There are patients there who are going to die and who have died from conditions that are treatable."

May applied for a PEPFAR grant last year and was turned down. He is trying again this year.

US officials, including PEPFAR's Dybul, say they have discussed funding a program at the prison.

In the meantime, May brought rapid HIV tests to the prison during a September visit and returned two weeks later with antiretroviral medicine for a prisoner whose blood test results showed advanced AIDS.

"If the systems aren't going to come together," he said, "I need to treat this patient in front of me."

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"When you make a choice, you mobilize vast human energies and resources which otherwise go untapped...........If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want and all that is left is a compromise." Robert Fritz