A survey of people living with HIV has found that the current coronavirus disease outbreak, known as COVID-19, is having a major impact on the lives of people living with HIV in the country.
In the survey, nearly a third (32.6%) of people living with HIV reported that, because of the lockdowns and restrictions on movement in some places in China, they were at risk of running out of their HIV treatment in the coming days-of these, almost half (48.6%) said they didn’t know where to collect their next antiretroviral therapy refill from. However, a close partnership between the government and community partners is determined to ensure that access to life-saving HIV treatment is not interrupted as the country fights to get COVID-19 under control.
The Chinese National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention has directed local authorities to ensure that non-resident people living with HIV can collect their medication wherever they are and has published and disseminated lists of antiretroviral therapy clinics. The UNAIDS China Country Office is working with the BaiHuaLin alliance of people living with HIV and other community partners to urgently reach those people living with HIV who are at risk of running out of their medicines in the next 10–14 days and will offer support as necessary. UNAIDS will also be donating personal protective equipment to civil society organizations serving people living with HIV, hospitals and others to help improve the quality of care for people in health facilities and to prevent coinfection of people living with HIV with COVID-19.
“People living with HIV must continue to get the HIV medicines they need to keep them alive,” said Winnie Byanyima, UNAIDS Executive Director. “I applaud the efforts of the Chinese National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention to support people living with HIV affected by the lockdowns to get their medicines-we must ensure that everyone who needs HIV treatment gets it, no matter where they are.”

Science for Democracy, together with Associazione Luca Coscioni, is organizing the 6th meeting of the World Congress for Freedom of Scientific Research on “THE RIGHT TO ENJOY THE BENEFITS OF SCIENCE” in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 25 to 26 February 2020. The event is co-sponsored by the Commission of the African Union in the person of Prof. Sarah Anyang Agbor, Commissioner for Science and Technology. Among speakers: Sir Richard John Roberts, Nobel Prize in Physiology, and Abdi Adam Hoosow, Minister of public works, Somalia.
The themes at the center of the debate will contribute to the global debate on the “Right to Science”, which constitutes the object of the latest “General Comment” of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, soon to be adopted at the United Nations in Geneva.
Once approved, the document will create an obligation for Member States to report on the respect of both the freedom indispensable for scientific research and the fundamental human right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications.
The World Congress in Addis Ababa will include panel discussions on the concrete enjoyment of the benefits of science in different fields, such as: the promotion of scientific culture; open access to science; genome editing on humans, vegetal biotechnologies; rare, infectious and non-transmissible diseases as well as aerospace, big data and artificial intelligence.
The interaction between science, the scientific method, evidence-based debates and the decision-making process in full respect of the international Rule of Law has always been at the center of the five meetings of the World Congress organized since 2004 at the Italian and European Parliament by the Associazione Luca Coscioni.

The costs of dangerous, sometimes lethal passages some irregular migrants make in Africa can be measured in many ways: in currencies, even in lives. Tamrat and Debebe – two young men newly returned to their native Ethiopia – measure their hardships in years.
They’re not alone. In fact, they’re among 463 Ethiopian migrants already brought home this month thanks to the cooperation of the Governments of Tanzania and Ethiopia, working together to facilitate their release and return while the International Organization for Migration (IOM) with the European Union (EU) provided the post arrival assistance. The most recent return flight arrived Monday February 17.
Tamrat and Debebe are among the first of a total of 1,400 who are scheduled to be returned this way-all Ethiopians being brought home from Tanzania in the coming weeks.
The returns are supported by the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration in the Horn of Africa (the EU-IOM Joint Initiative), with migrants being flown from Dar es Salam to Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport on three Ethiopian Airlines flights. The Government of Ethiopia covered the cost of the returnees’ airfare.
The programme that brought these men home is part of the larger EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration which facilitates orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration management through the development of rights-based and development-focused policies and processes on protection and sustainable reintegration. The EU-IOM Joint Initiative, backed by the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa covers, and has been set up in close cooperation with 26 African countries.
IOM provided fitness to travel medical screening as well as clothes and shoes prior to the returnees’ departure from Tanzania. Upon arrival in Addis Ababa, IOM also provided further medical assistance, psychosocial support, temporary accommodation at its Migrant Transit Centre, and onward transportation to their communities of return.