New cases of HIV rise in Eastern Europe, decline in the West

LONDON -- More than 130,000 people were newly diagnosed with HIV last year in Eastern Europe, the highest rate ever for the region, while the number of new cases in Western Europe declined, global public health experts said on Wednesday.

European Union and European Economic Area countries saw a reduction in 2017 rates, mainly driven by a 20 percent drop since 2015 among men who have sex with men. That left Europe's overall increasing trend less steep than previously.

All told, almost 160,000 people were diagnosed in Europe with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, according to data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organization's (WHO) regional office for Europe.

"It's hard to talk about good news in the face of another year of unacceptably high numbers of people infected with HIV," said Zsuzsanna Jakab, director of the WHO regional office. Calling on governments and health officials to recognize the seriousness of the situation, she urged them: "Scale up your response now."

The United Nations AIDS agency UNAIDS warned in July that complacency was starting to stall the fight against the global epidemic, with the pace of progress not matching what is needed. Some 37 million people worldwide are infected with HIV.

The WHO's European Region is made up of 53 countries with a combined population of nearly 900 million. Around 508 million of those live in the 28 member states of the European Union plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

The joint report said one reason for the persistence of HIV in Europe is that many people infected with the virus are diagnosed late, meaning they are more likely to have already passed it on and are also at an advanced stage of infection.

It also found that in the European region, men suffer disproportionately from HIV, with 70 percent of new HIV cases diagnosed in 2017 occurring in men.

Since the start of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, more than 77 million people worldwide have become infected with HIV. Almost half of them - 35.4 million - have died of AIDS. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Thousands march in Rome for gay rights

ROME - Thousands of people marched in Italian cities Saturday to demand legal recognition for gay couples and their children, days before lawmakers begin addressing the deeply divisive issue.

Italy is the only major Western European country not to have enacted civil union legislation allowing same-sex couples to have their relationships acknowledged and protected in law.

A bill, which the Senate will start examining on Thursday, is the first to get to parliament.

If approved, the draft legislation will enable same-sex couples to commit themselves to one another before a state official, to take each other's names and, in certain circumstances, adopt each other's children and inherit each other's residual pension rights.

"The first time I marched with these slogans, it was 10 years ago, and I was pregnant. I hope this time it works," said bank worker Costanza Tantillo, who joined the Rome protest with her partner and their two children, nine-year-old Beatrice and Ludovico, four.

Two women who marched nearby held up a sign that read: "Stella and Paola, we've been together for 30 years and you still don't acknowledge us."

Protests had been planned for 90 towns and cities across Italy, under the slogan "Wake up Italy! It's time to be civil."

Opponents of the bill, in contrast, are planning a show of strength at a demonstration scheduled for January 30 in Rome's Circus Maximus.

Hundreds of thousands are expected to attend the self-styled "Family Day," organised by mainly Catholic groups under the battle cry of "Defend our Children".

Angelo Bagnasco, the chair of the Italian conference of bishops, has denounced the whole debate as a "grave and irresponsible distraction from the real problems of the country".

In the world of politics, dividing lines cut across party loyalties. A minority faction within the ruling Democratic Party supports junior coalition partner the New Centre Right (NCD) in opposing a reform championed by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

Renzi, who has allowed his allies a free vote on the "issue of conscience", can however count on backing from most of the opposition Five Star movement, left-wing fringe parties and even sections of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia.

Most observers expect Renzi will get the bill adopted in the end.

- 'Historic day' -

According to Italian media, there were at least 7,000 demonstrators in Turin, 5,000 in Milan, thousands in Rome and Bologna, a thousand in Bari in the south, and hundreds in Naples and Venice among others.

"It is a historic day for this country, an immense protest that was fed by the desire and enthusiasm of a lot of people who hold the belief in equality close to their hearts," said Gabriele Piazzoni, the national secretary of Italy's biggest gay rights group, Arcigay.

In what many saw as papal intervention in the debate, Pope Francis on Friday ruled out any form of union except Catholic marriage.

"What he said didn't surprise me, all he did was to repeat the church's anthropological viewpoint," said Andrea Rubera, a gay man who married a fellow homosexual in Canada.

They came to the demonstration with their three young children.

"But he chose to say this on the eve of the day when we took to the streets to defend the rights of our children to have a little security."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Internet-enabled devices reshaping hardcopy industry

A new study by research firm IDC has revealed that the boom in Internet-enabled mobile devices (IEMDs) is reshaping the printing industry, offering new challenges and opportunities for hardcopy vendors.


After a flat trend in 2010, IDC said it expects home and office print volumes in Western Europe to slow down even further, declining at a CAGR of 0.6 percent from 2011 through 2015. The increasing popularity of IEMDs will contribute to this slow decline, IDC said.

“New Internet-enabled mobile devices change the nature of users’ relationship with documents,” said Arnaud Gagneux, director for imaging hardcopy and document solutions ay Western Europe, IDC.

“This affects both consumers and businesses, and offers hardcopy vendors opportunities for growth in security, document solutions, and managed print services, to name a few.”

Roughly 95 million smartphones are expected to be sold in 2011, up more than 220 percent year on year. The massive uptake has already drastically changed the way users consult certain documents, reducing the need for printouts.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg, IDC noted. In the enterprise sector, the increasingly mobile workforce will create huge demand for IEMDs in the years to come, ignited by the global process of digitization and consumerization of IT.

As discussed in the study, media tablets will make their entrance in key vertical markets with dramatic consequences for document workflows. As a result it will be crucial for vendors to have a mobile and cloud printing solution strategy in place, IDC said.

“With information increasingly available in digital format at users’ fingertips, the entire hardcopy industry faces a real challenge,” said Mario Lombardo, senior analyst for imaging hardware devices at IDC.

“The boom in IEMDs, combined with the growth in cloud storage and digitization, is already set to change the rules of the game in the printing industry.”

But it is not all doom and gloom for the hardcopy industry. As outlined in the study, the growth in digital content will continue to create many opportunities in the document solutions area.

There will continue to be significant opportunities for print in select verticals, due to hardcopy document compliance and the use of business applications for which paper documents are still preferred.

The production printing space will also be greatly impacted by the digital revolution. With e-readers expected to generate a CAGR of 23.7 percent between 2011 and 2015, demand for e-books will be high.

Though this will negatively impact the analog printing market, demand for short runs will increase, favoring digital production printing, said IDC. — Newsbytes.ph

source:gmanetwork.com