HIV and Disability Law

“The Vatican felt the heat from an unprecedented amount of international condemnation last week after Pope Benedict XVI made an outrageous and wildly inaccurate statement about HIV/AIDS,” a Lancet editorial says. It adds that the Roman Catholic Church’s “ethical opposition to birth control and support of marital fidelity and abstinence in HIV prevention is [...]

Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have introduced a bill
(H.R. 1616) to allow states to expand Medicaid coverage to
low-income HIV-positive people, CQ HealthBeat reports. The bill
would permit states to change their Medicaid eligibility
policies to increase access to early and cost-effective HIV
treatment before the virus progresses to AIDS, Engel said [...]

Older HIV-positive adults have richer and more satisfying social support and less depression than younger HIV-positive adults, according to a study published online March 11 in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.
Researchers have been concerned about the consequence of aging in people living with HIV. In particular, given increased reports of social isolation in [...]

Together Rx Access, a multicompany collaborative patient assistance program that provides discounts on prescription drugs for people without health insurance, has widened its eligibility criteria so that 90 percent of uninsured Americans will qualify.
As the number of uninsured Americans has risen in the past decade, so has the number of people living with HIV who [...]

PBS’ “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” last week launched a Web site
for the show’s new Global Health Unit, which is funded by the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. On Monday, “NewsHour” began a
three-part series about South Africa that examines efforts to
address HIV/AIDS, the increase of HIV/tuberculosis coinfections
and the impact of HIV/AIDS on children. The series runs through
March [...]

Today’s New York Times reports that “The United Nations AIDS agency has joined the chorus of politicians and activists critical of Pope Benedict XVI for saying as he embarked on a tour of Africa this week that condoms “increase the problem” of the disease. With more than 7,400 new infections of H.I.V., which causes AIDS, [...]

The pope “has every right to express his opposition to the use
of condoms on moral grounds, in accordance with the official
stance of the Roman Catholic Church,” according to a New York
Times editorial. However, the editorial continues that Benedict
“deserves no credence when he distorts scientific findings about
the value of condoms in slowing the spread” of HIV/AIDS.
According [...]

The idea of furloughing state employees to balance budgets is spreading. This could spell disaster for the states’ Disability Determinations Services offices — these are the offices in each state where initial and reconsideration decisions are made on Social Security disability and SSI disability claims.
For the past year or two, the backlogs [...]

The Chicago Tribune on Wednesday examined a CDC-funded program
in four Chicago hospitals that offers no-cost HIV tests to
emergency department patients. CDC in 2007 gave $35 million in
grants to 23 state and local health departments to implement the
no-cost HIV testing programs with a goal of testing one million
people, particularly blacks who account for about 50% of [...]

Life expectancy in developing countries could increase to 69
years by 2050 if the global health community sustains progress
in controlling HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, according
to a report released Wednesday by the United Nations Population
Division, Montreal’s Gazette reports. For the report, titled “2008 Revision of the U.N.’s World Population Prospects,” the United Nations compiled findings [...]