Today marks a victory for PHR and all of you who have been working to lift the US HIV travel ban. This morning, while signing the fourth reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act, President Obama? vowed to “publish a final rule that eliminates the travel ban effective just after the New Year.”Obama said:

Twenty-two years ago in a decision rooted in fear rather than fact, the United States instituted a travel ban on entry into the country for people living with HIV/AIDS. ?Now, we talk about reducing the stigma of this disease—yet we've treated a visitor living with it as a threat. ?We lead the world when it comes to helping stem the AIDS pandemic—yet we are one of only a dozen countries that still bar people from HIV from entering our own country. If we want to be the global leader in combating HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it.

The final rule will remove the HIV infection from the list of “communicable disease of public health significance,” no longer require HIV testing as part of the US immigration screening process and eliminate the need for a waiver to enter the country as an HIV carrier.Please read Obama’s statement, his first public address about HIV/AIDS where he illustrates his commitment to make the United States a global leader in tackling HIV/AIDS and erasing its stigma.? Also check out PHR's press release on this important victory.Said PHR CEO Frank Donaghue:

Today is a great day for human rights and for people living with AIDS, their friends and their families. The HIV Travel Ban made the United States a pariah in human rights circles, and harmed our reputation as a world leader of HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care. Starting in 2010, people living with HIV will no longer be prevented from entering this country, no longer turned away at customs, no longer forced to hide their condition and interrupt medical treatment, and no longer be treated by our government with contempt.

We're celebrating in Cambridge and DC; we hope you are too. This is an amazing victory for all of you who have worked so hard to promote and protect the human rights of people living with AIDS!

You may have seen the news last week that the Obama Administration unveiled its long-awaited Sudan policy.PHR welcomed the renewed sense of urgency in the policy but took a skeptical position on the Khartoum genocidal regime's ability to fulfill the role of trusted partner envisioned in the new policy.The new policy relies heavily on offering incentives to the Bashir regime to improve the situation on the ground. PHR urged the Administration and international community to build strong multilateral pressure on the regime and give a higher priority to the accountability for genocide and atrocities.As an independent medical organization which has documented, from 2004 to 2009, the Sudan government's mass killing and rape, pillage, forced displacement and destruction of all means of survival for hundreds of thousands of Darfuri civilians, PHR has repeatedly called for an end to impunity for this genocidal campaign.An immediate goal for US policy which is not explicitly addressed in the new comprehensive approach is an end to the gender-based violence occurring inside and outside camps in Chad and Darfur and an end to impunity for the crime of rape.In line with US Strategic Objective #1, "a definitive end to conflict, gross human rights abuses and genocide in Darfur," UNAMID and all UN agencies must be tasked with specific reporting on the problem of gender-based violence and must be free to report without obstruction by local authorities. The current system, which discourages women from reporting rape and seeking justice, must be reformed and existing rape laws must be strengthened.The US and UN must also immediately demand a commitment from the Government of Sudan to cease impeding support programs for victims of gender-based violence and remove any obstacles to gender-based violence programming in technical agreements between the government and humanitarian NGOs. It is essential that the US monitor the ongoing situation on the ground in Darfur and not allow Omar al-Bashir’s government the opportunity to further deceive the international community over human rights abuses. The Government of Sudan must accept an independent fact-finding mission to assess the human rights situation in Darfur, and the State Department should immediately encourage a high-level congressional delegation to perform this role.As the US engages with the Government of Sudan and international partners to attempt to reinvigorate the peace process, US policy must remain committed to safely return refugees in Chad and displaced in Darfur to their homes and rebuilding of their villages and livelihoods. This goal should not be lost in efforts to achieve short-term forward progress in the peace process and immediate improvements in humanitarian assistance to the millions of displaced Darfuris.The renewed commitment by the Obama Administration to end the conflict in Darfur and move forward with implementation of the North-South Comprehensive Peace Agreement must not deter the US from supporting the UN Security Council and the ICC in pursuit of justice by enforcing the arrest warrant for President Bashir.More soon: PHR briefing on rape and sexual violence in Sudan/Chad in DC this Wednesday (Oct 28)!

PHR will be at the American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia Nov 7-11th. We hope to see you there! Here are the things we'll be doing:

1. PHR will have a booth all week at the APHA Exposition — do come by and see us!
2. PHR will host a Health and Human Rights Reception on Monday November 9 from 6:30-8:00 p.m. at the Philadelphia Marriott (1201 Market St, Room 403). Everyone is welcome to attend, and bring friends and colleagues — the reception is free and open to all. We'll have drinks and appetizers and plenty of mixing and mingling. We look forward to seeing longtime PHR members — and new faces!
3. We are also co-sponsoring the Annual Health Activist Dinner, the evening before our reception — Sunday November 8 from 6-9 p.m. at Ocean Harbor Restaurant, 3 blocks from the Convention Center. One of the award winners is GHAC advisor and doctor-activist extraordinaire Mardge Cohen. Please join PHR and the human rights and medical community in celebrating her achievements and those of all health activists like you. See more details below.
4. PHR staff will also be presenting on various panels throughout the week:
   • Successful International Experiences in Advocacy: Monday, November 9, 2009: 8:30 a.m. (two panel presentations on HAA and Colleagues at Risk)
   • Reproductive Health Poster Session: ?Tuesday, November 10, 2009: 4:30 p.m. (two poster presentations on sexual violence in Chad and on integration of HIV/AIDS and family planning services)
   • War and Public Health: Monday, November 9, 2009: 12:30 p.m. (presentation on Afghan mass graves)
   • Water Rights and Water Fights: Resolving Conflicts Before They Boil Over: Tuesday November 10, 2009: 10:30 a.m. (presentation on water and war crimes)

If you're coming to APHA, please email me at skalloch@phrusa.org — we'd love to meet up with you during the week. And if you are presenting, let me know, and we will add your event to the list of things to do at APHA!

Annual Health Activist Dinner

Sunday, Nov 8th, 6:00 – 9:00 pm

This Year’s Barsky Award recipient: Dr. Mardge Cohen, Women's Equity in Access to Care and Treatment (WE-ACTx)

This Year’s Cornely Award recipient: Dr. Josh Sharfstein, Principal Deputy Commissioner of the FDA

This Year’s Wellstone Award recipient: Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY); Co-Chair, HR 676 Coalition

This Year’s Activist Student Recognition: TBA

Ocean Harbor Restaurant, 1023 Race St (3 blocks from the Convention Center at 1101 Arch St.)

View Larger Map

$45 in advance, $50 at the meeting

RSVP Today!

Make Checks Payable to: OHSI – Activist Dinner Occupational Health Services Institute UIC Medical Center (MC684) 835 S. Wolcott Street, Chicago, IL 60612

Phone: 312-996-5804, Fax 312-413-8485

For more information: porris@uic.edu

AFSCME, American Medical Student Association, Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU Healthcare, Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO, Doctors for Global Health, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Physicians for Human Rights, Physicians for a National Health Program, Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, Physicians for Social Responsibility, The Physicians Forum, Doctors Council SEIU

New Sponsors Welcome

During his campaign, President Obama promised to end the ban on federal funding for syringe exchange programs. Call President Obama TODAY at (202) 456-1414 or (202) 456-1111 and tell him to keep his promise to save lives. This summer, the House of Representatives took a historic step by removing the ban on federal funding for needle and syringe exchange programs (SEPs).? Now, the Senate must act, but they are not making this policy a priority.Senators need to hear from President Obama that his Administration supports syringe exchange. Now is the time to urge President Obama to fulfill his campaign promise to end the ban and to urge the Senate to act.SEPs promote health and human rights. More than a dozen scientific reviews of SEPs have shown that when implemented as part of a comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention strategy, SEPs help reduce HIV transmissions without increasing drug use.Indeed, SEPs do more than provide clean syringes and properly dispose of used ones; they link people into the health care system and drug treatment programs that save lives.President Obama's leadership is key to moving this issue forward in the Senate. His support could help save the lives of thousands of people. 20 years is too long—help us end the ban today!Call The White House Comment Line TODAY at (202) 456-1414 or (202) 456-1111 and tell Obama to fulfill his promise and END THE BAN.Phone Script:Tell the operator where you are from and if you are a health professional and/or have any specific expertise relevant to needle exchange, AIDS, and/or harm reduction. It is okay if you don’t have specific expertise—Obama needs to hear from everyone, in every state, about this issue!Ask the operator to tell President Obama:

• The research is clear–syringe exchange programs work. The presence of syringe exchange programs in communities does not increase rates of drug use, nor does it lead to a rise in crime. What it does do: decrease transmission of HIV, Hepatitis C and other diseases.
• Now is the time for the President to make good on his promise to support lifting the ban on federal funding for syringe exchange. We are calling on President Obama to let key congressional members know that the White House supports Chairman Obey in fully revoking the ban on federal funding for syringe exchange.
• The President must also urge the Senate to refrain from adding any language or amendments to the Senate bill that would place undue restrictions on SEPs. The detrimental “1,000 Foot Rule” contained in the House bill may seem innocuous, but in reality it severely and unnecessarily limits the locations of SEPs. In some cases, the rule makes it impossible for urban communities to have needle exchange programs at all.

Washington Director, John Bradshaw, was recently interviewed by PressTV about PHR's new report, Aiding Torture: Health Professionals’ Ethics and Human Rights Violations Demonstrated in the May 2004 CIA Inspector General’s Report.A team of PHR doctors authored the white paper, which details how the CIA relied on medical expertise to rationalize and carry out abusive and unlawful interrogations. It also refers to aggregate collection of data on detainees’ reaction to interrogation methods. Physicians for Human Rights is concerned that this data collection and analysis may amount to human experimentation and calls for more investigation on this point. If confirmed, the development of a research protocol to assess and refine the use of the waterboard or other techniques would likely constitute a new, previously unknown category of ethical violations committed by CIA physicians and psychologists.

Physicians for Human Rights mourns the loss of child psychiatrist, medical educator, and human rights advocate Leon Eisenberg, MD, husband of PHR founding board member Carola Eisenberg, MD.PHR CEO Frank Donaghue said:

The board and staff of Physicians for Human Rights express our appreciation for Leon’s lifelong commitment to the advancement of human rights, and extend our deepest sympathies to his wife, Carola, and his family and friends. We will all miss our dear friend and colleague.

PHR Deputy Director Susannah Sirkin added:

Leon was a towering figure in advancing social medicine and passionate about human rights and dignity. He will be deeply missed.

The American Academy of Arts Sciences captured many of? Dr. Eisenberg's accomplishments in a death notice published in the New York Times:

To the medical community, he contributed pathbreaking work in child psychiatry and an abiding concern with the relation between the practice of medicine and the lives of patients. As the Communications Secretary of the Academy for seven years, he informed our work with his gentle humor and his wide-ranging knowledge and interests. He helped to ensure that merit and diversity were the hallmarks of our membership and that the communication of information and ideas across fields and professions was our responsibility to society.

PHR is deeply moved and grateful that Dr. Eisenberg's family has requested that in lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Physicians for Human Rights or Partners In Health.Last year, Harvard Medical School's Focus Online profiled Dr. Eisenberg. The piece described Eisenberg's difficult entry into medical school in the 1940s; he was a straight A student but most schools would not admit him because he was a Jew. He was eventually admitted to Pennsylvania School of Medicine, rose to the top of his class and graduated valedictorian. He was nonetheless denied an internship, along with the seven other Jews who applied, at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

He went to Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, where he discovered psychiatry….? In 1952, after a two-year stint in the Army teaching physiology to military doctors, he began a residency in child psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, where his doubts about psychoanalysis were encouraged by the great psychiatrist, Leo Kanner….Eisenberg would join him in his exploration of the newly identified psychiatric disorder, autism, paying special attention to the social, and especially, the family setting of the children in which it appeared.Though Eisenberg suspected a genetic basis to the then rarely diagnosed disease, it would be years before the tools existed to look at it. In subsequent years, he turned his attention to more common childhood problems, such as school phobia, looking once again at the social setting in which they occurred.In 1962, Eisenberg launched the first randomized clinical trial of a psychiatric medicine. “As simple as it seems, as straightforward, child psychiatry had gone on for 40 years before somebody did a randomized clinical trial,” said Earls.

The Focus piece also noted Dr. Eisenberg's role in increasing the number of Black students at Harvard Medical School.

"Since being Jewish was no longer an issue in medical school after about 1950, I had thought that my job was to fight for the people who were being excluded, which were blacks,” he said. He was asked to chair the HMS commission on black community relations and the HMS admissions committee for the first seven years of affirmative action. “It was a wonderful place to see to it that the plan was implemented.”

Dr. Eisenberg's commitment to fairness was constant and always included a focus on the institutions that he worked in.

A case in point was a festschrift held on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Former students presented an extraordinary array of papers, each of which Eisenberg thoroughly critiqued.“At the end, when you would have expected Leon simply to say, ‘I’m so delighted, and I want to thank you for what you’ve done,’ well, he said all those things, and then he said, ‘You know, I just want to be honest with you,’” said Kleinman. “‘You’ve all become professors now, and you’re all outstanding in what you do, but I want to ask you this—have you used your tenure to go up against the system that we’re in? Have you spoken out?’”

With great admiration for Dr. Eisenberg's contributions to psychiatry, medical education and human rights, the entire PHR staff extends our condolences to his wife, Carola; to his family; and to all who have been his friends, colleagues and students.

The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Physicians for Human Rights are pleased to invite you to a training for health professionals on how to diagnose, evaluate and document the physical and psychological after-effects of torture and other severe human rights violations.This is a great opportunity to gain a thorough introduction to working with asylum seekers or to enhance your skills.Not able to make it to Florida? Please share this invitation with a friend or colleague who may be interested.The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine designates this educational activity for a maximum of 6.25 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits.^TM (Physicians should only claim credits commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.)

Aiding Survivors of Torture:

Medical and Psychological Documentation of Asylum Seekers

Saturday, October 24, 2009

8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.University of Miami Miller School of MedicineMailman Center for Child Development8th Floor AuditoriumSpace is limited, so preference will be given to board certified and state licensed physicians.Registration is required so please register today!(If you'd like to host a training in your area, please contact Jennie Bald_ at asylum [at] phrusa [dot] org.)

Waiting for me in my inbox on Monday morning were two press releases. One from the US State Department. ?The other from two prominent dissident groups in Burma: the 88 Generation Students and the?All Burma Federation of Student Unions. The juxtaposition of these two emails side-by-side struck me.On occasion of the US government assuming a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, Esther Brimmer (US?Assistant Secretary,?Bureau of International Organization Affairs) stated that the United States

will not look the other way in the face of serious human rights abuses. The truth must be told, the facts brought to light and the consequences faced. While we will aim for common ground, we will call things as we see them and we will stand our ground when the truth is at stake.

Half a world away in Burma, the two Burmese organizations?reminded the world that two years ago this month, the Saffron Revolution took place representing

the worst brutality committed by the Burmese military regime.

Over the past two years nothing has improved in Burma. Rape as a weapon of war, slavery, forced labor, summary executions, looting and pillaging all continue unabated.Perhaps the Obama Administration will indeed embark on a new quest for truth and accountability. It would do well to start with Burma.

It’s a script for a great horror story—or nightmare. Being:

1. mentally ill,
2. indigent,
3. jailed, perhaps indefinitely, and
4. without a lawyer or guardian or anyone to speak for you?

And it’s happening right now in America.Indigent mentally ill persons are placed in immigration detention and ordered deported from the United States every day. They have no right to a free lawyer nor to a court-appointed representative to speak on their behalf. Many have stories like Xiu Ping Jaing: an immigrant who fled human rights abuse in her home country only to be caught in a system dubbed by one expert the “American gulag.”Other mentally ill people in immigration detention are not immigrants at all: they’re US citizens who, without help, can be detained for years or deported away from family members who were never informed of the action taken and are frantic to find their missing loved ones.For many human rights problems, the solutions are complex. This isn’t one of them. In July, PHR joined human rights groups across the United States in asking Attorney General Eric Holder to take common-sense steps:

1. appoint lawyers for mentally ill detainees who can’t afford them,
2. set up a fair process to determine individuals’ competency to face deportation hearings, and
3. appoint guardians ad litem for individuals found incompetent.

[download id="18"]In ratifying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the US agreed that

all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person (Art. 10(1)).

The Obama Administration can, and must, act now to ensure that the mentally ill in our immigration jails are treated with the dignity they deserve.

Remember the calamitous end to Sri Lanka’s 26-year-long civil war back in May?? Some 16,700 non-combatants were wounded and several thousand more were killed during the final onslaught. Fighting between the 150,000-strong Sri Lankan Army (SLA) and the 7,000-strong Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) armed forces resulted in 300,000 displaced minority Tamils.Although both sides committed mass atrocities, recent video footage of apparent executions (warning: this video contains graphic images) of 9 Tamil?POWs supports widespread allegations of war crimes by the SLA.But the international community, most notably the UN Security Council, remains idle while it should be launching a commission of inquiry.Now shift your attention to Burma where eerily similar events are taking place. Murder, torture, forcible displacement, enslavement and rape comprise the military’s arsenal of abuses inflicted against minority populations. Last week, in a Washington Post op-ed, Chris Beyrer, MD, and I described such recent attacks?that resulted?in?the flight of some?30,000 Kokang (an ethnic Chinese minority group in Burma) to Yunnan Province, China.Though it can't be confirmed, it seems as if the Burmese junta is reading the SLA's play book on how to?pull off a swift and murderous end to its own decades-long civil war. Curiously,?following?the military victory over the Tamil Tigers, the President of Sri Lanka, General Mahinda Rajapaksa, made a state visit to Burma to meet with President Than Shwe. Perhaps the two military dictators?met only to discuss a bilateral agreement on tourism. But I doubt it.