Kenyan house prices rise in Q3 on interest rate drop

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's house prices rose by 7.1 percent in the third quarter of 2012 compared to the same period last year, a real estate firm said on Wednesday, as lower mortgage rates on the back of falling interest rates spurred demand for prime real estate.
Housing has been one of Kenya's fastest growing sectors over the last decade, fuelled by a burgeoning middle class with higher disposable incomes. Returns on investments in the sector have easily outpaced those of equities and government securities.
HassConsult, a real estate firm which publishes the only regular property price index in the country, said a reduction in lending rates by commercial banks was expected to spur further growth of the property market and help support an upward movement of house prices.
"The week that the central bank dropped the rates, activity peaked up (September)," said Sakina Hassanali, marketing manager at HassConsult.
"Confidence in the property market has come back ... If the last six weeks are any clue, then the coming (quarter), so long as mortgages continue going down, we are in a better place than we were six months ago."
The central bank has cut its benchmark rate twice since July by a total of 500 basis points to 13 percent, having raised the rate to 18 percent last year to fight double-digit inflation and stabilise the shilling.
Inflation fell to 5.32 percent in September from 6.09 percent previously, having peaked at 20 percent late last year, while the shilling has largely oscillated at 85 to the dollar this year, from a record low of 107 in October last year.
The lending rates in commercial banks have dropped to about 19 percent, from as high as 30 percent earlier in the year, easing the cost of funding for both house developers and buyers.
"Even the psychological satisfaction of (investors) knowing that the rates are coming down, makes (investors) make that buying decision instantly," said Caroline Kariuki, the managing director of The Mortgage Company.
The east African nation of 40 million people has a massive housing shortage with annual demand at 250,000 units per year against a supply of 60,000 units, a World Bank study showed.
Kariuki said a steady rise of diaspora remittances to a record high of $891.1 million in 2011, had boosted development of the real estate sector, while China was singled out as one of the top foreign investors in east Africa's biggest economy.
"... We have seen (Chinese investors) getting financing at very cheap rates for their projects, so you will find that they have became significant players in Kenya," said Kariuki.
China is one of the main players in the construction of Kenya's infrastructure such as roads.

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New exhibition explores our love and hate of money

NEW YORK (Reuters) - How does money make you feel? Fearful, stressed, happy?
U.S. financial guru Suze Orman has teamed with the producer of the popular Body Worlds exhibits for a new traveling show to look at how we relate to and understand money.
Orman, media star and author of best-selling books on personal finance, described the finance-themed exhibit as "an extension of my life's work as a financial educator, and an innovative way to teach people about money".
The interactive, multi-media exhibit, "Economia: Money Matters," will begin a five-year, nationwide tour in the fall of next year, starting in Chicago. The admission-charging show will move on to other venues that include science and natural history museums.
Gail Vida Hamburg, who designed and developed the exhibition, said she hit on the idea several years ago.
"I found a study about worry, stress and depression and their links to money or rather the lack of money ... I realized that I could synthesize all of this information into a designed exhibition with multimedia and interactives (displays)," said Hamburg, who designed the Body Worlds traveling exhibition of preserved human corpses that has toured Europe, North America and Asia.
The Money Matters exhibit spans 7,000 square feet with galleries on phases of life ranging from College Road to Third Phase, or retirement. It aims to meet national and state financial literacy goals for children and adults.
Hamburg, who founded museum exhibit firm Rainworks Omnimedia in 2010, believes the show's appeal is universal because money is something that everyone has a relationship with throughout life.
Orman has described the show as a walk through the life of money, and the effect it can have on you.
"It will be entertaining," she said in a statement, "and when you're having fun learning, the lessons stay with you."
Hamburg said she addressed finance's fear factor by engaging people with various exhibits and displays.
"How do you make it easy for visitors to understand the power of compounding?" she asked, adding that it has traditionally been taught with graphs or charts or calculators.
She decided to approach it differently using visitor prompts, and entry into a computer terminal and to show the results through the growth of actual physical objects.
"We should all be so smart with money and channel our inner Suze Orman. But we're not and we don't. Unless you're an MBA or an economist or a freak, you don't want to read about SEP-IRA or social security or student loan interest rates."
The goal of the exhibition "is to give visitors the tools and resources for financial self actualization," she added.

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Analysis: Mortgage demand too much for U.S. banks, who respond slowly

(Reuters) - Big U.S. banks are hiring mortgage bankers to meet a surge in demand for home loans and refinancings, but they are still struggling to process applications, which could undermine the Federal Reserve's attempts to stimulate the economy.
Since the Fed announced its plan in September to buy up to $40 billion of mortgages a month, consumer mortgage rates have fallen more slowly and by less than they would have done in more normal times.
On average, 30-year home loan rates are down just 0.18 of a percentage point this week from September 13, when the Fed announced its latest stimulus program. Some analysts estimate that in more normal markets, rates would have fallen by roughly 0.31 of a percentage point or more. That could save a home buyer thousands of dollars over the lifetime of a mortgage.
The dysfunction in the mortgage market, which has yet to fully recover after its battering in the U.S. housing bust and subsequent financial crisis, means most benefits from the Fed's new stimulus plan may be accruing to banks instead of consumers.
Banks still committed to the home loan business are hiring to meet increased demand, but fewer banks are committed to the business after the 2007-2009 mortgage crisis pulverized some of the biggest lenders in the United States and wounded many others.
Capacity constraints work in the banks' favor. Profit margins for home lending are more than double their usual level, JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon told investors last Friday. The major U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo & Co and Citigroup Inc, all said mortgage operations boosted third-quarter profits.
Lenders making mortgages say they do not want to hire too many staffers only to lay them off when volume declines. The Mortgage Bankers Association estimates that banks will make $1.47 trillion of home loans this year for home purchases and refinancings, but then just $1.04 trillion in 2013, a decline of nearly a third.
"We are trying to ... not over hire," Andy Cecere, chief financial officer at U.S. Bancorp, said in an interview on Wednesday.
Top U.S. mortgage lender Wells Fargo added about 2,000 people in the third quarter as volume surged. Chief Financial Officer Tim Sloan said in an interview the bank is responding to the impact of the Fed's plan. Chase has increased its number of loan officers by 23 percent over the last year, and expects to keep hiring aggressively, said Kevin Watters, head of mortgage originations at JP Morgan Chase.
But mortgage applications are also jumping, rising nearly 17 percent in the week ended September 28. With demand that strong and no staffers to handle extra business, banks have little reason to cut rates much. In a speech on Monday, New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley acknowledged that difficulty, noting the Fed's efforts to stimulate the economy in recent years would have had a bigger economic impact if consumer mortgage rates were falling more.
Bank staffing issues are a headache for mortgage applicants already struggling with tough appraisals and wary lenders. Many borrowers tell Kafka-esque stories of bureaucracy, where what used to be a 30- to 60-day process has stretched to 90 days or more.
PROFIT BONANZA
The mortgage business has grown much more concentrated. The top two mortgage lenders made 14 percent of mortgage loans in 2000, 29 percent of mortgages in 2006, and 44 percent in the first half of 2012, according to Inside Mortgage Finance data.
Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase are the top two lenders now, and their predecessor companies were the top in 2000.
In 2006, Countrywide Financial Corp - now owned by Bank of America Corp - and Wells were the top. Bank of America last year stopped buying loans from other banks after suffering billions of dollars of losses from its exposure to home loans, which has cut its volume in half and limited smaller banks' capacity to lend.
Bankers are unsure how long the refinancing bonanza will last.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Dimon told investors the mortgage boom will continue "next quarter, maybe for a couple of quarters after that but it won't last for that much longer."
Citigroup Chief Financial Officer John Gerspach told investors on Monday that figuring out how long the refinancing boom will last is "one of the big questions facing a lot of institutions at this point in time."
Smaller banks are struggling with the same questions.
Matt Williams, president of Gothenburg State Bank in Gothenburg, Nebraska, and incoming chairman of the American Bankers Association, said his bank was not adding staff even though its 28 employees were "stressed to the max right now."
Williams said his bank, with $125 million in assets, expects rates eventually will go up, cutting demand for refinancing.
Mortgage demand was rising even before the Fed announced its latest plan to buy home loans, but that announcement immediately lowered bank funding costs. The effect on bank revenues will take longer to show up, because it takes months to process and close mortgage applications.
For consumers, capacity constraints among mortgage lenders mean rates are not falling as much as they theoretically could.
The average 30-year consumer mortgage rate was 3.37 percent, Freddie Mac said on Thursday - about 1.13 percentage points higher than rates investors in mortgage bonds would accept, as measured by the "secondary rate" for mortgages guaranteed by Fannie Mae.
In the second half of 2011, the gap between consumer mortgage rates and the secondary rate averaged closer to about 0.9 percentage point, suggesting lenders could cut rates another 0.23 point. However, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae boosted fees for guarantees by 0.1 of a percentage point in August, meaning the difference may be only about 0.13 of a percentage point.

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Different challenges in Central African Rep., Mali

BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) — Two land-locked, desperately poor African countries are gripped by rebellions in the north that have left huge chunks of both nations outside of government control. Neighboring countries are rushing troops into Central African Republic only a few weeks after rebels started taking towns but Mali's government is still awaiting foreign military help nearly one year after the situation there began unraveling. Here's a look at why there's been quick action in one country, and not in the other.
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THE INSURGENTS
The simple answer lies in the vastly different challenges faced by intervention forces. Northern Mali is home to al-Qaida-linked militants who are stocking weapons and possess stores of Russian-made arms from former Malian army bases as well as from the arsenal of toppled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. The local and foreign jihadists there are digging in and training forces in preparation for jihad and to repel an invasion. Central African Republic, by contrast, is dealing with home-grown rebels who are far less organized and have less sophisticated weapons.
The numbers of troops being sent to Central African Republic are relatively small — Republic of Congo, Cameroon and Gabon are each sending about 120 soldiers. The rebels stopped their advances toward the capital on Dec. 29, perhaps at least in part because of the presence of the foreign troops who have threatened to counterattack if the rebels move closer to Bangui, the capital. In Mali, it will take far more than the 3,000 African troops initially proposed for a military operation to be successful in ousting the militants, analysts say.
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THE MISSION
The military objectives are also a stark contrast. In Central African Republic, neighboring nations have a mandate to help stabilize the region between rebel-held towns and the part of the country that is under government control. The intervention force will fire back if fired upon, but so far are not being asked to retake the towns already in rebel hands.
The mission in Mali that foreign forces are slowly gearing up for is far more ambitious. It involves trying to take back a piece of land larger than Texas or France where militants are imposing strict Islamic law, or Shariah. Making things even more complicated there: A military coup last year that created chaos and enabled the rebels to more easily take territory has left the country with a weak federal government and the country's military with a broken command-and-control structure, and with its leaders reluctant to give real power to the civilians.
"In Mali you have a very undefined mission. What does it mean to retake the country and give it back to government forces that were not able to hold it in the first place?" noted Jennifer Cooke, director of the Africa program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Central African Republic's situation "is a more limited, defined and frankly somewhat easier mission in the military sense," she said.
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THE TERRAIN
Northern Mali is a scorching desert that is unfamiliar to many of the troops who would be coming from the West African regional bloc of countries known as ECOWAS. By contrast, Central African Republic's neighbors already have been pulled into past rebellions in the country.
Chadian forces helped propel President Francois Bozize into power in 2003 and they have assisted him in putting down past rebellions here.
"These forces — particularly the Chadians — have been there before," Cooke said. "They know the players, they have an interlocutor in Bozize however fragile he is. This is familiar territory to them."
The Economic Community of Central African States, or ECCAS, also already had established a peacekeeping force in Central African Republic known as MICOPAX.
"From the beginning, they knew that they needed to have troops on the ground. MICOPAX was already there, had already been deployed there. There was already a structure in place," said Thierry Vircoulon, project director for Central Africa at the International Crisis Group.
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DIFFERING MOTIVATIONS
The rebels in Central African Republic are made up of four separate groups all known by their French acronyms — UFDR, CPJP, FDPC and CPSK. They are collectively known as Seleka, which means alliance in the local Sango language, but have previously fought one another. For instance, in September 2011 fighting between the CPJP and the UFDR left at least 50 people dead and more than 700 homes destroyed. Insurgent leaders say a 2007 peace accord allowing them to join the regular army wasn't fully implemented and are demanding payments to former combatants among other things. Rebel groups also feel the government has neglected their home areas in the north and particularly the northeast, said Filip Hilgert, a researcher with Belgium-based International Peace Information Service.
In northern Mali, the Islamist rebels are motivated in large part by religion. Al-Qaida fighters chant Quranic verses under the Sahara sun , displaying deep, ideological commitment. They consider north Mali as "Islamic territory" and say they will fight to the death to defend it. They also want to use the territory to expand the reach of al-Qaida-linked groups to other countries. This would seem to make other countries more motivated to intervene in Mali than in Central African Republic, but the challenges are so steep and convoluted that an intervention mission is still on the drawing board.

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Mali's Islamists withdraw cease-fire pledge

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — An Islamist group in northern Mali says it's suspending its pledge to halt hostilities less than a month after it agreed to do so.
The group Ansar Dine said negotiations with the Malian government are ultimately aimed at a military intervention to oust the Islamists from the West African nation and are not true peace talks. Still, the group said it remains committed to a dialogue with the Malian government in Bamako even though it is keeping its military options open.
The original offer had drawn skepticism from some observers, who noted the group's links to al-Qaida's North Africa branch.
Ansar Dine, which says it seeks autonomy for northern Mali, has been behind public executions, amputations and whippings in the area that it seized last year.

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New child soldier fears in C. African Republic

BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) — The U.N. children's agency says it's concerned about a growing number of children being recruited by armed groups in Central African Republic as President Francois Bozize's government faces a rebellion in the north.
UNICEF said Friday it has received "credible reports that rebel groups and pro-government militias are increasingly recruiting and involving children in armed conflict."
Souleymane Diabate, UNICEF Representative for Central African Republic, said children who have become separated from their families amid the instability are at the greatest risk.
UNICEF estimates that even before the latest crisis here some 2,500 children were part of armed groups in the country long plagued by rebellions. Rebels have seized 10 towns in a month's time.

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Ukraine fights spreading HIV epidemic

BUCHA, Ukraine (AP) — Andrei Mandrykin, an inmate at Prison No. 85 outside Kiev, has HIV. He looks ghostly and much older than his 35 years. But Mandrykin is better off than tens of thousands of his countrymen, because is he receiving treatment amid what the World Health Organization says is the worst AIDS epidemic in Europe.
Ahead of World AIDS Day on Saturday, international organizations have urged the Ukrainian government to increase funding for treatment and do more to prevent HIV from spreading from high-risk groups into the mainstream population, where it is even harder to manage and control.
An estimated 230,000 Ukrainians, or about 0.8 percent of people aged 15 to 49, are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Some 120,000 are in urgent need of anti-retroviral therapy, which can greatly prolong and improve the quality of their lives. But due to a lack of funds, fewer than a quarter are receiving the drugs — one of the lowest levels in the world.
Ukraine's AIDS epidemic is still concentrated among high-risk groups such as intravenous drug users, sex workers, homosexuals and prisoners. But nearly half of new cases registered last year were traced to unprotected heterosexual contact.
"Slowly but surely the epidemic is moving from the most-at-risk, vulnerable population to the general population," said Nicolas Cantau of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, who manages work in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. "For the moment there is not enough treatment in Ukraine."
Stigma is also a big problem for those with HIV in Ukraine. Liliya, a 65-year-old woman who would give only her first name, recently attended a class on how to tell her 9-year-old great-granddaughter that she has HIV. The girl, who contacted HIV at birth from her drug-abusing mother, has been denied a place in preschool because of her diagnosis.
"People are like wolves, they don't understand," said Liliya. "If any of the parents found out, they would eat the child alive."
While the AIDS epidemic has plateaued elsewhere in the world, it is still progressing in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, according to Cantau. Nearly 21,200 new cases were reported in Ukraine in 2011, the highest number since the former Soviet republic registered its first case in 1987, and a 3 percent increase over 2010. As a result of limited and often delayed treatment, the number of AIDS-related deaths grew 17 percent last year to about 3,800.
Two years ago, Mandrykin, the prisoner, was on the verge of becoming part of that statistic, with his level of crucial CD4 immune cells — a way to measure the strength of the immune system — dropping to 11. In a healthy person, the CD4 count is usually over 600.
"I was lying in the hospital, I was dying," said Mandrykin, who is serving seven years for robbery, his fourth stint in jail. "It's a scary disease."
After two years of treatment in a small prison clinic, his CD4 count has risen to 159 and he feels much better, although he looks exhausted and is still too weak to work in the workshop of the medium-security prison.
The Ukrainian government currently focuses on testing and treating standard cases among the general population. The anti-retroviral treatment of more than 1,000 inmates, as well as some 10,000 HIV patients across Ukraine who also require treatment for tuberculosis and other complications and all prevention and support activities, are paid for by foreign donors, mainly the Global Fund.
The Global Fund is committed to spending $640 million through 2016 to fight AIDS and tuberculosis in Ukraine and then hopes to hand over most of its programs to the Ukrainian government.
Advocacy groups charge that corruption and indifference by government officials help fuel the epidemic.
During the past two years, Ukrainian authorities have seized vital AIDS drugs at the border due to technicalities, sent prosecutors to investigate AIDS support groups sponsored by the Global Fund and harassed patients on methadone substitution therapy, prompting the Global Fund to threaten to freeze its prevention grant.
Most recently, Ukraine's parliament gave initial approval to a bill that would impose jail terms of up to five years for any positive public depiction of homosexuality. Western organizations say it would make the work of AIDS prevention organizations that distribute condoms and teach safe homosexual sex illegal and further fuel the epidemic. It is unclear when the bill will come up for a final vote.
AIDS drug procurement is another headache, with Ukrainian health authorities greatly overpaying for AIDS drugs. Advocacy groups accuse health officials of embezzling funds by purchasing drugs at inflated prices and then pocketing kickbacks.
Officials deny those allegations, saying their tender procedures are transparent.
Much also remains to be done in Ukraine to educate people about AIDS.
Oksana Golubova, a 40-year-old former drug user, infected her daughter, now 8, with HIV and lost her first husband to AIDS. But she still has unprotected sex with her new husband, saying his health is in God's hands.

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Awareness of HIV Risk Has Dropped Among Gay Men Even As Infection Rates Rise

More than 30 years after the dawn of the HIV epidemic, the significance of the infection and awareness for how it's transmitted has dropped precipitously among young people, especially among gay men, according to new data from the federal government.
National statistics for 2010 show that more than one-quarter of all new HIV infections are among youths ages 13 to 24. Of the estimated 47,500 new infections in 2010, more than 83% are among men.
Almost three-quarters are attributed to sex between men, and half of all new cases are among African Americans, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Statistics.
HIV prevalence among blacks is nearly three times higher than among Hispanics and nearly eight times higher than among whites. Men who have sex with men have prevalence rates nearly 40 times higher than other men,  the authors said.
MORE: HIV Vaccine Under Study May Last a Lifetime
An estimated half of HIV-positive young people are unaware they were infected. The study found that HIV testing was low -- only 12.9 percent among high school students and 34.5 percent among people ages 18 to 24. Testing is less common among males compared to females and is lower among whites and Hispanics compared to African Americans.
"More effort is needed to provide effective school- and community-based interventions to ensure all youths, particularly men who have sex with men, have the knowledge, skills, resources, and support necessary to avoid HIV infection," wrote the authors of the report.
The statistics  are sobering news as World AIDS Day approaches on Dec. 1.
"I think the statistics are alarming and that we should be alarmed," Chris Collins, vice president and director of public policy at amFAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, told Take Part. "I think that what we in the gay community need to come to grips with is HIV remains our number-one health equity issue. "
MORE: Can HIV Prevention Be Found in a Pill?
In an essay published earlier this month on the amFar web site, Collins and co-author Jeffrey Levi said it's time to refocus the HIV-prevention campaign among gay men. Young men who have sex with men represent the only group in which HIV incidence appears to be increasing, he says.
The alarming HIV incidence among gay men stands in contrast to the popular perception that the HIV threat is under control. Efforts by the LGBT community in the '80s and '90s resulted in an estimated 89 percent decline in HIV transmission over that time period, Collins says.
"I think the advent of life-saving AIDS drugs in the mid '90s was both a wonderful thing that saved the lives of so many gay people but also meant that the gay community, to some degree, turned to many other challenges -- understandably so," he says.
MORE: More People Than Ever Living with HIV
Since then, efforts to educate a new generation of young people about HIV prevention have faded. The LGBT community is needed to reinforce the HIV prevention message, he says.
"We saw the power of the gay community in the '80 and '90s to confront this epidemic and mobilize the public and private sectors to address a problem that was devastating us," Collins says. "We need to reconnect with our activism and focus from the 1980s and help everyone in the gay community get tested and get access to the care they need."
AmFar recently published a brief, "Ending the HIV Epidemic Among Gay Men in the United States" that serves as an agenda for progress. The brief calls for utilizing the Affordable Care Act to improve HIV testing and treatment as well as to promote overall better health among LGBT people.
Stigma is another big reason why people with HIV or who are at higher risk for the infection don't get the healthcare they need, Collins adds.
MORE: FDA Approves Truvada as First HIV Prevention Drug
"We know for sure is stigma is a huge part of the HIV epidemic in the United States," he says. "It impedes people from learning their HIV status, getting the care they need and talking to their doctors openly."
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which advises the federal government on health policy, earlier this month issued preliminary guidelines calling for routine HIV screening as part of a check-up.  In 2006, the CDC recommended that doctors routinely test all patients for HIV, regardless of risk,  however only people at increased risk for HIV were eligible for free HIV screening. The USPSTF recommendation would mean more people could be tested without having a co-pay.
The task force also recommended that people at high risk for infection be tested at least once a year.
"The recommendation from the commission is a hopeful sign and the kind of thing we need to encourage health providers to offer testing," Collins says. "We need to have HIV testing readily accessible and routine in all kinds of environments. It ought to be something doctors and nurses regularly offer. For gay men, they ought to be getting HIV tests regularly, not just every couple of years but perhaps every six months."
MORE: Transgender Healthcare: A Work in Progress
Collins says he expects HIV prevention will re-emerge as a top priority in the LGBT community. The topic will be prominent at the 25th National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, in January in Atlanta.
"There are a variety of efforts going on to engage the gay community," he says. "I think we're going in the right direction.

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Health officials: Athens has spiraling HIV crisis

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Athens is seeing an alarming increase in new HIV infections, particularly among intravenous drug users, health officials warned Friday, as Greece struggles through a protracted financial crisis in which funding for health care and drug treatment programs has been slashed.
While there were about 10-14 new HIV infections per year among Athens drug users from 2008 to 2010, that number shot up to 206 new cases last year and 487 new cases by October this year — a 15-fold and 35-fold increase, respectively, officials said.
"There is no doubt we have a big and rapidly developing epidemic in Athens," Athens University epidemiology and preventive medicine professor Angelos Hatzakis said.
A total of 1,049 new cases of HIV infection were recorded in Greece in the first 10 months of this year, including the 487 drug users. Of the others, 256 were gay men, while 108 caught the virus through heterosexual intercourse, the figures showed.
"One of the reasons is the financial crisis," European Center for Disease Prevention and Control director Marc Sprenger said. "There are more people who are vulnerable, marginalized" and who use drugs.
They turn to cheaper drugs and turn to injecting instead of smoking in order to get the same high from a smaller quantity, officials said.
"We are very concerned," Sprenger said. "What we see now is this increase, and if you don't really pay attention to this, it will become in the future a really huge burden."
Greece has been hammered by a financial crisis since late 2009 that has left the country facing a sixth year of a deep recession and with a quarter of the workforce unemployed. The country relies on international rescue loans from other European countries that also use the euro and the International Monetary Fund to stay solvent.
But in return, the Greek government has imposed several rounds of spending cuts and tax hikes in an effort to reform its economy and reduce its mountainous debt. The cuts have affected health care spending, with many hospitals reporting shortages of basic material, while charities dealing with drug users and HIV sufferers have also struggled to find funds.
One of the main methods of prevention for the spread of the virus among drug users is the distribution of free, clean needles, officials said, and Greek programs have managed to increase the number of needles they hand out from 40 to about 50-60 per addict per year. But the actual number needed in order for the programs to be effective, ECDC officials said, is about 200 for each drug user per year.
"The cost of prevention to avoid HIV infection is significantly lower than that of treating those who become infected," Sprenger said.

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Zurich puts Sandy storm damage claims at $700 million

 Natural gas distributor Laclede Group Inc is buying two utilities from Energy Transfer Equity LP for $1 billion, doubling its customer numbers and boosting its exposure to more stable state-regulated income.
More than 91 percent of Laclede's earnings will come from rate-regulated business after the acquisition of Missouri Gas Energy and New England Gas Co, owned by Energy Transfer's affiliate, Southern Union Co.
About 68 percent of Laclede's operating revenue of $1.12 billion came from its regulated gas distribution business in the year ended September 30.
"With lower ... prices, more and more customers are interested in using natural gas," Chief Executive Suzanne Sitherwood told Reuters. "The other emerging market that is taking place is with natural gas vehicles."
Gas prices have fallen sharply from their peak of more than $13 per million metric British thermal unit (mmBtu) to about $3 now due to vast supplies from shale fields in North America.
This has prompted increased use of gas for heating and power generation. Westport Innovations Inc , General Motors Co , Caterpillar Inc and Ford Motor Co are some of the companies developing technologies to drive the use of the fuel in vehicles.
Laclede too has been working on fueling natural gas vehicles and has received a lot of interest for possible partnerships, Sitherwood said. She did not name the interested parties.
GOOD PRICE FOR ETE
Missouri Gas and New England Gas, which had combined revenue of about $517 million for the year ended September 30, serve more than 500,000 customers in western Missouri and about 50,000 in Massachusetts.
The acquisition, which includes debt of about $20 million, will take Laclede's customer base to 1.2 million, the company said in a statement.
Laclede expects the acquisition to be neutral to its earnings per share in the first full year after close, likely in the third quarter of 2013.
Energy Transfer Partners LP , a unit of Energy Transfer Equity and a party to the deal, said the transaction was part of the company's efforts to divest non-core assets.
The gas utilities passed into Energy Transfer's hands when it bought pipeline operator Southern Union Co last year.
"For the Energy Transfer family, this (deal) compares favorably to our previously modeled $710 million sale estimate," analysts at Robert W. Baird wrote in a note to clients.
St Louis, Missouri-based Laclede said Wells Fargo Bank will provide a $1 billion bridge facility for the purchase.
Laclede shares were down about 2 percent at $39.12 in afternoon trading on Monday on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of Energy Transfer Equity and Energy Transfer Partners were slightly up.
Wells Fargo Securities LLC advises Laclede, while Credit Suisse Securities LLC is advising Energy Transfer and Southern Union. Moelis & Co gave the fairness opinion to Laclede.

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