DURHAM, N.C. - Tammy Faye Messner is keeping busy. She s promoting a new self-help book, will appear on the WB reality show The Surreal Life - premiering Jan. 11 - and will host a drag bingo benefit Friday night to raise money for the Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina. I ve been around a lot of drag queens, said Messn
NEW YORK - With their homeland staggered by AIDS, poverty and political instability, many Haitian-Americans are struggling to find the right way to mark their country s bicentennial Thursday, with emotions ranging from pride to sadness. I m proud to celebrate the 200 years, said Jean Jean-Pierre, musical director of th
PHOENIX - The remoteness of many American Indian reservations largely protected tribes from the full force of HIV and AIDS for years, but that has begun to change. In 2001, then-Surgeon General David Satcher warned AIDS was a ticking time bomb for American Indians. Now, Indian infection rates are 1.5 times that of whit
WASHINGTON - The Food and Drug Administration has approved a 10-minute HIV test, the Irish company that makes the test said Monday. Trinity Biotech PLC plans to market the test to government programs, physicians and hospitals for quick testing of health workers who accidentally prick their fingers with bloody needles.
TOKYO (AP)--A patient has been infected with HIV after blood tainted with the virus that causes AIDS slipped through the detection system of the Japan Red Cross and was used in a transfusion, a Health Ministry official said Monday. It was the first time that anyone in Japan had been infected with HIV by a blood transfu
SINGAPORE - Young women dressed in skimpy Santa outfits have distributed 50,000 free safe-sex stocking stuffers - condoms - to holiday shoppers in the city-state s glitzy tourism and shopping district. The sexy Santas from Takaso Marketing, which makes Playsafe condoms, handed out the prophylactics along busy Orchard R
ALBANY, N.Y. - The state s highest court on Monday ended a case in which a New York Yankees clubhouse worker accused the team and some of its players of gay bashing, physical abuse and playing cruel practical jokes. The Court of Appeals declined to hear an appeal sought by Paul Priore, who sued the Yankees and three pl
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP)--Emergency food rations for 2.6 million hungry Zimbabweans were halved ahead of Christmas because of insufficient foreign donations, the U.N. food agency said Monday. It s tragic that these ration cuts have come at a time when people are normally celebrating the festive season, but if we re not gi
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)--The state s highest court on Monday ended a case in which a New York Yankees clubhouse worker accused the team and some of its players of gay bashing, physical abuse and playing cruel practical jokes. The Court of Appeals declined to hear an appeal sought by Paul Priore, who sued the Yankees and thre
DURHAM, N.C. - Former televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker Messner will headline a drag bingo benefit for AIDS here next month. The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, which serves people with HIV and AIDS in Durham, Orange and Wake counties, is organizing the fund-raiser at the Durham Armory on Jan. 2. The headliner was a
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) -- A syphilis outbreak that began in the Downtown Eastside is now believed to be the largest per capita in the world, medical officials say. Now the concern is that it s beyond its original group and it s spreading. Clearly, we haven t got a handle on it, said Patricia Daly, health offi
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - The birds and the bees do their thing in the mountains that fill this rugged Central Asian country, but the facts of life are off-limits this year in Kyrgyz high schools. An ethnic Kyrgyz nationalist drummed up a public outcry against a new sex-education book and pressured the government into with
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - The birds and the bees do their thing in the mountains that fill this rugged Central Asian country, but the facts of life are off-limits this year in Kyrgyz high schools. An ethnic Kyrgyz nationalist drummed up a public outcry against a new sex-education book and pressured the government into with
NORTH CHICAGO, Ill. (AP) -- Abbott Laboratories Inc. is hiking the U.S. price of an important AIDS drug more than fourfold, citing its sharp increase in treatment value and the costs of improving its formulation. The company informed doctors, AIDS groups and pharmacies of the change in price in
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Cirque du Soleil, criticized for firing an HIV-positive gymnast, does not have a blanket policy barring employment of performers infected with the virus that causes AIDS, the company has told the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. But the Montreal-based circus maintains that because of the spe
GENEVA (AP)--Global efforts to battle HIV/AIDS and other diseases and reduce the number of women who die in childbirth will founder unless the international community boosts basic medical care in poor countries, the U.N. health agency said Thursday. Campaigns against individual diseases are essential, but policy-makers
HANOI, Vietnam - Vietnamese with HIV/AIDS are often ostracized by their colleagues and employers in the workplace, including being fired or refused jobs, the International Labor Organization said Tuesday. Stigma and discrimination is in fact a reality at workplaces, ILO country director Rose Marie Greve said during a w
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Bill Hancock still gets upset when he recalls a letter that arrived last February informing him he would no longer receive free AIDS drugs. I knew there was this huge deficit and they were going to make budget cuts, he said. But, to be honest, I didn t believe they would cut people off from life
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Hanging above crumbling streets, the giant blue banners urging Haitians to abstain from sex dwarf the tattered signs for Pante, the Caribbean nation s best-selling condom. The abstinence message, financed by the U.S. government, is getting mixed reviews in this impoverished nation where ea
HYDERABAD, India - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated $50 million to private agencies in two southern Indian states for AIDS prevention programs among high-risk groups such as prostitutes, migrant laborers and truckers. The money - $25 million to each state - will be distributed over five years. It is pa
GENEVA - World leaders attending a summit on how to spread the benefits of the Internet to the whole planet stressed on Thursday that it can contribute to development and democracy, but only if it is supported by money and strong government policies. As a global society we must ensure that all our citizens enjoy the be
GENEVA - Some 65 million girls worldwide are kept out of school, increasing the risks that they will suffer from extreme poverty, die in childbirth or from AIDS and pass those dangers on to future generations, the U.N. children s fund said Thursday. UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said investment in education w
A three-drug cocktail used by many HIV-infected people proved clearly superior to other combinations at treating new patients in the biggest head-to-head comparison of AIDS medications to date. The combination works better and longer, is easier to take, and suppresses the virus more quickly, the international study fou
PITTSBURGH - An HIV-positive man in need of a liver transplant was wrongly denied coverage under the state s Medicaid program, an administrative law judge ruled. William Jean Gough s liver is deteriorating because of hepatitis C. The 46-year-old was accepted as a strong candidate for the lifesaving operation in August
BRASILIA - (AP) -- The director of Brazil s anti-AIDS program broke a long-standing silence and attacked the Catholic Church s stance against the use of condoms, calling it a possible crime against humanity. Dr. Alexandre Grangeiro said Tuesday the church s attempts to discredit the effectiveness of condoms in preventi
PRETORIA (AP)--U.K. pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) said Wednesday that it will license up to three more South African companies to manufacture generic versions of its AIDS medicines and allow the country to import drugs produced elsewhere. The moves, part of a settlement with a business regulator, are e
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A San Francisco judge Tuesday dismissed a grand jury indictment against a former San Francisco health commissioner accused of intentionally infecting sexual partners with the virus that causes AIDS. The ruling by Superior Court Judge Kay Tsenin marked the first-ever judicial review of a 1998 state
WASHINGTON - The House approved a $373 billion spending package Monday detailing how nearly every domestic agency will spend its money this year and delivering wins to President Bush on overtime pay, media ownership and other fights. More than two months after the government s budget year began, Republican leaders push
DULUTH, Minn. - Chemist Pavel Krasutsky calls it nature s white gold. Betulin, a powdery substance in the outer bark of the birch tree, has been shown to help wounds heal faster and cut inflammation. Many cosmetic companies, touting it as a skin toner and restorer, add birch bark extract to various products. And a birc
BANGALORE, India - The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will give $25 million to a southern Indian state for prevention of AIDS in what officials said is the foundation s first arrangement with a state agency in the country. The money will come from $200 million grant pledged by the Seattle-based foundation to help
Health officials say this year s flu outbreak, which has spread faster and earlier than usual, appears to be the worst in at least three years. And the leading vaccine makers have shipped all of their supply. Here are answers to some common questions: Q: Will I be able to get a flu shot? A: That depends on demand. Ther
BANGALORE, India (AP)--The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will give $25 million to a southern Indian state for prevention of AIDS in what officials said is the foundations s first tie-up with a state agency in the country. The money will come from $200 million grant pledged by the Seatle-based foundation to help c
WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Wednesday signed legislation giving the government the ability to require drug companies to test medicines to ensure that dosages are appropriate for children. Now, only a fourth of the drugs on the market are tested and properly labeled for safe use in children. Because children and adu
KATMANDU, Nepal (AP)--The U.N. Children s Fund urged South Asian religious leaders Thursday to help fight HIV/AIDS and end the fear and ignorance that surrounds the disease. Nearly 5 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in the region and the trend is firmly upward, UNICEF Regional Director for South Asia Sadig Rase
LONDON (AP)--Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday said cutting the price of drugs used to treat HIV and AIDS in poor countries was necessary to help fight the worldwide epidemic. We have got to do everything we possibly can to make sure we put the support in but also reduce the price of the drugs for treatment for pe
KIEV (AP)--Ukraine s president accepted a $60 million World Bank loan Wednesday to fight AIDS and tuberculosis in this former Soviet republic. Leonid Kuchma s approval came after the bank agreed to provide the funds to prevent and control the two diseases that have spread rapidly since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
NAIROBI (AP)--Seven major international companies with operations in Africa said Wednesday they will expand HIV treatment and prevention programs in an effort to boost the fight against the disease. The companies - Anglo American PLC (AAUK), ChevronTexaco Corp. (CVX), DaimlerChrysler AG (DCX), Eskom, Heineken Holding N
BOMBAY, India - Hollywood actor Richard Gere talked to prostitutes and their clients inside dingy Bombay brothels Tuesday in a crowded red-light district to find out what they knew about HIV/AIDS. I have so many friends who are (HIV) positive...There s no way you should leave sick people to die, Gere told The Associat
(Updates with additional quotes.) KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) -- U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson laid a wreath Tuesday at the tomb of victims of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which thousands of women were raped and infected with HIV/AIDS. Thompson was driven from the airport to the Gisozi Genocide Memo
LIVINGSTONE, Zambia (AP)--U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson signed Tuesday a $6.39 million grant on behalf of the global AIDS fund to help this impoverished southern African country fight the pandemic. Thompson, who chairs the Geneva-based Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said
NEW HAVEN - The numbers of new AIDS cases and deaths from AIDS continue to decline in Connecticut, but the disease is increasingly infecting women, Hispanics and heterosexuals, a state report shows. AIDS counselors said trends are changing in part because new drugs are keeping AIDS patients alive longer, and because ed
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger s proposal to cap state funding that helps HIV-positive adults obtain medicine was criticized by treatment officials who challenged the plan at a World AIDS Day event. Officials at the JWCH Medical Clinic in downtown Los Angeles gathered Monday to call on Schwarzenegger to
ALBUQUERQUE - Patricia Monaghan wishes there was a better way to vanquish the invader attacking her liver. For now, she copes with a treatment that forces the 46-year-old lawyer and mother of two to ration her life, predicting the days she ll feel well enough to venture out or be too sick to leave her house. Monaghan
NEW YORK (AP) -- A New York arts group has unveiled an Internet list of hundreds of writers, actors, designers and others to help memorialize the lives and catalog the works of artists felled by AIDS. The Alliance for the Arts Estate Project for Artists with AIDS combed through academic research, magazine articles and
BEIJING (AP) -- Activists and health workers rallied around the globe Monday to mark World AIDS day, seeking support for the continuing battle against a disease that ravaged a record number of people in 2003. In China , the government says at least 840,000 people are HIV-positive and fears 10 million might become infec
LONDON (AP)--The U.K. will double its contribution to UNAIDS , the U.N. agency coordinating global efforts to fight the disease, next year to GBP6 million pounds, International Development Secretary Hilary Benn said Monday. The U.K. also called for one national strategy, one national AIDS commission and one way to moni
MOSCOW (AP)--Russia s top AIDS expert on Monday accused the government of not doing enough to prevent the spread of the disease, which is snowballing in Russia. Over 257,000 HIV cases, more than 7,500 of which involve children, have been registered in all but one of Russia s 89 regions, Russian officials said Monday, w
NEW DELHI (AP)--The Indian government plans to give free drugs to 100,000 of its 4.6 million AIDS patients in a move that is being described as a significant scale-up in the fight against the disease in this country, which has the world s second-largest number of HIV-infected people. Until now, the Indian government ha
NAIROBI (AP)--Tens of thousands of AIDS activists and health workers rallied worldwide on Monday to mark World AIDS Day, supporting officials who announced new initiatives and millions of dollars in new funding to combat the disease that has infected 40 million people, and kills more than 8,000 sufferers everyday. The
LIVINGSTONE, Zambia (AP)--U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson appealed Monday for a redoubling of efforts against HIV, saying Africa - the world s hardest-hit continent - cannot be left to fight the pandemic alone. Thompson, who is also chairman of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Mal
KUALA LUMPUR (AP)--Despite a rising infection rate, Malaysians remain lax about preventing the spread of HIV and AIDS, especially through unsafe sex, activists said Monday. Marina Mahathir, president of the Malaysian AIDS Council, said people were reluctant to acknowledge the disease was a threat, even though Malaysia
BEIJING (AP)--Health workers took to the streets in China s capital on Monday to teach HIV prevention as World AIDS Day began in the world s most populous country, whose communist leaders have promised an aggressive battle - and more openness - to fight the disease. The government has been sluggish for years about disc
SIBOVU, Swaziland (AP) -- In a sandy courtyard, a dozen children in torn shorts and grimy sweaters crowd around an iron pot, holding up plastic bowls for steaming spoonfuls of cabbage and maize porridge. For many of the children -- orphaned by AIDS -- this food grown on a chief s field and prepared by village women is
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP)--Beyonce Knowles, Bono, Peter Gabriel and other musicians from around the world took to the stage Saturday for an AIDS benefit concert hosted by former South African President Nelson Mandela. More than 30,000 people, among them Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities, filled Cape Town s Greenpo
MANILA (AP)--Ignorance, fear, denial and intolerance of HIV/AIDS are creating an environment that could allow the disease to spread faster in Asia, the World Health Organization warned Thursday. Shigeru Omi, WHO s regional director for the Western Pacific, said the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS - often linked to cultural
CHIANG MAI, Thailand (AP)--A doctor from Afghanistan stunned a conference on AIDS this month by revealing that he didn t know what the symptoms of the disease were. Dr. Baz Mohammad Shirzad s statement underscored a lack of awareness in many parts of Asia - even among health professionals - that experts say is still un
LONDON - The HIV/AIDS epidemic continues its devastating march across the globe, with more deaths and infections this year than ever before, according to a U.N. report. The report by UNAIDS , the U.N. agency responsible for coordinating global efforts to fight the disease, said the epidemic killed more than 3 million
Federal officials say more signs of prevention fatigue are reflected in the latest report on AIDS - a 17 percent increase in new HIV cases among gay men over the past three years. HIV is not over in the United States , said Robert Janssen, director HIV/AIDS prevention division for the Centers for Disease Control and P
JOHANNESBURG (AP)--AIDS has already orphaned more than 11 million African children under the age of 15, and the worst is yet to come, warns a report issued Wednesday by the U.N. Children s Fund. By 2010, there will be about 20 million children in sub-Saharan Africa who have lost at least one parent to AIDS, bringing th
WASHINGTON (AP)--A U.S. delegation of lawmakers, business people, religious leaders and others will mark World AIDS day in Africa next week and examine projects aimed at combatting the disease, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Tuesday. The group of 80 people will visit four hard-hit countries -
BANGKOK (AP)--Complacent governments, inadequate health care and widespread prejudice are worsening the AIDS epidemic in Asia, a new report has warned. (The epidemic) is both a cause and consequence of poverty and human rights violations, said the report entitled Time to Act, adding that unprotected sex, drug abuse and
WASHINGTON - U.S. lawmakers, business people and members of religious groups will visit Africa next week to mark World AIDS Day and examine projects aimed at combatting the disease, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Tuesday. The group of 80 people will visit four hard-hit countries-
LONDON (AP) -- International efforts to control the spread of HIV/AIDS are failing, with more people dying from the disease this year than ever before and as many as 46 million people around the world living with the virus, said a U.N. report released Tuesday. The worldwide epidemic killed more than 3 million people th
LONDON (AP)--The global HIV/AIDS epidemic is showing no sign of slowing despite international attempts to halt its progress and as many as 46 million people are living with the virus around the world, a report released Tuesday said. The report by UNAIDS -the U.N. agency responsible for coordinating global efforts to fi
BANGKOK (AP)--HIV is spreading faster in Asia than in Africa, and the Asian AIDS epidemic is worsening because of complacent governments, inadequate health care and widespread prejudice, a new report has warned. Time to Act, released Tuesday by ActionAid-Asia, says HIV/AIDS has reached a critical point in the region an
UNITED NATIONS - Media mogul Ted Turner has taken a small step to demonstrate his belief that women should run the world because men have mucked it up with too much warfare and military spending. The United Nations Foundation he established six years ago to distribute the $1 billion he pledged to U.N. causes has a new
GENEVA - The U.N. Children s Fund has appointed an HIV-positive Muppet starring in the South African version of Sesame Street as a global champion for children, officials said Monday. Kami, a mustard-colored furry Muppet who appears regularly on Takalani Sesame, represents a 5-year-old girl orphaned by AIDS. UNICE
NEW YORK - The choices can be wrenching: circumventing the law, leaving one s country, splitting up with one s lover. Under U.S. immigration policy, those are the options facing many same-sex couples when one partner is American, the other a foreigner. They re in a double closet of being gay or lesbian, and being an i
GEORGETOWN, Ky. — Scott County High School administrators told an HIV and AIDS services group to remove brochures about safe sex at a student health fair, group members said. Cathy Cox, executive director of Lexington-based AIDS Volunteers, Inc., said group members were instructed Friday not to display four brochures t
NEW YORK - The choices can be wrenching: skirting the law, leaving one s country, splitting up with one s lover. Under U.S. immigration policy, those are the options facing many same-sex couples when one partner is American, the other a foreigner. They re in a double closet of being gay or lesbian, and being an immigr
CHICAGO - Known as AIDS babies, they are children born HIV-positive who contracted the virus from their mothers. No one expected them to live very long in the early days of the epidemic, but today, many are thriving teens, and facing a new set of challenges. This is the story of one of them. If ever there was a time to
(AP) -- The World Health Organization estimates that about 800,000 infants become infected with HIV each year around the globe, mainly through mother-to-child transmission, which can occur during pregnancy and labor or after delivery through breast milk. The problem is most acute in developing nations, where mothers ha
SAN FRANCISCO - Cirque du Soleil, the Canadian circus company known for its stunning aerial acts, is being targeted by protesters here for firing an acrobat infected with the HIV virus, a move that also has been criticized by figure skater Rudy Galindo and several Olympic athletes. Galindo, the 1996 U.S. skating champi
BEIJING (AP) -- Dozens of villagers in northeastern China have contracted the AIDS virus by selling blood and at least 20 have died, a human rights organization said Friday. Blood tests have proven that 62 villagers from Soudengzhan in Jilin province are HIV-positive, part of a total of 300 people who may be infected,
GURGAON, India (AP)--Former U.S. President Clinton appeared at an Indian drug-making plant Friday to back the production of low-cost, lifesaving medicines for HIV and AIDS patients in Africa and the Caribbean. There are 6 million people in the world who need medication for HIV AIDS, of whom only about 300,000 are getti
PITTSBURGH (AP) - Attorneys for an HIV-positive man said the state s Medicaid program should cover his liver transplant because there is no evidence that otherwise healthy HIV-positive patients have a worse chance of surviving organ transplants than those who don t have the virus. Attorneys for Lambda Legal and the AID
CAPE TOWN (AP)--Cabinet Wednesday approved a plan to distribute free AIDS medicine through South Africa s public health system, but didn t specify when the drugs would be made available. Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said the government still needed to put out a tender for the drugs, train healthcare workers
DENVER (AP) -- Prosecutors in the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case have filed a motion asking a judge to order the NBA star undergo testing for the virus that causes AIDS, a television station reported. The motion was filed under seal and the judge has not ruled, KCNC-TV in Denver reported Tuesday night, citing unnamed
BUENOS AIRES (AP)--Latin America has yet to experience a full-blown AIDS epidemic, but the disease is spreading from high-risk individuals to the general population, according to a World Bank report released Tuesday. HIV/AIDS in Latin American Countries: The Challenges Ahead presents the results of a 2001 survey of hea
WASHINGTON (AP)--U.S. House-Senate bargainers have agreed to provide $2.4 billion this year to combat AIDS and other deadly diseases in Africa and other poor regions, congressional staff members said Monday. The amount is $400 million more than President George W. Bush proposed last February. The administration had def
BRASILIA (AP)--Brazil s health ministry said Friday the record discount it had negotiated for a key anti-AIDS drug represented a breakthrough in its relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. According to the ministry, Bristol-Myers Squibb agreed to concede Brazil a 76.4% discount on the anti-AIDS drug
NEW DELHI, India -- The virus that causes AIDS is being spread through India s general population mainly by married men who have unprotected sex with prostitutes, according to a study released Thursday. About 610,000 Indians contracted HIV last year, increasing the overall number of infected Indians to about 4.5 millio
LINCOLN, Neb. - Widespread discrimination against people with HIV or AIDS persists in rural America, the American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday in a report that detailed privacy violations and denial of housing and parental rights for people with the disease. The report by the ACLU s AIDS Project said people livi
NEW DELHI, India (AP)--About 610,000 Indians contracted HIV last year as the AIDS-causing virus spilled into the general population through married men having unprotected sex with prostitutes, experts said Thursday. That gives India - with its estimated 4.5 million HIV-infected people - the second-largest number after
BRISBANE, Calif. -- An experimental vaccine tested in Thailand on about 2,500 drug users failed to protect them from becoming infected with HIV, the vaccine s developer said. The poor results were widely expected since VaxGen Inc. had said earlier its vaccine didn t work in a larger North American study.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- One of the biggest problems in the fight against AIDS is convincing people that they can get it, too, the U.S. surgeon general says. In many minority and poor communities, people have not truly accepted that they can become infected with AIDS -- that they are not immune, Dr. Richard H. Carmona said
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- An experimental AIDS vaccine tested in Thailand on some 2,500 drug users failed to protect them from becoming infected with HIV, the vaccine s developer said Wednesday. The poor results were widely expected since VaxGen Inc. had said earlier that its vaccine did not work in a larger North Ame
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The president of Botswana said Wednesday that his government has fewer workers to devote to the fight against AIDS, because many are lured away by non-governmental organizations that pay higher salaries. At the beginning of the program, we lost our skilled health and other workers to the cooperating
NEW YORK (AP) -- Some career Web sites, recruitment services and automated job-application kiosks offer flimsy privacy protections and might even violate employment and credit laws, a report released Tuesday asserts. Many job sites still let too much information from resumes posted online get into the hands of third pa
NEW YORK (AP)--Between the terrorists who attack humanitarian groups and Western governments trying to use aid for political purposes, the global fight against terrorism leaves little room for those who try to help its victims, aid officials say. Suicide bombings at the Baghdad offices of the Red Cross in October and
BEIJING (AP)--A human rights group on Tuesday praised China s decision to make sure its poorest AIDS patients receive medicine but warned that potential crackdowns and continuing cases of discrimination could undermine the plan. Human Rights Watch issued the warning in a statement from its New York offices. Providing
SALT LAKE CITY - The mother of a 5-year-old boy who says he was pricked by a hypodermic needle left inside a shoe at Wal-Mart wants the world s largest discount retailer to pay for his HIV and hepatitis tests. So far, Becky Pidcock has not heard from the Bentonville, Ark.-based company about her request made last week,
LOUISVILLE - A statewide program that provides free medication to people who can t afford drugs to treat HIV or AIDS doesn t have enough money to treat those on a lengthy waiting list, officials say. The number of people with HIV or AIDS in Kentucky is growing, and more of them have low incomes that make them eligible
BEIJING - China brought together scientists, government leaders and even former President Clinton on Monday to battle the health threats most urgent to itself and to big swaths of the world - SARS and AIDS. Clinton praised the Chinese government for its decision to help poor AIDS patients receive treatment. And, he to
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Darryl Boyd exudes strength from the shaved head crowning his 6-foot-5, 235-pound Navy veteran s body to his T-shirt s image of bulging biceps pulling a forearm free of shackles. But look more closely, and you see the shirt s message: Freedom from Active Addiction. Listen more closely, and Boyd spe
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) -- When George Rene Marques thinks about his two youngest children, he sees them as they were seven years ago -- the day he was banished from America for drunken driving. Marques has not seen them since July 13, 1996. That was the day, he says, that he hocked his diamond ring to buy party hats a
PRETORIA (AP)--Developing nations across the world must unite to become recognized economic powers Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said as he wrapped up a five leg African tour in South Africa on Saturday. It is extremely helpful and politically and economically correct to join all countries with similar
WASHINGTON - The method used to allocate $1.3 billion in AIDS funds between states and municipalities should remain unchanged, at least for now, a research panel said Friday. The federal money is allocated based on the estimated number of people with AIDS in each state or community. Congress has suggested a better met
BEIJING (AP) - The number of AIDS patients in China is reaching frightening levels, a renowned expert on the disease said Friday, a day after Beijing said it would provide free treatment to thousands of sufferers in dire financial straits. There are about a million individuals in China who are already infected, said
BEIJING (AP)--The lessons China learned in beating back SARS earlier this year can help it fight its AIDS epidemic - as long as the central government keeps providing quick and honest information, the head of the United Nations AIDS agency said Friday. Through openness, firstly, and through strong leadership...the gove
TORONTO - Prime Minister Jean Chretien on Thursday proposed a bill that would allow generic drug makers in Canada to supply cheap copies of patented medicine to poor countries. The bill complies with a recent World Trade Organization agreement considered a breakthrough on helping the developing world get access to exp
TORONTO - Prime Minister Jean Chretien on Thursday proposed a bill that would allow generic drug makers in Canada to supply cheap copies of patented medicine to poor countries. The bill complies with a recent World Trade Organization agreement considered a breakthrough on helping the developing world get access to exp
MAPUTO, Mozambique (AP)--Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva wrapped up a two-day visit to Mozambique on Thursday with the launch of a joint program to fight HIV. Lula said Brazil has reduced its AIDS mortality rate by 50% since starting to make it s own HIV medicine and reiterated his pledge to build a facto
YANGON, Myanmar - A U.N. human rights envoy met with detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Thursday, one day after he criticized prison conditions and praised the Myanmar junta s anti-AIDS efforts. Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, on a weeklong mission to investigate human rights conditions, spent about two hours at
MAPUTO, Mozambique (AP)--Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva announced Wednesday that his country will build a factory to manufacture HIV drugs in this impoverished southern African country, ravaged by the disease. Silva did not specify when Brazil would do this, saying only that it would be in the near fut
MAPUTO, Mozambique - For months, 13-year-old Percilia wandered the streets of Maputo, surviving off scraps of food she begged from strangers or salvaged from garbage cans. Like thousands of other children here, Percilia and her sister, who is about 7, were left to fend for themselves when their parents and older siste
NEW YORK - Barraged by accusations from conservatives that it was distorting the legacy of a president, CBS announced Tuesday it was pulling The Reagans miniseries off the air. The network said it was licensing the completed film to Showtime, a pay cable network that, like CBS, is owned by Viacom. CBS insisted it was n
MAPUTO, Mozambique (AP)--AIDS is ravaging Mozambique s agricultural sector just as the southern African country starts to emerge from a debilitating drought, Health Minister Francisco Songane said Monday. Farmers are sick, and many have died, having terrible consequences on food production, Songane said at the start
NEW DELHI - Indian movie star Amitabh Bachchan (news) has been named goodwill ambassador for the United Nation s Children s Fund. Mr. Bachchan s tremendous appeal to young people makes him an ideal Goodwill Ambassador, said a statement quoting Maria Calivis, UNICEF s India representative. Our hope is to leverage Mr. Ba
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - Researchers this week will begin testing an experimental HIV vaccine on 24 human volunteers in South Africa, a country where more than one in 10 people is infected with the AIDS-causing virus. The treatment, which is also being tested in the United States
ALBANY, N.Y. - When these musicians come to town, you might have to hide the groceries instead of the women and children. A variety of jam bands are collecting donations of food and money at concerts across the country. An October concert in Albany by The String Cheese Incident brought in more than 1,100 food items for
WASHINGTON - The House narrowly approved an Interior Department spending bill Thursday that devotes nearly $3 billion to firefighting efforts as Congress struggled to make inroads into a backlog of unfinished spending bills. Already a month into the new budget year, both the House and the Senate voted earlier in the da
WASHINGTON - The Senate on Thursday approved an additional $289 million for next year to combat AIDS in Africa and other areas ravaged by the disease, deflecting criticism that the administration s ambitious AIDS-fighting program was being underfunded. The amendment to a foreign aid spending bill would bring total gove
CRANBROOK, British Columbia - About 3,000 people got the wrong results when they were tested for gonorrhea and chlamydia over an 18-month period, health officials say. Because of a faulty diagnostic machine in this southeastern British Columbia town, test results for the two sexually transmitted diseases were reversed,
LAGOS, Nigeria - Nigerian authorities said Wednesday polio vaccines recently administered in a nationwide campaign will undergo laboratory testing to calm fears about AIDS. Vice President Abubakar Atiku ordered testing on the vaccines for agents that could spread HIV or sterility, Nigeria s state television reported. A
WASHINGTON - Senators agreed Tuesday to direct a part of a $15 billion global AIDS bill toward the problems of unsafe medical injections in Africa, potentially one of few mandates from Congress on how the money should be spent. No one objected when Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., proposed amending a foreign aid package bei
UNITED NATIONS (AP)--Donors were generous last week in pledging billions to rebuild Iraq - disproportionately generous compared with their donations to fight poverty and AIDS in the world s poorest countries, development and AIDS officials say. The $33 billion in loans and grants for Iraq over the next four years,
WASHINGTON - Dr. Liana Clark says she is reconsidering whether to seek federal financing for new research into birth control use among teenagers after Washington questioned the value of her initial study. I just keep thinking that this is a bad nightmare and I m actually going to wake up from all this, said Clark, a ph
WASHINGTON - The Senate tied $1.2 million in military aid for Malaysia to religious freedom there, a response Monday to criticism of Jews by the Southeast Asian nation s prime minister. Before money could be spent, the State Department would have to determine that Malaysia supports and promotes religious freedoms, inc
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP)--Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni took a swipe at African governments efforts to tackle AIDS, saying Sunday that a lack of political commitment had contributed to the spread of the disease, which is ravaging the world s poorest continent. Museveni, whose government is credited with running one of
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - David Lands walked into the upscale office building, checked in with the receptionist and headed inside - to shoot heroin and cocaine into his veins. The frail Lands was one of the first addicts to use North America s only government-sponsored safe injection site, which opened in September
LUSAKA, Zambia (AP)--President Levy Mwanawasa marked Zambia s 39 years of independence from the U.K. Friday by honoring outstanding Zambians after earlier admitting to unacceptable poverty. After 39 years of independence it is unacceptable that we should have current levels of poverty in the country, Mwanawasa said in
OSLO, Norway - Top European health officials will gather in Oslo next week to address severe health problems facing Russia and the Baltic states, including HIV and tuberculosis. The 16-nation meeting includes health ministers, the European Commission, the World Health Organization
NEW YORK - Four foreign, generic-drug companies will provide low-cost AIDS drugs to several nations in Africa and the Caribbean, former President Clinton said Thursday on an agreement brokered by his foundation. The plan will cut the price of a triple-drug regimen in those countries to about 38 cents a day, Clinton sai
SYDNEY (AP)--The rapid spread of AIDS throughout the Asia Pacific region made it a bigger threat to regional security than terrorism, a conference on the disease heard Wednesday. While there are currently no accurate figures for the number of HIV infections in the region, estimates in India and
LONDON (AP) - Nelson Mandela joined celebrities from the music world Tuesday to raise AIDS awareness with a fund-raising campaign named in his honor. The international appeal, 46664, Give 1 Minute of Your Life to AIDS, uses Mandela s prisoner number from his incarceration on Robben Island off Cape Town for almost two d
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - Two British teachers working for an aid agency in Somaliland were found dead Tuesday after being shot at their apartment at the school, officials said. Richard G. Eyeington, 62, and his wife, Enid, 61, were killed Monday night in the town of Sheikh, where they worked for SOS Kinderdorf, an Aus
BANGKOK, Thailand - Despite the blackened teeth and a withered frame produced by AIDS, five-year-old Tutee smiled widely during a Thai dance performance Tuesday for first lady Laura Bush. Mrs. Bush visited the Queen Sirikit National Institute of Child Health to observe the hospital s efforts to prevent the transmission
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) - Janet Cuevas joined in AIDS Walk Los Angeles because she knew it was what her sister would have wanted. Cuevas walked alongside more than 25 of Elvira Susana Cuevas friends and relatives in the event, all of them wearing T-shirts with her face. She died of AIDS at age 19 in May, and her lo
BEIJING - The rapid spread of AIDS in China and India could destroy any chance of containing the disease, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson warned Sunday. Following brief meetings in Beijing, Thompson also announced that China and the United States are boosting ti
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) - With only 17 percent of the population in Central America, Honduras has the highest rate of AIDS cases in the region, a United Nations report released Thursday said. Honduras has about 60 percent of the AIDS cases in Central America, U.N. spokesman Lorina Macadam said.
In a setback for President Bush, the Supreme Court refuses to let the federal government punish doctors who recommend marijuana to ill patients. SAN FRANCISCO - The U.S. Supreme Court handed a major victory Tuesday to the nine states that allow the medical use of marijuana, refusing to let the federal government punish
LONDON (AP) - When he met women, tall, well-dressed Mohammed Dica pretended to be a lawyer and a Gulf War veteran. But he had a secret -- he was HIV-positive. A jury on Tuesday convicted the 38-year-old Dica on two counts of causing grievous bodily harm by coldly and callously infecting women with the virus that causes
PARIS (AP) - Leon Schwartzenberg, a leading cancer specialist who became one of France s most outspoken medical figures on topics ranging from euthanasia to AIDS, died Tuesday. He was 79. The doctor died -- of cancer -- in the cancer division he once headed at Paul-Brousse Hospital, in the Paris suburb of Villejuif, sa
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court cleared the way Tuesday for state laws allowing ill patients to smoke marijuana if a doctor recommends it. Justices turned down the Bush administration s request to consider whether the federal government can punish doctors for recommending or perhaps just talking about the benefits
SACRAMENTO (AP) -- Gov. Gray Davis has signed a bill that will create a card for medical marijuana users to help protect them from arrest, but he vetoed another that would have let pharmacists sell up to 30 hypodermic needles without a prescription. Davis deadline to sign or veto legislation was Sunday, by which time h
VATICAN CITY - A top Vatican cardinal said he was surprised by the reaction over his contention that condoms don t adequately protect against transmitting the virus which causes AIDS. Last week, the United Nations health agency strongly contested Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo s claim, which came in an interview he ga
NEW DELHI, India - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said Monday it was doubling to $200 million the prevention funds for HIV and AIDS that the Microsoft founder promised India in a visit last year. The announcement came as a former U.S. diplomat said India must educate its 1 billion people about AIDS or face a cri
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court cleared the way Tuesday for state laws allowing ill patients to smoke marijuana if a doctor recommends it. Justices turned down the Bush administration s request to consider whether the federal government can punish doctors for recommending or perhaps just talking about the benefits
NEW DELHI, India (AP) - India must educate its 1 billion people about AIDS or face a crisis, a former U.S. diplomat said Monday, while a foundation set up by Bill Gates pledged $200 million to fight the disease in India. Education means talking about sex and intimacy. These are difficult problems in any country in the
VATICAN CITY - A top Vatican cardinal s claim that condoms don t protect against the virus that causes AIDS was criticized by the U.N. health agency Friday as totally wrong. The disagreement arose after Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, told the British Broadcasting Corp. t
LARAMIE, Wyo. - Five years ago Tuesday, a gay college freshman named Matthew Shepard was tied to a fence and beaten into a coma. His death five days later left Peter Moran shaken about the community of 27,000 where he grew up. It was the worst possible thing you could hear about your hometown, Moran recalled. Laramie,
MOGADISHU, Somalia - Police in northwestern Somalia have detained four suspects in connection with the killing of a prize-winning Italian aid worker, the region s interior minister said Wednesday. A lone gunman shot and killed Annalena Tonelli on Sunday in Borama, a town 580 miles northwest of Mogadishu. She was killed
LONDON - Early marriage, unwanted pregnancy and HIV/AIDS among the world s adolescents are a threat to development and must be combatted as part of the war on poverty, the United Nations said Wednesday. A fifth of the world s population - 1.2 billion people - is between 10 and 19, more than ever before, the United Nati
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - At least one-fifth of South Africa s military is infected with the virus that causes AIDS, the defense minister said Tuesday. But he sought to dismiss concerns about the effects of the disease on the armed forces. South Africa is one of the hardest-hit nations by HIV and AIDS, with some 4.7 mi
BEIJING - A human rights organization demanded Tuesday that China release a health official reportedly convicted of circulating a restricted government report on a blood-selling scandal that spread AIDS in a central Chinese province. It was at least the second such legal action involving the same government report.
BEIJING -- A human rights organization demanded Tuesday that China release a health official reportedly convicted of circulating a restricted government report on a blood-selling scandal that spread AIDS in a central Chinese province. It was at least the second such legal action involving the same government report.
WASHINGTON - Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki asked President Bush Monday for more American help in stabilizing Somalia , an East African neighbor that terrorism experts say is a concern because of the lawlessness there. I emphasized that in order to maintain the democratic gains and to sustain the war against terrorism, i
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The patient s inoculation was as routine as any Dr. Robert Johnston had seen. Roll up the sleeve, a cotton swab of alcohol on the upper arm and a this shouldn t hurt much. What was in the syringe, though, was anything but typical: a genetically engineered Venezuela equine encephalitis bug
SACRAMENTO (AP) -- Legislation on women s health, sex education and the environment were signed into law Thursday by Gov. Gray Davis. One bill would require women patients facing an operation to give consent before undergoing anesthesia for doctors or medical students to perform pelvic exams or other procedures. It is
TORONTO (AP) -- Canada came under pressure Wednesday to quickly allow generic drug makers to supply cheap copies of patented medicine to poor countries, but a government spokesman said such a step would likely take months. The U.N. special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa joined aid agencies and other nongovernment organiza
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad -- U.S. ambassadors to Caribbean nations defended their country s commitment to fighting AIDS but said Tuesday they had no plans to push for changes to a recent U.S. aid package that excludes most of the region. The U.S. ambassadors from 11 Caribbean countries were meeting Monday and Tuesday
WASHINGTON - From creating drug-hunting databases to including more Main Street doctors in medical research, the National Institutes of Health pledged a series of changes on Tuesday intended to help turn scientific discoveries into better healthcare, faster. Consider it turbocharging the NIH, said Dr. Elias Zerhouni, t
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - A special task team presented South Africa s health minister with a plan Tuesday for the distribution of AIDS drugs through the public health system. The delivery of the report comes a month after the government, under pressure to tackle the AIDS pandemic ravaging the country, ordered the hea
FAIRFAX, Va. - Could a smallpox shot protect you from the AIDS virus? It s a tantalizing idea that scientists at George Mason University are studying. Early findings are very preliminary and based on lab tests of a small number of blood samples. Other AIDS researchers caution against putting too much faith in such ear
TOKYO -- Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, opening a major donor conference Monday, pledged $1 billion in new aid for education and health care in Africa. The money, to be dispersed over five years, will help fund AIDS treatment, vaccinations and building schools and facilities for drinking water. Mr. Koizumi
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - With tens of thousands dying from the ravages of AIDS, Denis Matwa saw a rare glimmer of hope when his government abandoned its insistence that AIDS medicines are poison and declared them effective in treating the disease. For 31-year-old Matwa and millions of other South Africans infected
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - With tens of thousands of South Africans dying from the ravages of AIDS, Denis Matwa saw a rare glimmer of hope when his government abandoned its insistence that AIDS medicines are poison and declared them effective in treating the disease. For 31-year-old Matwa and millions of other South
TORONTO - Canada is studying ways to allow its generic drug manufacturers to supply poor countries with cheap copies of patented drugs, as permitted under a new World Trade Organization agreement. Eric Dagenais, director of the industry ministry s patent policy directorate, said Friday that officials from several depar
SAN FRANCISCO - A former city health commissioner accused of deliberately exposing two people, including an ex-boyfriend, to HIV pleaded innocent Thursday. A grand jury charged Ronald Gene Hill, 46, under a rarely invoked 1998 state law that makes knowingly and intentionally exposing others to HIV a felony, punishable
ITAPIRA, Brazil (AP) -- Inside a laboratory in Brazil s coffee- growing region, scientists painstakingly replicate brand name drugs and oversee mass production of cheap copies to treat ailments ranging from Parkinson s Disease to AIDS. In three decades, Laboratorio Cristalia has grown from a tiny company making one clo
WASHINGTON -- Tagging bottles of pills with tiny transmitters may one day help keep counterfeits out of the drug supply, but until that or other protective technology arrives, patients must watch for fake medicines, a Food and Drug Administration official said Thursday. We need to raise the level of concern, said
CARSON CITY, Nev. -- A Nevada group that was allocated $250,000 in taxpayer money to combat AIDS wants to use half that money for a gospel festival -- and is running into resistance from state officials. During the Legislature s special session this summer, lawmakers approved a plan by Assemblyman Wendell Williams, D-L
NAIROBI, Kenya -- Aid workers, pharmaceutical companies and donors have made drugs available to a small number of African AIDS patients, but as new programs take root, the lack of trained doctors and facilities are becoming the biggest barriers to care. Many of the AIDS experts in Africa gathered to discuss their succe
GABORONE, Botswana - Bill Gates, whose foundation has given $50 million to combat AIDS in Botswana, said Wednesday he was baffled that more people were not taking HIV tests even though free AIDS drugs were available. The stigma of AIDS runs deep against those with the disease in this southern African country where mor
LONDON -- Another day at London Fashion Week, another display of beauty, sexy clothes and a celebrity on the catwalk. But the appearance of semiretired supermodel Naomi Campbell on the runway Wednesday wearing a skimpy, sparkling bikini came with a twist -- emblazoned across her chest was the slogan, Use a Condom.
UNITED NATIONS -- UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned Monday that AIDS has slipped from political agendas around the world, with efforts to fight the epidemic woefully inadequate. We are not on track to begin reducing the scale and impact of the epidemic by 2005, Annan said in opening a General Assembly session to r
DENVER -- A national gay-rights group is helping a Denver man with HIV fight Kaiser Permanente s refusal to cover his kidney transplant. John Carl, 53, has been turned down despite being accepted by the United Network for Organ Sharing s national list, according to Lambda Legal, a New York-based advocacy group that als
STOCKHOLM (AP)-- Sweden Monday appointed a special ambassador to oversee the country s role in fighting HIV and AIDS at home and abroad, and pledged to give more money to a U.N. agency overseeing the global campaign against the virus. Lennart Hjelmaaker, head of the Foreign Ministry s global development office, was ta
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - South Africa s hero, former President Nelson Mandela, and the world s richest man, Bill Gates, called Monday on the African nation s youth to fight AIDS as previous generations battled apartheid. The two, along with their wives, made the appeal to a gathering of university students, urging
UNITED NATIONS - U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan warned Monday that AIDS has slipped from political agendas around the world, with efforts to fight the epidemic woefully inadequate. We are not on track to begin reducing the scale and impact of the epidemic by 2005, Annan said in opening a General Assembly session to
UNITED NATIONS - The world s financial and political response to curbing the AIDS epidemic has been woefully inadequate, with many countries failing to achieve goals set two years ago at a historic United Nations session on the disease, a new report said. As the U.N. General Assembly on Monday reviewed progress since i
NAIROBI, Kenya - Poor nations that have suspended patents on AIDS drugs to allow the use of generic equivalents have shown greater success in treating those infected with the disease, a medical aid agency said Monday. But a report by UNAIDS said most countries are still not meeting their goals in battling the pandemic
KUTINA, Croatia - As the United Nations holds a special session on the AIDS pandemic Monday, the case of an 8-year-old girl underscores the myths and prejudices that persist about the disease. In this central Croatian town, and elsewhere around the world, AIDS still often leads to ostracism.
NAIROBI, Kenya - The AIDS epidemic represents the biggest challenge to improving the lives of people in Africa, but the disease can be contained with the right programs and the required resources, according to a U.N. report released Sunday. UNAIDS - the agency responsible for coordinating global efforts to fight AI
GENEVA - As AIDS runs rampant in Africa and threatens calamity for India , China and Russia , epidemiologists say that even the promise of billions in rescue money cannot curb the disease as long as social and political barriers hamper the fight. Coping mechanisms are collapsing, Richard Feachem, head
WHITEHOUSE STATION, N.J. - Pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. said Friday that it has started the first global human tests of an experimental AIDS vaccine, working with the Seattle-based HIV Vaccine Trials Network. The experiment, which will include about 435 adult volunteers not infected with the HIV virus, is mean
SAN FRANCISCO -- A former city health commissioner who allegedly lied to an ex-boyfriend about his HIV status is the first person charged under a state law against intentionally exposing another person to the virus, prosecutors said. Ronald Gene Hill, 46, was arrested in Grass Valley, 50 miles northeast of Sacramento,
DUBAI (AP)--African economies will see significant economic growth in 2004, provided there is a substantial reduction in violence and more favorable weather conditions, according to a forecast by the International Monetary Fund released Thursday. The World Economic Outlook, released ahead of the upcoming meetings in D
UNITED NATIONS, New York -- A U.N. task force called Wednesday for sports to be given a greater role in promoting development and peace worldwide. A report by the U.N. Task Force on Sport and Development urges governments, nongovernment organizations and sports federations to use sports as a tool to bridge differences
BEDFORD, N.Y. -- Over bitter protests from law officers, 1960s radical Kathy Boudin was released from prison Wednesday after serving 22 years for murder in an armored car heist that left two policemen and a security guard dead. I m physically ill right now, said Brent Newbury, president of the Rockland County Patrolmen
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP)--The U.N. Wednesday announced the formation of a special commission to study the impact of AIDS on the economic, social and political stability of Africa. The 20-member commission brings together global experts on AIDS as well as government officials. Our task is to help governments and
MOSCOW (AP)--World Bank experts warned Tuesday that certain regions of Eastern Europe and Central Asia face an explosive AIDS epidemic that endangers the economic progress of the region. The Eastern Europe and Central Asia Region is experiencing the world s fastest growing HIV/AIDS epidemic, the World Bank said in a re
OTTAWA - Some of the first patients to smoke Canada s government-approved marijuana say it is disgusting and they want their money back. Health Canada, the federal health department, started selling marijuana in July to bring relief to patients suffering from AIDS, cancer and other diseases. The move followed a court o
ALBANY, N.Y. -- The state Health Department will soon cut the time limit within which newborns must be tested for the AIDS virus by three quarters to give drug therapies a better chance of preventing transmission of the disease from mother to baby. Under a new requirement on birth centers to take effect Nov. 1, the dep
CARACAS (AP)--President Hugo Chavez replaced his health minister Sunday but insisted the decision had nothing to do with widespread complaints about the state of Venezuela s public health system. Chavez said Maria Urbaneja was resigning because of personal career reasons and praised her work as health minister. The new
TORONTO - Canada s generic drug manufacturers want laws changed so they can supply poor countries with cheap copies of patented drugs to fight killer diseases, as permitted under a new World Trade Organization agreement. But an international trade ministry spokesman said Friday it will take time to study the issue and
KIGALI, Rwanda - Raising his right hand and touching Rwanda s flag with his left, Paul Kagame took the oath of office Friday as the nation s first popularly elected president since the 1994 genocide. The ceremony officially ended the transitional government set up in July 1994 after Kagame s rebel forces ended the geno
Associated Press - September 12, 2003, 11:02 AM EDT
MINNEAPOLIS -- The founder of the Parker Hughes Cancer Center is accused of excessively treating a terminally ill woman and seeking kickbacks in exchange for referring patients to other specialists, the Star Tribune reported Friday. The allegations against Dr. Fatih Uckun are part of a broad investigation into the Rose
SACRAMENTO (AP) -- Medical marijuana users could get identity cards designed to protect them from arrest by state and local law enforcement officers under legislation sent to the governor s desk Thursday. The bill by Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara, was given final approval by the Senate when it voted 24-14 to ad
WASHINGTON - Three prominent House Democrats on Thursday asked Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson to reconsider new rules imposed on HIV/AIDS prevention programs that get federal funds. HHS announced in July that a state or local health agency must approve any HIV/AIDS prevention material distributed by
NEW YORK - A New York hospital has offered former 1960s radical Kathy Boudin a job developing programs for HIV-positive women after she is released from prison. St. Luke s Hospital spokesman Jim Mandler said Wednesday that Boudin has been offered a privately funded position in the hospital s HIV-AIDS Center. Boud
MOSCOW - The number of Russians registered as having contracted HIV has reached 250,000 and efforts to slow the rapid spread of AIDS in the country have failed, officials said Wednesday. The proportion of HIV patients who contracted the disease through sexual contact doubled from 6 percent in 2001 to 12 percent last ye
MANILA, Philippines - The World Health Organization warned on Wednesday that an HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Asia-Pacific region could widen because of a rise in sexually transmitted infections, particularly among young adults. High-risk behavior is increasing and there are more sexually transmitted infections, notably in
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Near the squalor of Diepsloot squatter camp, basketball players dream of rim-rattling dunks and clutch 3-pointers that just might get them out of Africa. In my country, war has hurt us very much. Many people suffer because we don t have money, said 19-year-old Emanuel Maciel de Silva Neto.
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - A high-profile AIDS activist, who had vowed not to take AIDS drugs until the general South African population had access to them, announced Monday he has begun taking the potentially lifesaving medication. Zackie Achmat, an HIV-positive law student from Cape Town, changed his mind following t
WASHINGTON - A modified form of bacteria normally present in the vagina may one day be used to protect women from AIDS, according to new research. The engineered bacteria showed promise in laboratory testing, and researchers now plan to try them out in animals, said John A. Lewicki of Osel Inc., in Santa Clara, Calif.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) - It is too early to close the book on SARS and countries should assume that the devastating disease will come back, international health officials said Monday. Lee Jong-wook, the World Health Organization s director general, said the battle has been won over the world s newest disease, but war
Botswana (AP) - Donning both shimmering evening gowns and traditional Botswana costumes of animal-skin skirts, porcupine quills adorning their hair, 14 women competed in a beauty pageant for HIV positive women and their relatives. Some 38 percent of Botswana s people are HIV positive, the highest infection rate in t
SAO PAULO, Brazil - Brazil took the first formal step Thursday toward breaking patents with three pharmaceutical companies selling AIDS drugs to South America s largest country after talks failed to produce price reductions acceptable to the government. Negotiations are continuing with
(AP) - A man who bottled bacteria-tainted water and sold it as the lifesaving medicine Procrit was sentenced to more than 3 years in prison Wednesday. Eddy Gorrin, 30, had admitted to making the counterfeit drug, complete with imitation holographic safety seals, lot numbers and stamps almost identical to those on the r
HONG KONG -- China is fueling the spread of AIDS by refusing treatment and information about the disease and by failing to hold officials accountable for a blood-selling scandal blamed for infecting thousands of people, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday. Brad Adams, Asia division director of the New-York based Human Ri
BANGKOK, Thailand - U.N. officials on Tuesday urged Asia-Pacific countries to take decisive action against the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which they said is devastating the region the same way it ravaged Africa. Speakers at an annual meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific said th
The 146 members of the World Trade Organization agreed Saturday to allow some countries to import cheap copies of patented drugs to treat HIV infection and other diseases. This is what the agreement says: * A country can issue a compulsory license to import a drug if it confirms it has insufficient or no manufacturing
GENEVA - Heeding urgent appeals from African countries beset by AIDS, the World Trade Organization agreed Saturday to let impoverished nations import cheap copies of patented medicines needed to fight killer diseases. Member nations had approved the idea in principle Thursday night but kept haggling over an accompanyin
MIAMI - Two men were sentenced to prison or house arrest Friday for helping distribute vials of bacteria-tainted water passed off as the lifesaving medicine Procrit. William Chavez, 39, was sentenced to three months in prison for brokering sales of unlicensed drugs to undercover Food and Drug Administration agents.
CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush ordered the State Department on Friday to withhold U.S. family planning help from overseas groups that promote or perform abortions with their own money. The decision expands an order issued two years ago that applied only to family planning money administered by the U.S. Agency for Int
GENEVA - (AP) -- A World Trade Organization panel agreed Thursday to allow poor nations access to inexpensive copies of drugs to fight such diseases as AIDS and malaria after the United States dropped its objections. Approval by the WTO s council on intellectual property set the stage for the entire 146-member organiz
SAO PAULO - (AP) - Brazil is threatening to break patents and start producing three anti-AIDS drugs if three pharmaceutical companies don t slash prices. The cost has to go down so we can treat the patients, Marcia Lage, a spokeswoman for the Brazilian Health Ministry s AIDS division, said Thursday. Negotiations t
SACRAMENTO (AP) - State lawmakers, health officials and some national health groups are calling on condom makers to stop using a spermicide they say may actually increase the risk of AIDS and urinary tract infections. Citing several peer-reviewed scientific studies, the coalition is asking the federal Food and Drug Adm
GENEVA (AP) - The most emotionally charged problem in the World Trade Organization appeared near solution after key countries agreed on the wording of a deal that would allow poor nations to seek alternatives to expensive patented drugs for diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria. Negotiators who have struggled with the iss
WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department has cut off funding for an AIDS program benefiting African and Asian refugees, saying it believes a group taking part in the program supports involuntary abortions and sterilization in China . State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Wednesday funds were offered to six of se
(AP) - A new study finds that temporarily stopping AIDS treatment is ineffective and even dangerous as a strategy for controlling drug-resistant HIV. Many people being treated for AIDS carry mutant versions of the virus that are resistant to drugs in the three major classes of medicines used to subdue HIV. While many o
GENEVA (AP) - After almost two years of emotional wrangling, World Trade Organization members were close Wednesday evening to an agreement to allow poor nations to seek alternatives to expensive patented drugs for killer diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. The diplomat leading the talks at the WTO, Singap
GABORONE, Botswana (AP)--Botswana s war against AIDS should serve as a model for other countries fighting the disease, visiting U.S. Senate Majority leader Bill Frist said Tuesday. The southern African country has the highest HIV infection rate in the world - around 38% of its people are infected with the virus causes
TORONTO (AP) - Jari Dvorak scored two ounces of pot and lit up, but -- unlike in the past -- the deal involved no back alley exchange or hiding from police. This time, the 62-year-old Dvorak went to a doctor to pick up his supply, making him one of the first patients to receive government-grown marijuana. He paid $245,
GENEVA - World Trade Organization negotiators were staying tightlipped Tuesday amid rumors that they are on the verge of striking a deal on the long-deadlocked issue of ensuring that poor countries have access to expensive patented drugs to treat HIV/AIDS and other diseases. I am keeping my fingers crossed. I am trying
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (AP)--The U.S. and the European Union should lift limited sanctions against Zimbabwe because they only make life more difficult in the southern African country, Tanzania President Benjamin Mkapa said Monday as leaders from a trade bloc gathered for their annual summit.
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (AP) - Reducing trade barriers and fighting the spread of HIV top the list of issues leaders from a southern African trade bloc plan to discuss at their annual summit. The 13 leaders from the Southern Africa Development Community, which starts its two-day meeting Monday in Tanzania, hope to adop
GENEVA (AP) - After a weekend of desperate negotiating, the man leading talks to open up international trade made a last-ditch attempt Sunday to find agreement. World Trade Organization envoys gathered at the body s lakeside headquarters for a proposal by Carlos Perez del Castillo -- Uruguay s ambassador and chairman o
VIENTIANE, Laos (AP)-- Myanmar , a conservative country that wouldn t even acknowledge having prostitution just two years ago, has made great strides in promoting condom use to fight the spread of AIDS, said World Health Organization officials. This is an amazing shift in Myanmar s poli
SOWETO, South Africa (AP)--Visiting U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist suggested Thursday South Africa had to take the scope of the AIDS pandemic sweeping the country more seriously. Frist said in conversations with South Africa s trade minister he was told AIDS wasn t hurting the country s economy or lowering life
VIENTIANE, Laos (AP)--AIDS experts from several Asian countries agreed to expand a program to ensure rigorous condom use among prostitutes as they ended a regional meeting Thursday organized by the World Health Organization. The four-day meeting, tiled 100% Condom Use Program aimed at the sex industry, was told that
SOWETO, South Africa - The unemployed, HIV-positive South African woman sobbed Thursday as she told her story to a U.S. Senate delegation seeking to learn more about the AIDS epidemic ravaging sub-Saharan Africa. I can t afford medicine, it s too expensive. I know with your help my dream can come true, the 34-year-ol
JOHANNESBURG (AP)--The Road-Freight industry, a cornerstone of the South African economy, could be completely destroyed by HIV/AIDS, officials said Monday. The percentage of infected drivers compared with the rest of the population is much, much higher, Deputy Director General of the Health Department, Nthari Matsau sa
GABORONE, Botswana (AP) - A Botswana human rights organization has criticized the government for not passing legislation protecting people participating in HIV/AIDS vaccine trials. Alice Mogwe, director of the Botswana Center for Human Rights, said there was little legal protection for trial participants and the board
WASHINGTON - For the third time in a year, the federal government is examining the books of a group that promotes the use of condoms to fight AIDS and whose leaders have criticized the Bush administration s support for abstinence-only sex education. Auditors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are expec
ATLANTA - AIDS and gay rights activists are fighting Georgia s effort to collect the names of people who test positive for HIV in doctor s offices, saying the new proposal will threaten confidentiality and deter testing. Georgia is the last state in the country that does not collect HIV case data with personal identifi
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) -- Domestic violence against women is contributing to the spread of AIDS in Uganda, and the government should act to protect them, a human rights group said Wednesday. HIV-infected men force their wives to have unprotected sex, and women are afraid to seek testing, counseling or treatment because o
ATLANTA -- Georgia s push to collect the names of people who test positive for HIV in doctor s offices is being fought by AIDS activists who fear the new proposal will threaten confidentiality and deter testing. Georgia is the last state in the country that does not collect HIV case data with personal identifiers, such
BOSTON - A nationwide shortage of rhesus macaque monkeys is hampering efforts to create cures from new information such as the human genome sequence, organ transplant techniques, and the use of stem cells to replace diseased of damaged tissue, scientists say. The 15-pound monkeys have long been laboratory favorites bec
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)--California and other states that want to make marijuana available to sick or dying patients are flouting federal drug laws, a senior Bush administration lawyer said. California is the center of a long tug-of-war with the federal government over the medical value of marijuana and the power of state g
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- The South African government, under pressure to take stronger action against its AIDS pandemic, instructed the health ministry Friday to develop a plan for distributing AIDS drugs. About one in nine South Africans is HIV positive, but the South African government had refused to provi
YOL, Tajikistan (AP) -- Warrant Officer Amirali Niyozov and his men trekked for five hours to reach the isolated mountain spot near the Afghan border where they had been tipped a drug drop was going down. After four hours lying in wait, Niyozov heard footsteps: Afghans were making their way across the barren slopes.
NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- Lack of flexibility by developed nations is holding back progress on agreements that would help developing countries benefit from a liberal multilateral trade regime, an official from the World Trade Organization said Friday. Two years ago, trade ministers from 146 WTO member nations agreed on
AKRON, Ohio - Officials of a youth football league have reversed their decision to bar a former firefighter with AIDS from helping coach his 7-year-old son s team. Stephen Derrig, 36, was banned on Sunday from acting as assistant coach to the team of nearly 40 boys age 7 and 8. The Ellet Suburban Football League s boar
JOHANNESBURG (AP)--A long-delayed $41 million grant from the U.N. to help combat the AIDS pandemic ravaging South Africa was approved by the government Thursday, officials said. The grant includes money for AIDS drugs and testing for the disease in the KwaZulu-Natal province where studies show more than one in three ad
PRETORIA (AP)--A South African pharmaceutical company announced Wednesday it had begun producing the first cheap, generic copies of a major AIDS drug in Africa and was working on versions of several more AIDS medicines. The announcement by Aspen Pharmacare (O.APN) is considered an important step in the effort to bring
MEXICO CITY (AP)--The Mexican government will foot the bill for medications for all its citizens with AIDS, President Vicente Fox said Tuesday. About 10,000 Mexican AIDS patients who can t afford to pay for their own treatment already receive government funding for medications. It wasn t clear exactly how many more pat
SEATTLE (AP) -- Brian Wright, who helped choreograph winning routines for Kristi Yamaguchi and Michelle Kwan, died of AIDS at age 42. Wright, the U.S. Figure Skating Association s Choreographer of the Year in 1994, lived 17 years with HIV and eight with fully developed AIDS. He died July 29. He was a fighter. There wer
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - South Africa s top AIDS activist said Monday he is abandoning his pledge not to take potentially lifesaving AIDS drugs, ending an unsuccessful effort to force the government to give its people the medicine. Zackie Achmat, who has been HIV-positive for years, accused President Thabo Mbeki and
DURBAN, South Africa (AP)--Fighting the country s AIDS pandemic is one of the government s top priorities, Deputy President Jacob Zuma told the first South African conference on AIDS Sunday, trying to dispel concern here that authorities have not been aggressive in tackling the disease. The government has been crit
ATLANTA - Americans became complacent about safe sex. Revolutionary new drugs allowed HIV-infected people to live longer. A new generation of gay men entered their 20s without the memory of the early days of AIDS devastation. Health officials saw the signs and warned that AIDS - after declining for a decade - could mak
HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Zimbabwe s economic disaster is horrifyingly evident in the morgue at Harare Central Hospital, packed to more than three times capacity with the dead that relatives can t afford to bury. The morgue, designed for 164 corpses, holds nearly 600. Trays in the morgue often hold more than one adult body,
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Two AIDS activists have pleaded no contest to making harassing phone calls to public health officials and newspaper reporters. Michael Petrelis and David Pasquarelli were sentenced to three years probation in connection with phone calls in 2001. The men were also ordered to attend counseling sessi
NEW YORK - Giorgio Armani has a new muse: Barbie. Armani has created a strapless, silk chiffon top and crepe skirt embellished with dark beads and covered with sparkle tulle for the 11 1/2-inch doll. Both pieces are taupe. An evening purse, also in taupe crepe and dripping with beads, a matching necklace and earrings c
NEW YORK - A lawsuit against Democratic fund-raiser Denise Rich alleges that she asked an employee to make an illegal donation to Sen. Hillary Clinton, newspaper reports said Saturday. Jimmy Hester, who worked for Rich s record company until February 2002, reportedly filed the $30 million lawsuit Friday in federal cour
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP)--Budgetary restrictions are driving Brazil s government to once again threaten to strip AIDS drugs patents if pharmaceutical companies don t cut prices, officials said. The move seeks to protect its AIDS treatment program that provides free drugs to about 135,000 AIDS patients and has won praise acr
PHILADELPHIA - A bus company that offered a discount charter to a group of AIDS activists, only to have one of its drivers pull to the side of the road and refuse to continue because he didn t want to catch anything, settled a discrimination complaint Friday. Krapf Bus Companies agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to e
NEW YORK - TLC s Tionne T-Boz Watkins (news) is offering encouragement to those who have the HIV virus. She said people with HIV have everything to live for — not only for themselves but for their kids, brothers, sisters or relatives. Watkins and fellow group member Rozanda Chilli Thomas are promoting an AIDS education
CAPE TOWN (AP)--Threats by South Africa s Medicines Control Council to partially withdraw approval of a key AIDS drug have cast doubt on the future of efforts to prevent HIV infections in newborns. The council ruled Monday a key study on the drug nevirapine s effectiveness in preventing mother-to-child transmission of
UNITED NATIONS (AP)--The United Nations will hold a one-day session on the three leading killer diseases in developing countries in September in a bid to boost funding for programs to fight them, Secretary-general Kofi Annan said Wednesday. The Sept. 22 session is intended to galvanize support for the U.N. Fund to Fig
TOKYO (AP)--Japan s Red Cross shipped about 6,400 blood products possibly tainted with HIV, hepatitis or syphilis to patients across the country, officials said Wednesday. The Red Cross said it had recalled only 13 of the 6,419 possibly contaminated blood units shipped over the past year, and added that the remainder w
ATLANTA - AIDS groups gathered Tuesday to criticize a new federal HIV prevention policy, which they say focuses too much on people who already have the virus that causes AIDS and not enough on people at risk. About 250 activists gathered after sessions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention s National HIV Pr
ATLANTA - The number of newly diagnosed cases of HIV rose in the United States in 2002 for the first time in a decade, a disturbing turnaround that health officials say reflects growing complacency about the dangers of AIDS. For gays and bisexual men, AIDS diagnoses rose for the third straight year. If we let do
MONTREAL - Poor nations that want to use cheap copies of patented drugs to treat diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria might agree to give assurances that the drugs wouldn t be smuggled back to rich countries, a senior diplomat said Tuesday. Eduardo Perez Motta, Mexico s ambassador to the World Trade Organization, told T
ATLANTA - The number of newly diagnosed cases of HIV among gay and bisexual men rose in 2002 for the third straight year - a disturbing turnaround from the 1990s that health officials say reflects growing complacency about the dangers of AIDS. If we let down our guard even a little bit this is the kind of thing that c
ATLANTA - The government is unveiling a new surveillance system to better track HIV infections, scrapping an existing method that doesn t indicate how recently patients were infected. The new system no longer relies on AIDS cases data submitted by state health departments - half of which don t report those cases becaus
SAN FRANCISCO - Workshops on safe sex in San Francisco s Mission District. HIV-prevention skits developed by teenagers in Chicago. A ministry that counsels black women in Baltimore, where syphilis rates are shockingly high. All are among the programs that could lose funding under the new HIV prevention strategy from th
NEW DELHI, India (AP) - India s prime minister urged top policy-makers to make health issues part of the nation s political agenda in an effort to slow the rapid spread of HIV-AIDS. Indian Health Minister Sushma Swaraj told a conference of political leaders and AIDS workers Saturday that clinical trials were under way
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Workshops on safe sex in San Francisco s Mission District. HIV-prevention skits developed by teenagers in Chicago. A ministry that counsels black women in Baltimore, where syphilis rates are shockingly high. All are among the programs that could lose funding under the new HIV prevention strategy fr
The following community-based organizations receive some portion of their budgets directly from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to run HIV prevention programs. The groups must change the focus of their programs or risk losing their CDC money. ALASKA Alaska Native Health Board ALABAMA Birmingham Health C
WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress approved legislation Friday ordering prison officials to reduce the number of sexual assaults in the nation s jails and prisons. The House approved the bill by voice vote with no debate. The Senate had passed the bill on Monday. The bill now goes to President Bush. Experts estimate at least 1
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, is being criticized for a remark he made about an AIDS awareness program that serves the black community. In an interview with the Las Vegas Sun, Beers dismissed the Las Vegas-based Fighting AIDS in our Community Today as a program dedicated to putting condoms on gay
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A jury awarded nearly $2 million to a juvenile detention center cook who maintains he suffered years of discrimination and verbal harassment on the job because he was gay. Bruce Hope, 41, sued the state in 2001, alleging that he was denied a promotion and pressured to quit because of his sexual orie
GENEVA (AP)--The U.S. is working hard to solve a long-running problem over how to ensure that poor countries have access to vital but expensive drugs to treat diseases like AIDS and malaria, a senior negotiator said Thursday. We are not at the point of having a solution, but we attach a great deal of importance to find
INDIANAPOLIS -- An Indiana prosecutor is dusting off a little-used law to charge five HIV-infected people with knowingly selling their tainted blood to a plasma center. At least 15 states, including Indiana, have penalties for attempting to sell or donate HIV-positive blood. But charges are rare. When the information f
LOS ANGELES -- Hispanics comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population, but account for 20 percent of those living with AIDS, according to a study based on data from local and state health departments. What we have addressed here is that Latinos do not test, said Alberto Santana, a spokesman for the National Alliance of S
WASHINGTON - The House on Thursday approved a $17.1 billion foreign aid bill including two new initiatives by President Bush to fight AIDS in Africa and poverty around the world. Democratic critics said the AIDS money was short of what was promised and needed. The legislation passed, 370-50, after the House rejected an
KEY WEST - A Key West city commissioner has died after a long battle with AIDS. Jeremy Anthony, a 53-year-old landscaper who focused his political energy on beautifying Key West, was found dead at his home Monday. Police said there was no evidence of foul play and that Anthony apparently died of natural causes. Ste
MIAMI - Pharmacists and drug store workers checked their inventories after state investigators conceded there was a small chance bogus or watered down medications may have made their way onto shelves. Concerns about the safety of the state s drug supply surfaced when prosecutors said Monday that 19 people had been indi
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Haiti has become the first country in the world to implement a program spearheaded by President Bush to stem mother-to-child HIV/AIDS transmission. The mother-to-child program is a part of Bush s proposal to spend $15 billion over five years to help the hardest-hit African and Caribbean nations
WASHINGTON - Political unrest and war have affected the ability of many developing nations in Africa and Asia to promote family planning and literacy programs that could reduce soaring birth rates and poverty levels, the author of a new demographic study says. European nations - more industrialized and prosperous - fac
NUTLEY, N.J. - Century-old Swiss drug giant Roche Group, the parent of Hoffmann-La Roche , is returning to its roots and, potentially, its glory days. Early on, the Basel-based pharmaceutical company made a variety of novel drugs aimed at the masses, from painkillers and sleep aids to heart drugs, antibiotics and brea
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A Florida grand jury investigating pharmaceutical wholesalers indicted 19 people on charges of peddling bogus or diluted medications for cancer and AIDS patients, authorities said Monday. Michael Carlow and 17 others were indicted on a variety of charges including racketeering, conspiracy and ot
GENEVA - A senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has been appointed as the new AIDS chief at the World Health Organization , the U.N. agency s chief said Monday. WHO director-general Dr. Jong-wook Lee said he had picked Dr. Jack Chow to head a newly created department which is meant to fine-tune WHO s
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - A Florida grand jury investigating pharmaceutical wholesalers indicted 19 people on charges of peddling bogus or diluted medications for cancer and AIDS patients, authorities said Monday. Michael Carlow and 17 others were indicted on a variety of charges including racketeering, conspiracy a
GENEVA (AP) - The new head of the United Nations health agency took office Monday, pledging to boost the fight against AIDS and other global killers. World Health Organization director-general Dr. Jong-wook Lee also said he wanted to improve international monitoring to help tackle outbreaks of diseases such as SARS.
Black families gains in income and education are being undermined - at least to some degree - by rising incarceration rates and a persistent unemployment gap compared with whites, the Urban League says in its latest report on the state of black America. Black families are strong but challenged, said Urban League Presid
GARDEN GROVE, Calif. (AP) - The Rev. Herb Hall, an evangelist who sought to bridge the gap between HIV-infected Christians and their churches, has died of complications stemming from AIDS. He was 47. Hall died July 12 in Garden Grove. A former layperson, Hall co-founded his ministry, He Intends Victory, after being di
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Under a clear, blue sky, about 20,000 volunteers marched through Golden Gate Park in Sunday s AIDS Walk, collecting $3.1 million to help battle the deadly disease. Considering the poor state of the local economy, we re really pleased with the overall success of this event, said Redge Horton, spokes
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - The best birthday gift for Nelson Mandela would be for the world to do more for Africa, former President Bill Clinton said Saturday. Presenting the inaugural Nelson Mandela Lecture to an auditorium packed with foreign and local dignitaries, Clinton praised Mandela as a gift to humanity.
ATLANTA (AP) - Doctors need to have more detailed discussions about sex and drug use with HIV patients to keep them from spreading the virus, federal officials said Thursday as they announced guidelines intended to help cut new infections in half. The changes put more responsibility on doctors, many of whom have said t
WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (AP) - A man who said he was refused admission to a personal care home because its staff was uncomfortable caring for someone with AIDS has settled a complaint against the facility, his attorneys said Thursday. The 56-year-old man, also legally blind, ended his discrimination complaint after the Lovin
WASHINGTON - The House on Wednesday approved a $31 billion State Department bill that seeks to promote better communication with Muslim countries, outlines a plan to double Peace Corps volunteers and reaffirms the president s authority to deny funds for a U.N. family planning agency. The legislation, passed 382-42, aut
WASHINGTON (AP) - A House committee decided Wednesday that spending on a global HIV-AIDS prevention and treatment measure should be held to $2 billion for its first year, despite Democratic efforts to add $1 billion. The House Appropriations Committee voted down an amendment by Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., that would have
PARIS (AP) -- About 10 percent of Europeans infected with HIV contract a strain of the virus that is resistant to at least one AIDS drug, according to the first large-scale study of the problem. Scientists have known that HIV can become resistant to drugs and that resistant strains can be spread, but the extent of the
LOS ANGELES (AP) - An HIV-positive gymnast filed a federal complaint Tuesday accusing Cirque du Soleil of denying him the chance to take part in an acrobatic act in its Las Vegas show. Matthew Cusick, 31, of Maryland, alleges the company violated state and federal discrimination laws by firing him. His complaint was fi
PARIS - Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson said Tuesday he is confident American lawmakers will approve at least $2 billion this year to launch President Bush s emergency AIDS relief plan for the developing world. Bush announced in his State of the Union address in February an unprecedented plan to s
LOS ANGELES - Grammy-winning guitarist Carlos Santana has been working for free this summer so that those engaged in the fight against AIDS may benefit. Santana, who pledged the net proceeds from the U.S. leg of his Shaman tour to the fight against the AIDS pandemic in Africa, wrapped up the 23-city tour Monday night w
PARIS - New research presented Tuesday has raised the possibility of safer breast-feeding by HIV-positive mothers in the developing world, an advance that could save millions of lives. Programs aimed at preventing mother-to-child transmission of the AIDS virus in poor countries only treat mothers during pregnancy and u
PARIS - Evidence is growing that superinfection with more than one strain of HIV may be more common than previously thought, which could complicate efforts to make a vaccine, experts said Monday at an international AIDS conference. Scientists reported three new cases of HIV-infected people who initially were doing well
PARIS - The failure of the world to share lifesaving AIDS treatment with the millions of people who need it most in the developing world is a travesty, Nelson Mandela told the biggest AIDS research conference of the year Monday. But the former South African president praised President Bush for his leadership in fightin
WASHINGTON - President Bush s journey to Africa was also an outreach to black voters at home, an attempt to bridge a gulf as wide as the ocean separating the two continents. On his hurried travels, Bush inevitably moved in the lively shadow of Bill Clinton, who showed plentiful enthusiasm for Africa even if, in the end
PARIS - A leading economist on Sunday dismissed arguments that treating HIV in developing countries is not cost-effective and increases the virus resistance, saying it is more expensive not to treat the virus that causes AIDS. Jean-Paul Moatti, an authority on the economics of AIDS, told scientists at the opening of an
ABUJA, Nigeria - President Bush closed a five-nation tour of Africa on Saturday with words of hope and offers of help for Africa s battle against the deadly AIDS pandemic sweeping the continent. The progress we are already seeing in parts of Africa is proof that AIDS can be defeated in Africa, Bush told an annual sum
ABUJA, Nigeria - President Bush chose a nation where about 1 million children have been orphaned by AIDS as the place to wrap up his five-nation tour of a continent struggling to contain the disease. Bush was meeting privately Saturday with President Olusegun Obasanjo, and Liberia ,
MAPUTO, Mozambique - Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi told a conference of African leaders Saturday that Africans who are straight need not fear AIDS, which is ravaging many countries on the continent. Speaking through a translator, Gadhafi drew some laughter with his reference to AIDS only affecting homosexuals. He t
ENTEBBE, Uganda - President Bush looked into the eyes of AIDS patients in this country that has stemmed its once-spiraling infection rate and declared: Life by life, village by village, Uganda is showing that AIDS can be defeated across Africa. Speaking Friday in the courtyard of an AIDS clinic where he met about two d
WASHINGTON - While President Bush was telling Africans they can count on the United States in their struggle against AIDS, the House moved Thursday to approve only two-thirds of the money available in 2004 for a global HIV-AIDS prevention and treatment act Bush signed in May. Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., chairman of the Ho
GABORONE, Botswana - President Bush pledged to the nation with the world s highest AIDS infection rate that it will have a strong partner in his administration in fighting the disease. You will not face this enemy alone, he said Thursday. Bush s remarks were greeted with chants of Pula! Pula!, which means all good
KAMPALA, Uganda - Compared to the other countries President Bush is visiting in Africa, Uganda is a political and economic lightweight with few democratic credentials. Bush, however, has other reasons for making a four-hour stop Friday in the Oregon-sized country in East Africa. When it comes to security and trade,
GABORONE, Botswana -- First lady Laura Bush, sitting between two 9 year olds with HIV, said Thursday she hoped state-of-the-art pediatric AIDS clinics run by an American medical school showcased her country s compassion for AIDS-ravaged Africa. Mrs. Bush, accompanying President Bush on his first presidential tour of Af
GABORONE, Botswana - Botswana s fears and hopes are contained in the small metal HIV test trays that proliferate at clinics throughout this AIDS-ravaged country. U.S. funding for the clinics is part of a broader effort to bolster this southern African democracy and prove that dictators, civil war, and economic devasta
GABORONE, Botswana - Daylight had not yet broken and the sandy courtyard of the family home was packed with mourners. Many had been there all night, warming hands by a crackling wood fire and drifting from hymn to hymn, voices lifted in rich-throated harmony in farewell to a 33-year-old construction worker who died of
TORONTO - Canada s government will sell marijuana and seeds to sick people and their suppliers to fulfill a court order for it to provide medical cannabis by Wednesday. The announcement of the interim measure satisfies an Ontario court order while the federal government appeals the ruling. Under the program announced b
GOREE ISLAND, Senegal - American slavery was one of history s greatest crimes, President Bush said Tuesday at the very spot where hundreds of thousands of Africans were bought and sold like cargo. Embarking on a five-nation tour of Africa, Bush also edged toward sending U.S. troops to help end a three-year civil war i
EMERYVILLE, Calif. - Chiron Corp. Monday said it settled antitrust complaints by European blood banks over the pricing of its hepatitis and HIV tests. Chiron, the Emeryville-based biotechnology company, said the Commission of the European Communities had accepted a joint settlement proposal made by Chiron and its Europ
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - When President Bush visits Africa this week, he will find a continent crippled by catastrophe. Millions upon millions are already dead, orphaned or sick from AIDS. The continent s triple scourges of poverty, disease and hunger are getting worse every day, exacerbated by the deadly pla
(AP) - President Bush travels this week to Africa, where he will visit some of the leaders who could help steer the troubled continent to a more prosperous future. President Thabo Mbeki, 61, South Africa : Took power in 1999 after the retirement of anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela. Has championed the New Partnership
MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica -- Caribbean leaders promised to merge their fragile economies to confront the free-trade era, strengthen tourism and work together to fight crime and AIDS at a four-day summit that ended Saturday. Leaders agreed to establish a European Union-style commission to oversee their 15-member single mark
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - When President Bush arrives in Uganda next week he will meet a leader who says all the right things about free trade and terrorism and has overseen one of the world s most successful fights against the spread of HIV. What he won t find is a full-fledged democracy. Bush is making a five-day, f
SAPULPA, Okla. - (AP) -- A convicted rapist has been sentenced to life in prison for spitting on a police officer. Creek County Associate District Judge April Sellers White followed the recommendation of a jury for the maximum sentence against John C. Marquez under a law that makes it a felony to place bodily fluids o
GENEVA (AP)--The World Food Program appealed Wednesday for $308 million to feed 6.5 million people in southern Africa over the next year. It said that harvests have largely recovered from last year s debilitating drought but the hunger caused by the AIDS epidemic is worse than expected. The U.N. food agency said that t
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush named a former pharmaceutical company executive director of a new $15 billion program to battle the disease in Africa and the Caribbean. Bush, making the announcement Wednesday, said Randall Tobias would have the rank of ambassador. The former chief executive officer for
WASHINGTON - President Bush pledged Wednesday that the United States will deal harshly with those who attack American troops in Iraq , and said such violence will not undercut his resolve to keep Americans there until stability is restored. Anybody who wants to harm American troops will be
WASHINGTON - Of the first 42 American presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are the only ones to make extended visits to sub-Saharan Africa. On Monday, it will be George W. Bush s turn. The 43rd president is going to five countries next week - Senegal , South Africa ,
BUDAPEST -- Government mistreatment of drug users and others vulnerable to contracting AIDS is contributing to the spread of the disease across Central and Eastern Europe, human rights advocates said Monday. They said repressive drug laws criminalizing drug use, as well as abuses by law enforcement and public health au
GENEVA - Nearly a billion people in farming communities across the world need urgent help with jobs, education and sustainable farming methods that will give them a way out of poverty, the U.N. Secretary-General said Monday. Kofi Annan told the opening session of the U.N. Economic and Social Council that some 900 milli
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic development and conflict resolution will be among the topics that President Bush will focus on when he travels to five African countries next week. Four of the five -- Senegal , South Africa , Botswana and Nigeria -- are led by el
LIMA, Peru - Flanked by her three small children at a crowded government clinic in one of the shantytowns ringing this capital city, Maria Morales said she would have liked to have had a tubal ligation. Instead, she is seven months pregnant. It seemed like the best choice to me, she said of the sterilization surg
SAN FRANCISCO(AP) -- Add hepatitis B to the list of diseases alongside AIDS, herpes and the common cold researchers are using in attempts to create medicines in the sometimes rocky gene therapy research field. On Sunday, a scientific team of 12 Japanese and Belgium researchers reported it had some success in using a s
(AP) - Researchers are reporting progress in the quest to infect mice with HIV, which would allow more widespread use of the common laboratory animal in studying the virus that causes AIDS. An incremental step reported by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, is the latest in a decade-long effort.
LAS VEGAS - In a city known more for sin than virtue, a group of virgins from around the country gathered this weekend to send a message: wait until marriage. It was a clash of the Good Girls and the sin-seekers as about 200 teens, parents and youth counselors descended on the Strip to pass out cards promoting abstine
ATLANTA (AP) - Dr. Julie Gerberding seems as comfortable behind the wheel of her weathered pickup as she is posing in a Chanel suit and Marc Jacobs heels in the pages of Vogue. She appears as confident studying diseases in an Atlanta lab as she is planning policy with Washington s political elite. And in just a year, t
JOHANNESBURG -- South Africa s social development minister said Friday that a new approach is needed to fight AIDS, which he said threatens the security, stability and development of the country. Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya said the country needs a new vision, new ideas and a new policy development to ta
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Canada will open North America s first legal safe-injection site for drug addicts later this year, a decision that drew swift criticism from White House drug czar John Walters. The so-called shooting gallery will be federally funded, a 12-seat facility where addicts will be given the equi
LONDON - The lives of 6 million children under 5 could be saved every year if flu shots and other low-cost measures to prevent or treat disease were more widely used, global health experts say. Every year, nearly 11 million children worldwide die before their fifth birthday, most from preventable causes such as diarrhe
WASHINGTON (AP) - A crash program to develop an AIDS vaccine may be the only way to reduce a worldwide death toll that could reach 70 million by 2020, some of the world s leading researchers say. Twenty-four scientific leaders advanced a formal proposal in the journal Science on Thursday calling for a network of coordi
WASHINGTON - AIDS will kill 70 million people worldwide by 2020 unless a successful vaccine is found, health authorities say. They recommended a crash program aimed solely at finding the best way to protect humans from HIV. In a formal proposal appearing this week in the journal Science, some of the world s leading res
WASHINGTON (AP) - As many as 5 million ancient and recent manuscripts may lie unexplored in West African private libraries and hidden underground, and some may provide clues to diseases that have spread from the continent, the Librarian of Congress says. I d bet there s material in those African manuscripts about disea
WASHINGTON (AP) - Which war has claimed the most lives since World War II? Korea? Vietnam ? Not even close. The answer is the continuing conflict in Congo. There are no firm figures on the death toll, but the range is believed to lie between 2 million and 4.7 million. Assuming the low end estimate, that s equivalent to
WASHINGTON - Having failed to halt the Republican tax-cutting juggernaut, congressional Democrats are trying a new tactic: linking tax reductions to what they say are shortfalls for protecting ports, educating handicapped students and paying for other important programs. Even many Republicans concede that the 2004 budg
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A federal trial began Monday for a poultry researcher accused of selling powdered egg yolks as a way to cure everything from attention deficit disorder to cancer. Prosecutors said Marilyn Coleman falsely told people the eggs had federal approval and could help the immune system, but defense attorneys a
SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt - Trade leaders from around the world ended a two-day meeting Sunday with doubts about the chances for a new trade treaty by the end of next year. The gathering of 29 members of the World Trade Organization failed to find common ground on reducing subsidies to increase international competition in
CAIRO (AP)--Trade ministers from across the globe are to meet this weekend in hopes of settling major disagreements, from making AIDS drugs affordable in poor nations to opening up protected agriculture markets. The ministers from 29 World Trade Organization members were attending an informal two-day meeting in the Egy
PORTO CARRAS, Greece (AP)--European Union leaders meeting at a summit here failed to agree Friday to match the U.S. in pledging $1 billion next year to a global fund to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. The leaders issued a statement saying they were committed to fighting the diseases on a long-term basis and to
WASHINGTON - The government has approved the first once-a-day protease inhibitor to treat the AIDS virus. Protease inhibitors are a powerful type of drug that revolutionized HIV care in the mid-1990s. While they re not a cure, protease inhibitors taken together with older AIDS medicines suppress HIV enough to allow ma
PHOENIX - The Southern Baptist Convention denounced same-sex marriage and homosexuality at its annual meeting, while asking members to help gays become heterosexual through Christian faith. The nation s largest Protestant denomination also spent much of the gathering that ended Wednesday defending the right of evangeli
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Aiming to stem an alarming rise in syphilis, San Francisco health officials are turning to the place where they say many infected residents meet their sexual partners: the Internet. The Department of Public health launched a Web site this week where people who think they may have contracted syphili
PARIS (AP) - France s highest court on Wednesday threw out cases against 30 medics accused of giving patients AIDS-tainted blood, a decade-old scandal that shook the public health establishment. More than 4,000 people, mainly hemophiliacs, were infected by blood products tainted with the HIV virus. Several hundred have
WASHINGTON -- A flu vaccine that is the first to be delivered by a squirt up the nose instead of a needle in the arm has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for healthy people from 5 to 49. The vaccine, called FluMist, was approved by the FDA even though it was given only a tentative endorsement by an ad
GALLUP, N.M. (AP) -- Dr. Jonathan Iralu shakes his head in frustration, recalling the week that four Navajo patients showed up at his hospital and left with the same alarming diagnosis: syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease all but vanquished on the reservation years ago. Worried that a health crisis was taking shap
KARACHI (AP)--Murad Ali, a chronic drug addict, injects Valium into his left arm in broad daylight near an open sewer in Karachi, cursing his fate for not being able to afford the strong stuff that he craves - heroin. Ali, in his late 20s, hasn t been able to afford heroin for the past year, largely because of a steep
UNITED NATIONS (AP)--Leading human rights and aid agencies called the situation in Congo one of the world s largest humanitarian tragedies and demanded urgent action to halt the sexual abuse and forced recruitment of children. In a 36-page report, a network of agencies called on all parties in Congo s war to uphold int
PRETORIA, South Africa (AP)--Drugs that block the virus that causes AIDS will be offered soon throughout South Africa, a top government council said Saturday. The South African National AIDS Council didn t give a specific date for the releasing the antiretroviral drugs, but said the government was at an advanced stage
SAN FRANCISCO - Federal health officials have warned an HIV/AIDS prevention program that its federal funding will be cut if it does not stop offering classes that encourage or promote sexual activity. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention specifically criticized the nonprofit Stop AIDS Project for a wo
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- Children are dying of hunger in Zimbabwe and many others will die if emergency action is not taken soon, U.N. officials said Friday. A survey children under six years old by the United Nations agency for children, UNICEF, found high levels of severe malnutrition in several areas, es
WASHINGTON (AP) - Sudan is supporting rebels in northern Uganda because it wants to expand into territory of its east African neighbor, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said Friday. In an interview with The Associated Press, he denied that Uganda was supporting tribal fighters in northeast Congo as a proxy in a strug
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad - A worker holds the painfully thin boy s hand as he walks unsteadily through the cramped orphanage to join other children saying their ABCs. The 5-year-old already has been diagnosed with full-blown AIDS. But his health has improved since he arrived in October and started taking antiretrovira
WASHINGTON (AP) - Public health authorities are scrambling to combat the nation s first outbreak of monkeypox -- including a controversial recommendation of smallpox vaccinations for people who may have been exposed. Several cases of monkeypox have been confirmed in the United States , with more than 50 possible ca
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell says the global campaign against AIDS is just as important to the United States as the war with Iraq or any other aspect of U.S. foreign policy. I can envision a day in this century when every man is free of tyranny and poverty, Powell told b
WASHINGTON - The ancestry of the virus that caused the AIDS epidemic has been traced to two strains of virus found in monkeys in Africa. The viruses probably passed into chimpanzees when the apes ate infected monkey meat, researchers say. Earlier studies have shown that HIV1, the virus that causes the most common form
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Wednesday proposed the creation of a national medical translation hotline that hospital employees could use to communicate with Hispanic and immigrant patients day or night. The North Carolina senator said language barriers are a main reason that Hisp
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush sought new ways to combat terror and AIDS during Oval Office meetings with the leaders of Uganda and Thailand on Tuesday. Bush met in the morning with Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Afterward, they urged Myanmar s military government to release immediately the opposition leade
CHICAGO - Health officials investigating an outbreak of monkeypox that apparently spread from pet prairie dogs to people said Monday the number of reported cases has risen to at least 37, including four that have been confirmed. It is the first time monkeypox, a smallpox-related virus normally found in Africa, has ever
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The World Health Organization s long- held position that dirty needles cause 2.5 percent of African HIV exposures is too conservative, says a leading researcher at the U.N. agency, prompting questions about a congressional bill focused mainly on unsafe sex. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy T
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - About 300 black church pastors and activists gathered for a meeting on AIDS in the black community, and the message they got from Pernessa Seele was simple: Get involved. Seele is founder and head of a group called The Balm in Gilead, which for 14 years has helped black churches address AIDS in their
CLOVIS, Calif. (AP) - When Duran Hernandez told his little sister he was gay, she cried. She thought it might be dangerous, Hernandez said. When Tomas Guerra thought he might be gay, he went to talk to a Catholic priest. It was just flat-out no, Guerra recalled. Things might have been different if either teen lived in
WASHINGTON - President Bush is bringing the leaders of Thailand and Uganda to the White House on Tuesday for talks on trade, increased AIDS-fighting money and other topics. Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has suggested that the United States and the southern Asia country enter into ne
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - About 300 black church pastors and activists gathered for a meeting on AIDS in the black community, and the message they got from Pernessa Seele was simple: Get involved. Seele is founder and head of a group called The Balm in Gilead, which for 14 years has helped black churches address AIDS in their
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) - Guitarist Carlos Santana said Thursday he will donate the net proceeds from his upcoming concert tour to help fight AIDS in Africa. The rocker hopes to raise between $2.5 million and $3 million during his U.S. Shaman tour, said tour manager Kevin Chisholm. We invite you to join us in spread
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Medical marijuana users would get identity cards designed to protect them from arrest under legislation approved by the state Senate. The bill, passed Monday, would require the state Department of Health Services to develop the card program. County health departments would verify the qualifications
SAN FRANCISCO - Several hemophiliacs filed a lawsuit against Bayer Corp. and other companies, claiming they exposed patients to HIV and hepatitis C by selling medicine made with blood from sick, high-risk donors. The lawsuit allege the companies continued distributing the blood-clotting product in Asia and Latin Americ
LOS ANGELES - Carlos Santana plans to put his music and his money up as weapons in the fight against AIDS. Santana intends to donate the proceeds from this summer s United States portion of the Shaman tour to benefit Artists for a New South Africa (ANSA). The donations will be earmarked for grants and aid to So
EVIAN, France - After winning new contributions for fighting AIDS, world leaders were turning their attention Monday to other global problems, such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation and the world economy. President Bush scored two victories in the opening day of talks. Not only did European nations pledge to match B
BRUSSELS, Belgium - European Union health ministers gave their preliminary approval on sweeping new rules for drug approvals Monday, creating a single EU drugs agency with similar powers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Under the proposal, the drug industry would be required to follow a centralized procedure
EVIAN, France - World leaders sought to put the deep divisions of the Iraq war behind them on Sunday by demonstrating a more united front on efforts to combat poverty and AIDS in the developing world. President Bush challenged other nations to follow America s lead and pledge dramatic incr
EVIAN, France - World leaders clamped a harmonious face on a summit simmering with Iraq war disputes Sunday, striking a united front with pledges of billions of dollars to fight AIDS and hunger in poor nations. The meeting s most closely watched moment was the welcoming handshake between F
EVIAN, France - World leaders sought to put the deep divisions of the Iraq war behind them on Sunday by demonstrating a more united front on efforts to combat poverty and AIDS in the developing world. President Bush challenged other nations to follow America s lead and pledge dramatic inc
EVIAN, France - World leaders clamped a harmonious face on a summit simmering with Iraq war disputes Sunday, striking a united front with pledges of billions of dollars to fight AIDS and hunger in poor nations. The meeting s most closely watched moment was the welcoming handshake between
UNITED NATIONS - With more than a billion people still struggling to survive on less than a dollar a day, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged leaders of the major industrialized nations Thursday to double their aid to developing countries and keep promises to drop trade barriers. In an open letter to the leaders wh
NTENYO, Rwanda (AP) -- Shuffling her feet on a dirt floor, Pascazia Mukamana remembers how quickly her life changed when she became a parent to two siblings after their mother died of AIDS. Her elder brother eventually left home, abandoning the small plot where the family s food is grown, the 16-year-old said in the fa
WASHINGTON - Teenagers at high schools where condoms were available were no more likely to have sex than other teens, a study published Wednesday finds. The study confirms earlier research on the programs developed in the 1990s to stem the spread of HIV and reduce teen pregnancy. It found that students in high schools
VIENNA, Austria - G-strings and feathers replaced the usual staid gray suits and power ties at Vienna City Hall as Elton John took the stage for the Austrian capital s annual Life Ball to benefit AIDS charities. John dedicated For The Boy In The Red Shoes to a friend who died of AIDS, but the mood was far from somber a
WASHINGTON - President Bush said the $15 billion global AIDS bill he signed on Tuesday is the moral duty of the United States to act against a disease that has killed more than 20 million people worldwide. We believe in the value and dignity of every human life, Bush said, likening the AIDS initiative to U.S. relief an
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A one-two punch of malaria DNA virus and the virus used to vaccinate against smallpox spurs the human immune system to mount a powerful defense against malaria, researchers report. This approach might provide a basis for preventive and therapeutic vaccination in people, scientists said in a paper tha
BRUSSELS, Belgium - European Union governments Monday approved a measure to encourage pharmaceutical companies to sell cut-rate AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis drugs to poor countries by reducing worries the medicines will end up on the black market back in Europe. But an industry group said it was unlikely many drug co
BLANTYRE, Malawi - A group of religious leaders in Malawi decided Monday to lobby the government to halt condom distribution, despite the devastating AIDS pandemic that has hit the country. The religious leaders said that religious teachings of Christianity and Islam, the main religions in Malawi, do not support the us
BALTIMORE - Refusing to bend to pressure from the Bush administration, Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich signed a bill Thursday that reduces criminal penalties for seriously ill people who smoke marijuana. Ehrlich is the first GOP governor to sign a bill protecting medical marijuana patients from jail, according to the Ma
GENEVA -- Poor countries are granting more patents on medicines than necessary, making crucial drugs far too costly for them, the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said in a report Thursday. Many developing countries don t have the scientific expertise to decide whether a patent is justified, so they grant pro
FRANKFURT, Germany -- Chemical and drug maker Bayer AG said Thursday it acted responsibly, ethically and humanely during the 1980s in selling a blood-clotting product that stopped potentially fatal bleeding in hemophiliacs but was linked to the risk of HIV infection. The company s statement was in response to a New
KUALA LUMPUR (AP)--About 20 delegates, mostly Muslim scholars, stormed out of international conference on AIDS after an American academic suggested that some Islamic teachings worsen the spread of the disease, participants said Wednesday. The delegates accused Amina Wadud, an associate professor of Islamic studies at t
LAGOS, Nigeria - At a rickety table in a Lagos market, a man identifying himself as Native Doctor Ndubuisi displayed his wares: tree barks, dried roots, shriveled vines, fresh leaves and balls of clay. In this natural apothecary, he claimed, lay the treatment for the world s latest dreaded disease, SARS. There is
WASHINGTON - The House on Wednesday passed and sent the White House a $15 billion global AIDS bill, giving President Bush a powerful leverage as he asks other Western leaders to work harder in the fight against the deadly disease. Passage of the five-year plan aimed at AIDS prevention and treatment in 14 African and Ca
GENEVA - Prices for vital medicines vary dramatically from one developing country to another, and cheaper generic drugs are often unavailable, the U.N. health agency said Tuesday. The World Health Organization , in conjunction with Health Action International, released a computer-aided guide that allows governments to
GABORONE, Botswana (AP) -- Botswana is scheduled to begin tests on an AIDS vaccine to find out if it is safe when given to healthy adults, officials said Monday. The experimental vaccine, which has already been tested successfully on mice and rabbits, will be tested to determine the immune responses of healthy adults w
ASHLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Students at Southern Oregon University say they will cancel their blood drive this term because many gay men are ineligible. Guidelines established by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ban males who have had a homosexual encounter since 1977. Some students say that goes against the university
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush praised Congress on Friday for giving the hope of life to millions by voting to greatly increase U.S. spending against global AIDS. The challenge now, advocates said, is making sure those hopes aren t dashed. The Senate early Friday, responding to an appeal Bush made in his State of th
The Bush administration wants to make it easier for religious groups that offer social services to apply for money from eight housing programs. Groups that currently receive money from the following two programs are forbidden by law to make employment decisions based on religion: * HOME Investment Partnerships Program:
WASHINGTON - The Senate voted early Friday to fund relief for millions of AIDS victims worldwide, moving swiftly so President Bush can go to next month s summit in France with powerful evidence of American intent to combat the deadly disease. The five-year, $15 billion measure targeted to AIDS victims in sub-Saharan Af
WASHINGTON - The Senate has given President Bush the $15 billion he sought to take on the scourge of global AIDS and prod the rest of the world to follow America s lead. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a doctor, hailed passage early Friday of the five-year plan as the first major step in reversing this greatest of h
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - A U.N. women s organization called Friday for the establishment of an international commission to delve into violence and brutality endured by women. Noeleen Heyzer, executive director of UNIFEM, the U.N. fund for women, told Parliament the proposed agency should be modeled on South Africa s T
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate moved Thursday toward a quick vote on spending to fight AIDS worldwide, a measure that would give President Bush a boost when he seeks a greater international effort at next month s meeting of world leaders in France . The five-year, $15 billion measure targeted to AIDS victims in sub-Saha
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- In an attempt to fight the spread of AIDS, Illinois lawmakers passed legislation that would make it easier for drug users to obtain clean needles. The Illinois House voted 70-48 Tuesday to lift a requirement that people have a prescription to buy needles and syringes. Gov. Rod Blagojevich expe
SEATTLE - Worldwide spending to prevent new infections by the AIDS virus should be increased by $3.8 billion by 2005, an advocacy group recommended Tuesday. The report by the Global HIV Prevention Working Group said fewer than one in five people at risk of being infected by HIV worldwide has access to prevention progra
WASHINGTON - One form of the virus that causes AIDS made the jump from animals to people by 1940, a new analysis indicates. HIV-2 didn t spread across West Africa until the 1960s, perhaps spurred by a war in Guinea-Bissau , where researchers say it originated. HIV-2, which is common in West Africa, is genetically diffe
BEIJING - Chinese basketball star Yao Ming hosted a telethon to raise money for SARS research Sunday, while subway riders in Taiwan s capital of Taipei were ordered to wear surgical masks to curb the spread of the highly contagious illness. China s number of new cases reported Sunday was 69, the lowest number in weeks,
WASHINGTON - A gay Republicans group says it is trying to get beyond the flap over Sen. Rick Santorum s derogatory remarks about homosexual behavior, yet it is that very controversy that helped double the attendance at its annual convention. Comments by the conservative Republican from Pennsylvania, the GOP takeover of
BEIJING - The subway system in Taiwan s capital became a new front in the war against SARS on Sunday as a top Chinese Communist Party official called for total victory against the disease. Elsewhere, an AIDS researcher said the SARS virus seems to attack human cells in a manner akin to HIV, which may offer clues for fi
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) -- A police crackdown on drug dealers in downtown Vancouver is causing more harm than good for the neighborhood s AIDS and hepatitis epidemic, a Human Rights Watch report says, asserting addicts are being driven away from needle-exchange programs and other services. Called Operation Tor
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An international fund that is a key to the Bush administration s $15 billion plan to fight global AIDS is threatened by a lack of money, according to a congressional report made public Wednesday. The report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative wing of Congress, could bolster the argume
TRENTON, N.J. -- A recent spike in the number of New Jersey men infected with syphilis has public health officials worried. The number has more than tripled in the last three years. According to figures released last week by the state health department, 121 men were diagnosed last year with syphilis in its first or sec
Bay Area health officials are warning gay men that the rate of HIV infection is high among those using crystal methamphetamine, also known as speed, on the raging party and club circuit. Some city health professionals have concluded that rampant use of the drug among gay men is fueling behavior that leads to the spread
The 375-41 vote Thursday by which the House authorized $15 billion over five years to fight AIDS (X marks those not voting): ILLINOIS: Democrats: Costello, Y; Davis, Y; Emanuel, Y; Evans, Y; Gutierrez, Y; Jackson, Y; Lipinski, Y; Rush, Y; Schakowsky, Y. Republicans: Biggert, Y; Crane, Y; Hastert, Y; Hyde, Y; Johnson, Y
The House approved, 220-197, an amendment by Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., requiring that one-third of funds spent on prevention go to abstinence programs. It s important that we not just send them money, but we send them values that work, said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., a supporter of Pitts proposal. The legislation recommends
UNITED NATIONS - Two American women angered by the U.S. decision to stop funding the U.N. population agency said Thursday their grassroots campaign has so far raised $1 million for the agency, money that will go to helping women in poor nations. More than 100,000 people - the vast majority Americans - have contributed
WASHINGTON - The House neared a vote Thursday on a $15 billion plan that would greatly increase U.S. spending to treat and prevent AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. In a gesture to conservatives, the legislation that President Bush strongly promotes stresses the importance of abstinence in preventing the spread of AIDS
WASHINGTON - The House on Thursday passed a $15 billion bill that would more than double U.S. contributions to the worldwide fight against AIDS. Supporters, led by President Bush , said the money could bring relief to millions of people with AIDS and prevent the deadly disease from infecting millions more. It sends a m
ALAMEDA, Calif. (AP) -- Earvin Magic Johnson averaged seven rebounds per game before HIV cut short his NBA career. Now the former Los Angeles Lakers star hopes his rebounding touch and high-profile AIDS activism can help turnaround a struggling manufacturer of HIV tests. On Tuesday, Johnson joined the board of Calypte
DENVER - In an effort to cut costs, Colorado will start limiting low-income patients to eight prescription drugs at a time starting Friday, a plan some doctors say could push physicians to stop accepting Medicaid patients. Under the plan, expected to save Colorado s Medicaid program $6.6 million a year, doctors who bel
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush asked Congress Tuesday to quickly pass a $15 billion initiative to combat AIDS in the Caribbean and Africa, saying swift action is needed against a disease that is leaving graves and orphans across a continent. Bush spoke as lawmakers dug into the divisive details of a bill whose broad
DUNCAN, British Columbia (AP) - Marijuana growers Eric Nash and his wife, Wendy Little, are Canada s first licensed medical marijuana growers to have their crop officially certified 100 percent organic. In an interview at the couple s home in this Vancouver Island town about 45 miles north of Victoria, Nash says the ac
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush is inviting lawmakers and AIDS activists to the White House to encourage action on his proposal, announced in the State of the Union address last January, for a $15 billion program to fight the global AIDS crisis. The White House event on Tuesday comes two days before the House votes on
NEW YORK (AP) - GlaxoSmithKline on Monday further reduced the prices of its AIDS medicines for the world s poorest countries by up to 47 percent -- the fifth time since 1997 that the company has cut prices. The world s second largest drug company said more efficient manufacturing contributed to the reduction. The last
LAGOS, Nigeria - Olusegun Obasanjo has made a career out of dramatic transformations: He s been a military ruler, a political prisoner and a farmer. After his first election win in 1999, he was hailed as the man who restored democracy to Nigeria. Despite a resounding presidential election victory, Obasanjo faces heavie
NEW YORK - The characters on NBC s Friends love their recliners - and now, the actors who play them have designed their own chairs for charity. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer created recliners for La-Z-Boy, which will be auctioned off on eBay to benefit the
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Troops fired upon a small force of paramilitary fighters north of the Iraqi capital on Friday, and thousands of Baghdad residents demonstrated in the streets on the first Muslim day of prayers since the regime s collapse. The Ministry of Information building was on fire at midafternoon, flames
ATLANTA - Saying AIDS prevention efforts have stalled, the government announced a new strategy Thursday it hopes will sharply increase routine testing of people at risk for the disease. The CDC also said it was recommending routine HIV tests for all pregnant women and any infants of women who refused to be tested. Abou
MOSCOW - Up to 1.5 million Russians have contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, the nation s top expert on the disease said Thursday. AIDS came lately to Russia but spread rapidly as intravenous drug use has grown and prevention programs have been weak. Russia has officially registered 235,000 HIV cases. However,
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A medical oversight board found that a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles violated federal laws by participating in medical studies involving AIDS patients in China who were injected with malaria-infected blood. The university said Tuesday that the oversight board has determined
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Critics of a U.S.-led global crackdown on illicit drugs declared the policy a failure Tuesday, calling it the war that America cannot win and urging a United Nations commission to consider other approaches to the problem. Activists, think tanks and non-governmental organizations asked the U.N. Co
Kenya (AP) - An Italian woman has been awarded by the United Nations for devoting more than 30 years to helping Somalis, the head of the U.N. s refugee agency said Tuesday. Annalena Tonelli won the Nansen Refugee Award, which includes $100,000 for a refugee project of the recipient s choice, said Ruud Lubbers, the U.
UNITED NATIONS - Germany s development minister reaffirmed her nation s opposition to the Iraq war and asked to know why the world can find billions of dollars for military battles but not to fight poverty. If there is a just war to be fought, it is the war on poverty and hunger, illness and disease, illiteracy and env
Relief workers also blame corruption, war, bad governments and weather. But the disease has killed millions of Africa s breadwinners. CHIBOMBO, Zambia -- About 38 million Africans are threatened by starvation this year from a food crisis that relief workers predict could last for generations because of AIDS. Relief
SAN FRANCISCO - California mothers are breast-feeding their infants at a far higher rate than the goal set by federal officials, according to a new state report. Even so, the state lags in other key public health areas, such as prenatal care and reducing suicides and deaths by firearms. The findings appear in a report
VIENNA, Austria - Illicit synthetic drugs, including Ecstasy and methamphetamine, could become the world s top drug problem in the next five years, a U.N. report says. Progress has been made in the global battle against drugs in the last five years, said a report released Tuesday by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - International agencies that are withholding aid from Haiti should make exceptions for humanitarian causes, such as the country s AIDS crisis, former President Bill Clinton said during a visit. Haiti, which has the highest rate of HIV infection in the Caribbean, was Clinton s last stop on Tuesday
HAVANA - Latin American and Caribbean countries must double the $1.2 billion they spend yearly in fighting AIDS to treat the disease effectively and keep it from spreading, an official said at a U.N. conference Tuesday. The money spent now just isn t enough said Nina Ferencic, a program development adviser for the U.N.
WASHINGTON - (AP) -- Five patients who developed skin cancer after an organ transplant may have received cancer seed cells from the donor, researchers report. The cancer, Kaposi s sarcoma, is caused by a virus that the body usually can eliminate. It has become associated with the AIDS epidemic because the virus affects
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The emaciated men lie in hospital cots, straining to breathe and moaning in pain as AIDS drains away life. Many arrive at the clinic so weak they are carried in wheelbarrows. Without access to modern health care or lifesaving drugs now common in wealthier countries, the patients can only wait fo
ZAMBIA - About 38 million Africans are threatened by starvation this year from a food crisis that relief workers predict could last for generations because of AIDS. Relief workers say the devastation from AIDS is combining with the effects of poverty, war, bad governance, corruption and erratic weather to cripple the a
ANNAPOLIS, Md. - A bill that would reduce criminal penalties for seriously ill people who smoke marijuana is headed to the governor. The state Senate approved a medical marijuana bill on Friday by a vote of 30-16. The legislation would set a maximum fine of $100 and no jail time for defendants who can convince a judge
LONDON -- Scientists have developed a new diagnostic test for tuberculosis that experts say could help control the disease in the developed world by more accurately detecting infections before people get sick. The World Health Organization estimates that two billion people -- one-third of the world s population -- are
MOSCOW - Russia accepted a $150 million World Bank loan to combat the rapid spread of AIDS and tuberculosis in the country, World Bank officials said Friday after four years of negotiations. The World Bank first offered the loan in 1999 but disagreements over bank rules delayed the project. Russia objected to World Ban
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - The American Civil Liberties Union has asked Florida health officials to recall a set of state-sponsored AIDS education brochures that contain Biblical messages. The pamphlets, titled A Christian Response to AIDS, use passages from the Bible to urge compassion toward people with AIDS and the HIV vir
A five-year, $15 billion program to fight AIDS won approval from a House committee Wednesday as lawmakers said the disease threatens the fabric of civilization. The 37-8 vote by the International Relations Committee followed the rejection of an amendment by conservatives stating that abstinence should get priority over
WASHINGTON - In trying to agree on how to spend the billions of dollars President George W. Bush promised for a global fight against AIDS, Congress can t get past the basic questions like whether it s more important to advise people to abstain from sex or to give them condoms. The House International Relations Committe
A drug that reduces the disabling pain of sickle cell anemia can also significantly lower death rates and should be used by many more patients with the blood disorder, researchers say. The drug, hydroxyurea, is more often associated with cancer and AIDS treatments and most sickle cell patients who need it aren t gettin
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Etched in Zackie Achmat s memory are the last choking grunts of a friend dying of AIDS. The HIV -positive law student could well die of the disease himself if he doesn t begin taking antiretroviral drugs. Achmat, an outspoken leader of a civil disobedience campaign that seeks to force the gove
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - AIDS might be an opportunity, provided by God for South Africa to care for its people, Health Minister, Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said Monday. She was addressing religious leaders at the launch of an interfaith initiative to combat the epidemic through the provision of counseling and dis
SEATTLE - The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wants to help scientists discover a gel, cream or other similar product that prevents or reduces the risk of HIV infection among women in developing countries. The foundation was to announce a $60 million grant Monday to the International Partnership for Microbicides in
A second health care worker has died of a heart attack after receiving the smallpox vaccine, and officials are investigating whether vaccinations are to blame for cardiac problems seen in 17 people who have been inoculated. The vaccine has never been associated with heart trouble, but as a precaution, the Centers for D
A gay-rights case before the Supreme court tests how times have changed for the country and for the court itself, which was widely criticized for a ruling 17 years ago that upheld a ban on homosexual sex. The court could reverse course and declare a similar ban unconstitutional. A large crowd gathered outside the court
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) -- Activists interrupted Tuesday s opening of an AIDS conference, interrupting a speech by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang by calling her a murderer and demanding her arrest. About 100 members of an AIDS activist group shouted down the controversial health minister, the South Afric
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Tuberculosis rates in the nation s capital climbed last year. The District of Columbia Dept. of Health said the number of TB cases was up 8 percent from 2001. An increase in TB among the city s homeless population and residents infected with HIV contributed to the 82 cases. District health officials
BERLIN - Germany s supreme court overturned on Tuesday a 1995 ban on a Benetton advertisement that showed a man stamped with HIV Positive, saying it was covered by free speech guarantees and did not violate human dignity, despite being used to sell clothes. The Federal Constitutional Court first threw out a complaint a
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- A deeply divided Illinois Senate is backing the idea of fighting HIV by making it easier for drug users to get clean needles. The Senate voted 30-24 Monday to let people buy needles and syringes without a prescription. The measure now goes to the House. The sponsor, Sen. Donne Trotter, D-Chicago, s
NAIROBI, Kenya - President Mwai Kibaki said Sunday he will set up a Cabinet committee to ensure his government is coordinated in the fight to reduce HIV/AIDS infection rates in this East African nation. Kibaki said he will chair the committee and promised that his government would launch a war against the deadly dise
STELLENBOSCH, South Africa - Two South African universities expect to begin trials for an AIDS vaccine by next year, according to a statement released at the African Human Genome Initiative conference Saturday. The universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch expect to start vaccine trials by 2004 for the HIV strain domi
South Africa -- Scientists challenged African nations Thursday to produce their own generic drugs -- not just rely on pharmaceutical giants to help fight AIDS, malaria and other diseases ravaging the continent. African nations lag behind countries such as Cuba and India
SHARPEVILLE, South Africa -- Wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the words HIV Positive and Dying to be treated , AIDS activists Thursday filed manslaughter charges against government officials and called for their arrest. They claimed Health Minister Dr. Manto Tshabala-Msimang and Trade Minister Alec Erwin were responsib
LUSAKA, Zambia - Zambia and Malawi complained Wednesday of delays in the release funds from the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS which could negatively affect their fight against the epidemic. Speaking at the end of discussions in Lusaka, Zambia s National Aids Council acting director, Rosemary Musonda, and visiting Malawian h
WASHINGTON -- Ask about blood safety and most people think AIDS or other viruses that today are incredibly rare in transfusions. Bacterial contamination of blood poses a much bigger risk -- sickening and killing dozens of people a year -- yet germ-tainted transfusions get little attention. Now blood banks are starting
WASHINGTON - House lawmakers have agreed on a $15 billion package to fight the global AIDS epidemic, compromising on how the money will be used and sidestepping a divisive abortion issue. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee also readied a vote for Thursday on a similar anti-AIDS plan, first outlined by President Bus
BANGUI, Central African Republic -- Rebels in the Central African Republic captured the capital Sunday, and their leader declared himself the new president of this coup-prone nation, dissolved the legislature and suspended the constitution. In a state radio address introducing him as head of state, Rebel leader Gen.
Life expectancy for Americans reached an all-time high of 77.2 years in 2001, federal officials said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that life expectancy increased by two-tenths of a year from 2000. A drop in major causes of deaths, such as heart disease, cancer and stroke contributed to the
A measure to drastically reduce sentences for people caught smoking marijuana for medical purposes survived attempts to gut it through amendments today in Maryland s House of Delegates. Under the proposal, a $100 fine would be the maximum penalty someone could face if they use or possess marijuana because of a medical
The government on Thursday approved the first in a new class of AIDS-fighting drugs, a dramatically different treatment that provides an important option for many patients and opens new avenues for researchers. Fuzeon works for people who have become resistant to other HIV treatments, and as many as 100,000 patients in
WASHINGTON - Patients who are running out of medicines to fight the AIDS virus won a new option Thursday, as the government approved a dramatically different anti-HIV drug. The drug may be helpful to as many as 100,000 U.S. patients, though its price could put it out of many people s reach. Manufacturers said it should
A new AIDS medication to treat patients resistant to existing drugs is expected to get final approval within days, but the AIDS community is anxious instead of celebrating. The issue is the high price tag for the drug, called Fuzeon - about $20,000 a year. That is almost triple the cost of the most expensive treatment
MOSCOW - The Russian military will no longer draft drug addicts, homosexuals, men infected with HIV and sexually transmitted diseases into the armed forces, an official newspaper reported Thursday. The new regulations, published in Thursday s edition of Rossiiskaya Gazeta, are due to take effect July 1. Officials said
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Police in Sweden were searching Wednesday for a woman believed to have used fake prescriptions to buy HIV drugs worth as much as 3 million kronor (US$360,000). The drugs may have been intended for sale on the black market in eastern Europe, said Hans Olsson, spokesman for the police in Malmoe, 615 k
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The World Health Organization hopes to double the number of people receiving AIDS treatment in Latin America by 2005, a top official said Wednesday. Bernard Schwartlander, head of the WHO s HIV/AIDS department, said his organization would like to see 400,000 people receiving a cocktail of ant
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A businessman pleaded guilty to two counts of federal securities fraud Tuesday, the same day he announced a partnership with former Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates. Charles W. Kallmann, who admitted that he exploited the anthrax scare of 2001 to bolster his company s flagging share price, approac
BANGKOK, Thailand - A global disease prevention fund gave Thailand US$209.7 million to help treat a rising number of infections of HIV -AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis caused by an influx of migrant workers, the health minister said Monday. The donation is the largest-ever given to an Asian country by the Global Fund to
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) -- A doctor who co-founded AIDS Vancouver 20 years ago faces disciplinary measures over sexual misconduct allegations, and at least three lawsuits from former patients. The British Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons is expected to act in the case of Dr. Michael Maynard in the c
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - The life expectancy of black people in Cape Town is expected to plunge to an average of 40 years because of the AIDS epidemic. A study commissioned by Cape Town health officials found that in six years, black life expectancy will plummet by 15 years. Dr. Ivan Toms, head of the city s health
NAIROBI, Kenya - An international human rights organization on Tuesday urged Kenya s new reform-minded government to act decisively to redress the widespread abuse of women s property rights. This is a pivotal time for change, said Janet Walsh, author of the Human Rights Watch report that says the abuse of women s prop
BOSTON (AP) -- The state Department of Public Health is investigating how five men in Boston were infected with a drug-resistant staph infection. Doctors at the Fenway Community Health Center last fall started seeing patients with pneumonia, sinus infections and skin conditions caused by Methicillin-resistant Staphyloc
With magazine articles and television ads, prayers and free testing, the effort to fight AIDS among black Americans is taking on new vigor in the face of bleak statistics about the disease. Newspapers, magazines and television networks with predominantly black audiences began an unprecedented public awareness campaign
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - The unabated flow of illegal drugs from Afghanistan through Central Asia, continuing despite the U.S.-led ouster of the Taliban, is causing rising drug addiction and AIDS infections across the region, a top U.N. drug control official said Friday. The former Soviet republics of Central Asia co
BLANTYRE, Malawi - A senior Malawi tribal chief Friday denied AIDS existed and said thousands of deaths attributed to the epidemic were killed by a plague sent by God to punish misbehaving youth. There is no disease called AIDS in the country as government and other people claim, Group Village Headman Makunganya told
BANGKOK, Thailand - Asia could be hit by the same kind of catastrophic AIDS epidemic as Africa, and the world s business sector must help fight the disease, international business leaders said Friday in Bangkok. Every day, three times as many people die of HIV as died on Sept. 11 in New York City and at the Pentagon,
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - South Africans will see an increase in government spending in the fight against the AIDS pandemic and crime and for health and welfare, according to the new budget presented Wednesday. The budget for the 2003-04 fiscal year that begins March 1 aims at reducing chronic poverty while maintaining
WASHINGTON - After returning from a trip to Africa this week, a pair of U.S. Midwestern senators say many Africans are worried that the United States won t come through on its $15 billion commitment to fight AIDS There is a concern in Africa that the United States, engaging in a war in the Middle East, will not have th
GENEVA - A good diet can help people better cope with AIDS and may even help delay the progression of the deadly HIV virus by boosting defenses, the U.N. food and health agencies said Tuesday. Releasing a 97-page guide for health workers, patients and their families, the World Health Organization and Food and Agri
Researchers trying to learn more about why an AIDS vaccine appeared to work well in a small number of black volunteers may have trouble finding people for further studies, advocates and educators warn. Suspicion of medical research runs deep among many blacks, they say, and the reason can be summarized in one word: Tus
SAN FRANCISCO - The failure of an experimental AIDS vaccine in its first major test has shattered hopes of developing a shield against infection in the near future and demonstrated just how far scientists are from bringing the disease under control. Still, the results made public Monday contained an intriguing finding:
BASEL, Switzerland - Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Roche on Monday set at 52 euros (US$56) a day the European price tag for a new AIDS drug that could prolong the lives of patients with drug-resistant strains of HIV. Roche said it would make supplies of Fuzeon available in the European Union under a special program, ahea
A highly anticipated experimental AIDS vaccine failed to protect most people from the disease in its first major trial, but it did show promise in protecting blacks and Asians, its developer said. The announcement sent the developer s stock price sharply down. The overall expected rate of infection was not reduced in t
TIRANA, Albania - International health officials urged Albania Friday to intensify efforts to prevent the spread of AIDS and keep its status as a low-prevalence country. According to Albania s Health Ministry, there are 98 known cases of people being infected with the HIV virus or suffering from AIDS in the country of
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Bob Graham is intent on running for the White House even though he has heart disease, and John Kerry isn t letting prostate cancer stop him from pursuing the Democratic presidential nomination. Perhaps it s not surprising that men who ve doggedly pursued a dream of being president since their yo
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - South African playwright Gibson Kente was lauded Friday for publicly revealing his HIV-positive status. Politicians, a judge, AIDS activists and former president Nelson Mandela applauded Kente for his announcement which they hoped would be emulated by others. Kente whose plays include
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A medical oversight board at the University of California, Los Angeles has reopened an investigation into the possibility that two researchers participated in experiments to inject AIDS patients in China with malaria-infected blood. A university spokesman said Tuesday that officials are examining ne
LILONGWE, Malawi - Making an impassioned plea for his country to get tough on the AIDS pandemic, a government minister disclosed Tuesday that three of his children had died of AIDS. Lands and Physical Planning Minister Thengo Maloya made the rare emotional disclosure to members of his staff during an AIDS awareness wor
GABORONE, Botswana - Botswana s government launched a series of informational videos Tuesday aimed at informing the public about free AIDS drugs and prevention of the disease, part of an aggressive assault on the pandemic that is ravaging the country. Botswana has been at the forefront of developing world countries try
PARIS - We re still dying of AIDS in Paris, is the message that Paris City Hall is posting around the French capital as part of a new AIDS awareness campaign. Posters to be hung around the city starting Wednesday display the message on familiar looking neighborhood street maps - the kind with a bull s eye to tell you w
By restricting the use of federal AIDS-fighting money by organizations that promote or perform abortions overseas, President Bush is trying to balance his firm anti-abortion policies with his new commitment to battle the AIDS epidemic. Under the policy, such organizations family planning operations would be prohibited
DANA POINT, California - A nasty cold and a broken foot that put her in a wheelchair couldn t keep Elizabeth Taylor from at a benefit for AIDS research. After all, Gov. Gray Davis had declared it Elizabeth Taylor Day for her work in support of the cause. The actress made her planned address at the Feb. 8 gala, although
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Thousands of AIDS activists wearing T-shirts reading HIV Positive jammed the streets outside Parliament Friday as President Thabo Mbeki addressed lawmakers in a speech which virtually ignored the pandemic ravaging South Africa. Mbeki s annual state of the nation address focussed instead on his
BOSTON - Seven years into the modern era of AIDS treatment, the outlook for people with HIV infections continues to improve. Encouraging new European data released Friday show that the risk of developing full-blown AIDS or dying of the disease is still falling. In 1996, treatments became widely available that abruptly
BOSTON -- An ancient virus that has tagged along harmlessly through human evolution appears to improve people s chances of surviving AIDS by blocking HIV s ability to infect blood cells, new research shows. Several recent studies have found that people who are infected with the recently discovered bug, called GB virus
BASEL, Switzerland -- Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Roche said Thursday it will slash the price of its AIDS drug Viracept for sub-Saharan Africa and poor countries elsewhere. The company said it was offering no profit prices for delivery direct from its Swiss factory, starting March 1.
BOSTON - (AP) -- The death of three monkeys that had gotten an AIDS vaccine in a Boston lab suggests that a closely watched strategy intended to blunt the deadly progression of HIV may not provide total protection from the disease. For several years, researchers have concentrated on crafting vaccines that prompt the bo
LUANDA, Angola - Angola has at least 1 million HIV -positive cases and the deadly virus could quickly spread unless preventive measures are improved, Health Minister Albertina Hamukwaya said Wednesday. Hamukwaya told a news conference the estimated number of HIV-positive cases was based on a government survey in just f
KAMPALA, Uganda -- Ugandan researchers have begun testing an AIDS vaccine specifically designed for a strain of the disease common in East Africa, the lead researcher said Wednesday. Dr. Ponsiano Kaleebu said his team at the government-run Uganda Virus Research Institute gave two Ugandan volunteers the first injection
BOSTON -- The death of three monkeys that had gotten an AIDS vaccine in a Boston lab suggests that a closely watched strategy intended to blunt the deadly progression of HIV may not provide total protection from the disease. For several years, researchers have concentrated on crafting vaccines that prompt the body to m
BOSTON -- A variety of highly effective new AIDS drugs are on the horizon, experts say, easing worries that the fast-mutating virus will outstrip doctors ability to treat it. Ever since combinations of AIDS medicines transformed HIV into a manageable condition in the mid-1990s, doctors have worried that the virus would
GRAHAMSTOWN, South Africa -- U.S. Ambassador Cameron Hume criticized South Africa s fight against AIDS Tuesday, questioning if it will use the U.S. money it is being given to fight the pandemic. Hume was referring to President Bush s recent pledge to give $15 billion for AIDS relief. Hume said money to fight AIDS in So
WASHINGTON -- The worldwide AIDS epidemic undermines the stability and economies of many countries and may threaten U.S. national security, CIA Director George J. Tenet said Tuesday. More than 40 million people are infected with the virus that causes AIDS, most of them in southern Africa, Tenet told the Senate Intellig
BOSTON - Chat rooms on gay Web sites are becoming a common place for arranging risky sexual encounters, a survey found, as experts worry about a possible upswing in HIV infections. Research released Tuesday suggests that for some, the Internet serves the same hazardous purpose as gay bathhouses did in the early 1980s,
GENEVA - As it waited for an answer from the United States , the World Trade Organization on Monday once more postponed a decision on a deal to allow poor countries to import cheap copies of drugs to treat epidemics like HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Discussion on a proposal designed to break the stalemate has be
MIAMI - The University of Miami s medical school received a $2.5 million grant Friday to support AIDS, HIV and tuberculosis research, education and treatment in South Florida, Haiti and elsewhere. Steven J. Green, a former ambassador to Singapore , and his wife, Dorothea, announced the donation during a ceremony at
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has appointed a Barbadian as his special envoy for HIV /AIDS in the Caribbean. Sir George Alleyne, of the Barbados-based Pan American Health Organization, will be responsible for Caribbean reports to the U.N. General Assembly special session on HIV/AIDS, official
FRANKFORT, Ky. -- A state computer put up for sale as surplus contained confidential files naming thousands of people with AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, the state auditor said Thursday. This is significant data. It s a lot of information with lots of names and things like (the numbers of) sexual partner
GENEVA - Under a motto of Raise it, Spend it, Prove it, the new Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and malaria on Friday awarded grants of US$866 million to 60 countries for grassroots projects to save lives and limit suffering. The grants will ensure that an additional 500,000 people in developing nations are treated with
SAN FRANCISCO - Government researchers from California and Mexico plan to jointly study the spread of AIDS among migrant workers and their families in hopes of preventing it from reaching epidemic proportions in Mexico. The study will be the most comprehensive effort to track HIV infection rates in the migrant work pop
KATMANDU, Nepal - U.N. officials Tuesday urged leaders of South Asian nations to take immediate action against AIDS in this region where 4.2 million people live with the disease, and a growing number are contracting it. Leaders must break the silence that denies the existence of AIDS.
WASHINGTON -- An agency-by-agency glance at President Bush s proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The spending totals reflect new discretionary spending authority sought for each agency, and do not include mandatory spending such as Medicare and interest on the federal debt. Agency: Department of Sta
KATMANDU, Nepal - About 4.2 million people are living with AIDS in South Asia and the epidemic is worsening in the region, health officials said Monday. Lack of education and trafficking in women and children are the main reasons for the spread of the disease, health officials from eight South Asian countries and the U
GENEVA - Donor countries must do more to help the new global fund against HIV/AIDS in its battle with the killer disease, a veteran Red Cross campaigner said Monday. It s an international humanitarian scandal that so few people get access to drugs, said Dr. Massimo Barra. We need to push governments to place a higher p
KIEV, Ukraine - Top U.S. diplomats from 14 former Eastern bloc countries began a two-day conference Monday to discuss efforts to reverse skyrocketing HIV/AIDS infection rates they said threaten to devastate the region s health, social, and economic systems. Ambassador Jack Chow, Special Representative of the U.S. Secre
NAPLES, Fla. -- School officials fired a high school teacher who gave ninth-graders a demonstration on condoms - using props including mood lighting, music and a banana. The Collier County School Board gave no specific reason for firing Colin Nicholas Thursday, asserting it had the right to dismiss an employee without
WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush said he will ask Congress for a 7 percent increase in the money the United States spends to fight AIDS in what he called a massive attempt to save lives. He also announced Friday his administration s anticipated approval of greatly expanded use of an AIDS test that allows people to
GENEVA - The new Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria awarded grants of US$866 million to 60 countries Friday. The grants will ensure that an additional 500,000 people in developing nations are treated with anti-AIDS medicines, a six-fold increase from current levels. They will be used to provide care an
TOKYO - A total of 5,121 people in Japan had tested positive for HIV through December, an increase of 139 from three months earlier, Japan s health authorities said Friday. Most of the new cases, or 77, were transmitted via homosexual contact, said Makoto Iwakura, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfa
WASHINGTON -- President Bush s $15 billion commitment to AIDS relief in Africa will include condom distribution and generic drugs, administration officials said Wednesday, bucking abstinence-advocating conservatives and brand-name pharmaceutical giants. Generic AIDS drugs manufactured by Cipla , an Indian compa
MAPUTO, Mozambique - The government of Mozambique will begin providing a key AIDS drug to HIV-infected pregnant women to help prevent the spread of the virus to their babies during childbirth, the Mozambique news agency AIM reported Thursday. The program to give women the drug
PANAMA CITY, Panama (AP)--Five major pharmaceutical companies reached an agreement with the health secretaries of Central America to reduce the cost of AIDS drugs for patients in the region by up to 55 percent. Under the accord, Glaxo SmithKline (GSK), Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY), Merck
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- President Bush s pledge to give $15 billion for AIDS relief in Africa and the Caribbean was hailed by a U.N. official Wednesday as a dramatic signal the United States was ready to confront the pandemic, while others working with the devastating illness said far more was needed.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - U.S. President George W. Bush s pledge to give US$15 billion for AIDS relief in Africa and the Caribbean is a good start but far more is needed to fight the pandemic, officials working with AIDS in Africa said Wednesday. An estimated 29.4 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected wi
President Bush s State of the Union address, as delivered Tuesday night: Mr. Speaker, Vice President Cheney, members of Congress, distinguished citizens and fellow citizens: Every year, by law and by custom, we meet here to consider the state of the union. This year, we gather in this chamber deeply aware of decisive d
WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush proposed a $15 billion plan for emergency AIDS relief, a work of mercy that he said would save millions in Africa and the Caribbean from falling victim to the deadly virus. Bush outlined the plan in his annual State of the Union address Tuesday night, in which he explains his goals
GENEVA - A little-known tuberculosis expert from South Korea was selected Tuesday as director-general of the World Health Organization , promising to channel more resources to those worst hit by the AIDS epidemic and other scourges. Jong-wook Lee, head of WHO s Stop TB Program, defeated fou
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Reflecting growing outrage against America, Pakistan s religious right presented the government with a new list of demands Tuesday, calling for the fingerprinting of Americans, a boycott of U.S. products and compulsory AIDS testing of U.S. visitors. A coalition of Islamic parties, which gained con
SHANGHAI (AP)--A Chinese company Tuesday began distributing generic drugs that make up a potent anti-AIDS cocktail, the first time a low-cost version of the treatment has been available in China . Trucks carrying hundreds of thousands of doses of the two drugs, dd1 and d4t, arrived in the central province of Henan, whe
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP)--Widespread sexual abuse in Zambia is fueling the spread of HIV among girls and young women in the southern African nation, Human Rights Watch said in a report Tuesday. An estimated 21.5% of adult Zambians are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. About 120,000 Zambian children
DAVOS, Switzerland -- Corporate leaders at the World Economic Forum turned their attention Monday to the official theme of the conference - how to restore public confidence in business. We are dealing with this issue head on, J.T. Battenberg III, chief executive of U.S. auto supplier Delphi, told the forum, an annual m
DAVOS, Switzerland -- Global business leaders reported progress on making cheaper AIDS drugs available to poor nations as Microsoft founder Bill Gates made another contribution to health in the developing world - announcing a $200 million grant to fund medical research. Meeting at an exclusive Alpine resort, delegates
DAVOS, Switzerland -- Microsoft founder Bill Gates announced a $200 million grant Sunday to help identify and solve the grand challenges in global health that the private sector has little financial incentive to tackle. Under the program announced at the annual World Economic Forum, a panel of top scientists will draft
DAVOS, Switzerland -- Pharmacia Corp. announced Friday it would allow generic drug companies to manufacture cheap copies of its AIDS drug to sell in poor countries - a novel approach aimed at breaking the logjam over access to lifesaving medicines. Pharmacia Corp. said it will work with the International Dispensary Ass
WASHINGTON - A Christian activist chosen by the Bush administration for an AIDS advisory panel withdrew his name under pressure Thursday after criticism of his characterization of the disease as the gay plague. The administration had asked Jerry Thacker to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS.
HANOI, Vietnam - In an effort to slow the spread of HIV and AIDS in Vietnam, the United States launched a US$600,000 program Thursday to promote education in the workplace about the disease. The program aims to prevent further infection and help to make workplaces more tolerable for those already infected.
HARARE, Zimbabwe - The United States announced Wednesday it was giving US$114 million to three aid groups to assist them in battling hunger in the countries hardest hit by southern Africa s food crisis - Malawi , Zambia , and Zimbabwe.
VATICAN CITY - The Vatican has compiled a dictionary of words like reproductive rights and gender in a bid to clarify what it says are neutral-sounding terms that can mask anti-Church meanings. The 1,000-page Lexicon, containing 78 key terms about family, life and ethical questions, is due to be published soon, accordi
NEW YORK - As competition among makers of AIDS drugs increases, GlaxoSmithKline is using perhaps America s best-known HIV carrier to spread awareness among urban blacks of treatment methods and the company s products. Magic Johnson s image is being splashed on billboards, subway posters and full-page ads in newspapers
GENEVA - The World Health Organization s executive committee gathered Monday to elect a new leader to replace former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who steps down in July after five years in office. Among the seven candidates, the front-runners are considered to be the Belgian head of
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- An all-star AIDS benefit concert that was to be hosted by former South African President Nelson Mandela has been canceled because of problems with the producers, organizers said Friday. The concert, scheduled Feb. 2 on Robben Island, was to feature Bono, Elton John, Shaggy, Youssou N dour,
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - More than 20 developed nations and lending institutions have agreed to increase assistance to the world s poorest continent and improve the efficiency and quality of the aid, a senior World Bank official said Friday. The donors, who form the Strategic Partnership with Africa, or SPA, have also a
WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration proposed new warnings labels Thursday for over-the-counter contraceptive drugs that contain the spermicide nonoxynol 9. The warning would state that vaginal contraceptives containing nonoxynol 9 do not protect against infection from HIV or other sexually transmitted diseas
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - The Honduran government paid a woman US$294,000 Thursday after she was given a tainted blood transfusion and infected with the AIDS virus three years ago. Attorney General Sergio Zavala gave 29-year-old Maria Bersey the check during a ceremony, saying one can be a millionaire, but without your
NEW DELHI, India - A court has ordered the Indian government to respond within a month to an anti-AIDS organization s suit seeking an end to the law that makes homosexual relations a crime, a newspaper reported Thursday. New Delhi High Court Chief Justice Devinder Gupta and Justice B.D. Ahmed told the government to fil
MANILA, Philippines - Birth-control pills donated by the United States are being used as fertilizer for orchids while condoms have become party balloons in the Philippines, health officials said Wednesday. Despite a fast-growing population of 80 million, the country has more contraceptives than it needs and people have
DHAKA, Bangladesh - Bangladesh could face an AIDS epidemic in the next decade if it does not take action now, a U.N. envoy warned Wednesday. The time for action is today, Nafis Sadik, the U.N. Secretary-General s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Asia, told reporters at the end of a three-day visit to the Bangladesh capita
BEIJING - Visiting U.S. AIDS experts on Monday urged immediate action by China to prevent further spread of the disease, while Chinese health officials said the number of cases and deaths throughout the country had risen in the past year. The AIDS epidemic is still very serious in China, said Qi Xiaoqiu, director gene
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - An American nurse was released Friday after four months in jail in Aceh province for visa violations and immediately vowed to expose alleged abuses by Indonesia s military in the troubled region. Joy Lee Sadler, of Waterloo, Iowa, walked out of a jail in the provincial capital Banda Aceh, huggin
BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Union proposed Thursday calling in the World Health Organization to rescue a deal - blocked last month by the United States - on improving access to lifesaving drugs for poor countries. Blaming a lack of trust between Washington and developing countries for the failure o
UNITED NATIONS - Rich nations are committing mass murder by complacency by failing to contribute enough money to defeat the AIDS pandemic that is ravaging Africa and killing millions every year, a top U.N. official says. An appeal launched by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in April 2001 for US$7 billion to US$10 billion
CHICAGO -- Influenza has surpassed AIDS as a lethal killer and contributes to an average 36,000 annual U.S. deaths, largely because of a vulnerable aging population for whom the vaccine is often ineffective, government research shows. The U.S. flu-related death toll surged fourfold from 16,263 in 1976-77 to 64,684 in 1
HYDERABAD, India - The new head of the World Trade Organization on Wednesday warned member nations that delaying implementation of earlier agreements could derail future trade negotiations and harm the global economy. The implications will be such that I do not want to even talk about them, WTO Director-General Supach
LUSAKA, Zambia - Former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda on Wednesday accused U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of pushing for war against Iraq to control the region s oil and make a profit. American people, in particular church leaders, trade unions, are
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- An American nurse will be released from an Indonesian jail later in this week after serving a four-month sentence for violating her visa by contacting separatist rebels, her lawyer said Monday. Joy Lee Sadler, of Waterloo, Iowa, was found guilty last week of violating her tourist visa by contactin
WASHINGTON - The State Department is seeking substantial budget increases to fight the global AIDS epidemic and to counter terrorism, including more than $1 billion in new funds to tighten security at embassies, officials say. High on the department s wish list is $100 million to hire an additional 399 officers for Sec
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