TRIPOLI - A Palestinian woman died of an AIDS-related illness at a Libyan hospital on Saturday, taking to 57 the number of victims of an HIV outbreak in the late 1990s blamed on six foreign medics, a local support group said. Maha Mahmood Shams, 18, died in hospital in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, one-and-a-hal
TRIPOLI - Western criticism of death sentences handed to five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor by a Libyan court shows a lack of respect for the Libyan people, Libya s foreign ministry said late on Thursday. The medics were sentenced last week for deliberately infecting 426 children in the late 1990s with the
NEW YORK - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved BioForm Medical Inc. s Radiesse cosmetic treatment for long-lasting correction of moderate to severe facial wrinkles, the company said in a press release on its Web site dated Wednesday. Privately-owned BioForm describes the drug as an injectable dermal fill
HANOI - A stocky woman in blue jeans with spiky, gelled black hair dances on stage at one of Vietnam s rural rehabilitation centres, leading a hip-hop style chant. Hold hands together, we ll stop AIDS together, shouted the former heroin addict patient who returned to the rehabilitation centre to encourage over a thousa
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Male circumcision, which has been shown to decrease the chances of contracting HIV, could save billions of dollars in AIDS-hit Africa, a new study has shown. Circumcision has emerged as a new tool in the battle against AIDS following results in three African studies which showed it cuts the cha
KAMPALA - Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has condemned a new study showing that male circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection during sex, saying it sent out a dangerous message. The state-owned New Vision paper on Friday quoted Museveni as saying there were many confusing messages about HIV/AIDS. One of them i
KOLKATA, India - Hundreds of impoverished Muslim women are flocking to India s only all-female hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata to seek advice on family planning, preventing HIV/AIDS and other ailments. Conservative Muslim women are more comfortable discussing these issues in a female-only environment, doctors a
JOHANNESBURG - Widespread male circumcision could prevent some 1.4 million new HIV infections and 800,000 AIDS deaths in South Africa over the next 20 years, a South African research group said on Thursday. The South African Center for Epidemiological Modeling and Analysis (SACEMA) said new studies showing circumcision
MAPUTO) - AIDS is emerging as a major threat to Mozambique s economic development and the government must work harder to combat the epidemic, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) official said on Thursday. HIV/AIDS is hindering development ... it s a major risk for a sustainable economy because capacities in this count
HYDERABAD, India - India s Andhra Pradesh state, which has the country s largest number of HIV cases, is set to become the first to make it mandatory for couples to take a HIV test before marrying, officials said on Wednesday. Since condom use is not very popular, we are considering tough measures like HIV testing befo
GENEVA - The United Nations human rights office on Tuesday called on Libyan authorities not to execute five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, saying it had concerns about the fairness of their trial on charges of deliberately infecting children with the deadly HIV virus. The circumstances surrounding the appli
NAIROBI - Kenya s idyllic coastline of white sands and turquoise waters belies an alarming child sex industry, driven by widespread acceptance and even approval of the vice, a report said on Tuesday. Up to 15,000 girls in four coastal districts are involved in casual sex for cash -- about 30 percent of all 12-18 year-o
TORONTO - Theratechnologies Inc. s announcement on Tuesday of positive results in the Phase 3 clinical trial of its TH9507 drug, designed to treat the side effects of anti-HIV drug combinations, sent the stock up more than 70 percent in early trading. Shortly after the open, the company s shares surged C$2.00, or 72.7
NEW DELHI - AIDS-stricken Southern African nations should develop a policy of mass male circumcision to fight the disease, the head of the United Nations anti-AIDS agency said on Tuesday. Several recent medical studies have reported circumcision cuts the risk of HIV infection among men by 50-60 percent, and the finding
TRIPOLI - A Libyan court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death on Tuesday for deliberately infecting hundreds of children with the virus that causes AIDS, provoking a chorus of Western condemnation. The ruling, the latest episode in what experts say has been a deeply politicized case, could
PATNA, India - HIV-positive Santosh Srivastava s haunted eyes stare from his shrunken face as he talks about how much he regrets visiting prostitutes while working away from his home state. I just did not think about what I was doing, Srivastava, 48, told Reuters in Patna, capital of the impoverished state of Bihar in
SOFIA - Snezhana Dimitrova, 54, said her Libyan jailors hung her from a doorway by her arms, hands tied behind her back until her shoulders came out of their sockets. Nasya Nenova, now 40, tried to kill herself in prison after she says she was tortured into confessing to deliberately injecting children with the deadly
WASHINGTON - Circumcising men cuts their risk of being infected with the AIDS virus in half, and could prevent hundreds of thousands or even millions of new infections, researchers said on Wednesday. Circumcising men worked so well that the researchers stopped two large clinical trials in Kenya and
LONDON/NEW DELHI - The number of people living with HIV in India could be lower than government estimates, research published in a medical journal said, but the United Nations warned against drawing hasty conclusions . Scientists who studied the prevalence of the virus that causes AIDS in a district in the southern sta
JOHANNESBURG - Scientists in South Africa unveiled the country s most powerful weapon yet in their fight against AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis when they switched on a new supercomputer dedicated to scientific research this week. The supercomputer, which has been installed at the Council for Scientific and Industrial R
HYDERABAD, India - A four-year-old HIV-positive boy was asked to leave a nursery school in southern India after parents of other children complained, in the latest in a series of similar cases. Vamsikrishna s father, who used to sell toddy, a locally brewed alcoholic drink, died two years ago with AIDS. The boy, who li
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa s deputy health minister on Tuesday denied calling upon President Thabo Mbeki to take a public AIDS test, but repeated that she believed it was important for national leaders to be tested. Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, who recently became one of the few senior South African officials to publicl
NEW YORK/WHITEHOUSE STATION, N.J. - Merck & Co. (MRK.N: Quote, Profile , Research) expects to seek U.S. approval in 2007 for drugs to treat HIV, cholesterol and insomnia, and aims to have another four products in late-stage trials by mid-year, the company said on Tuesday. The products due to be in late-stage trials
NEW DELHI - India needs to tighten control on the sale of prescription drugs from chemist shops to stem the spread of HIV, the United Nations anti-AIDS agency said on Monday. Many painkillers and sedatives are freely available over the counter in India without any prescription from doctors or hospitals, even though the
DHAKA - A Bangladeshi women s group was awarded a cash prize of $20,000 on Monday for its work in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said. The Durjoy Nari Shongo (indomitable women s council) shared the UNDP s Red Ribbon 2006 award with four other groups in
NEW DELHI - Condoms designed to meet international size specifications are too big for many Indian men as their penises fall short of what manufacturers had anticipated, an Indian study has found. The Indian Council of Medical Research, a leading state-run center, said its initial findings from a two-year study showed
LONDON - Groups representing doctors and nurses worldwide urged the Libyan government on Friday to drop death sentences against six foreign medics accused of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV. The World Medical Association (WMA) and the International Council of Nurses (ICN) cited new scientific evi
WASHINGTON - Using hormonal contraception does not appear to increase women s overall risk of contracting the AIDS virus, according to a U.S. National Institutes of Health study published on Thursday. The study, published on the Web site of the journal AIDS, followed thousands of women in Africa and Asia and compared t
WASHINGTON - Malaria may be helping spread the AIDS virus across Africa, the continent hardest hit by the incurable disease, scientists said on Thursday. The way the two diseases interact greatly expands the prevalence of both among people in sub-Saharan Africa, a team of scientists said in a study in the journal Scien
NEW YORK - Biotechnology company Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD.O: Quote, Profile , Research) on Thursday said it received a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice related to its marketing and medical education programs for three of its HIV medications. Gilead, in a statement, said the subpoena requested documents fo
LONDON - Scientists have produced new evidence that casts doubts on charges against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of deliberately infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV in 1998. The trial of the six health workers ended in Tripoli last month. The prosecutor demanded the death penalty after five
Scientists have produced new evidence that casts doubts on charges against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of deliberately infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV in 1998. Following is a chronology of key events in the case: Feb. 1999 - Nineteen Bulgarian medical workers in Libya are detained in i
BEIJING - China will prosecute people who deliberately infect others with HIV, state media said on Wednesday. Those who know they are infected with AIDS or are sick with AIDS and deliberately infect others will be severely punished according to the law, the Beijing News said, citing an unnamed police officer as telling
ISLAMABAD - Afghanistan s booming opium trade is a huge concern for Pakistan as it confronts the spread of HIV/AIDS, especially among intravenous drug users, Pakistan s minister of health said on Wednesday. Pakistan recorded its first case of HIV infection in 1987 and the number of confirmed cases is now 3,556 -- of wh
Grant McCool, grant.mccool.reuters.com@reuters.net
HANOI - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton urged young Vietnamese on Wednesday to talk more about HIV and AIDS to reduce fear and ignorance of the disease and discourage discrimination. The more you talk about it and the more people see flesh and blood human beings who are HIV positive who are good people and not frigh
BEIJING - A hospital in northeastern China will pay 20 million yuan ($2.56 million) to 19 people it infected with HIV through illegal, unscreened blood transfusions in 2004, state media reported on Tuesday. The hospital in Heilongjiang province infected 15 patients with HIV through transfusions of untested blood from i
With almost 25 million Africans infected, 2.8 million new infections last year and 2.1 million deaths, the statistics are as grim as ever. But after years of relentlessly negative news about HIV/AIDS in Africa, health experts this year are nursing hopes that at long last there may be a simple step doctors can take to f
HARARE - Zimbabwe now has the world s highest percentage of children orphaned by AIDS, with almost one in every four children having lost at least one parent to the disease, the United Nations Children s Fund said on Tuesday. Zimbabwe is among the countries worst hit by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which kills more than 3,00
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton praised Cambodia on Monday for its success in fighting HIV/AIDS, saying other countries should take note of its twin strategy of public education and widespread condom promotion. There is a hope that Cambodia can be a model for the rest of Asia and perhaps for t
SYDNEY - Former U.S. president Bill Clinton was made an honorary chief in Papua New Guinea on Sunday after signing an agreement to help combat HIV-AIDS in the South Pacific island nation. Clinton praised PNG leaders for facing up to the challenge of HIV/AIDS and not denying its threat, in a country where the disease is
NEW YORK - The chief executive of Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD.O: Quote, Profile , Research) said on Friday that the launch of its triple-combination AIDS drug, Atripla, is going quite well and that the arrival of simplified therapies would help encourage more patients to seek treatment. Atripla won U.S. approval as
BEIJING - A Chinese province which has been ravaged by AIDS plans to force all couples in the worst-hit areas to take compulsory HIV tests before being married, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday. The results of the free tests in Yunnan, obligatory from January 1, will be given by health authorities t
BRASILIA, Brazil - Brazil will place an order for 1 billion condoms before January s end and give them away in coming years as part of its AIDS prevention program, Health Minister Agenor Alvares said on Friday. Speaking at an event to mark World AIDS Day, Alvares said the government would accept bids for a supply contr
HARARE - Zimbabwe is showing the way for Africa in the fight against HIV/AIDS, President Robert Mugabe said on Friday as he urged Zimbabweans to take greater personal responsibility in stopping the epidemic. Zimbabwe is among the countries worst hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which kills more than 3,000 people every wee
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa unveiled a draft five-year battle plan against HIV/AIDS on Friday, vowing to cut new infections by 50 percent and turn back an epidemic now killing almost 1,000 South Africans each day. In a rare show of unity, government officials joined community leaders and activists to announce the new p
ORANGE FARM, South Africa - By sun-up, Valencia Mofokeng has her modest home in the ramshackle black township near Johannesburg humming like a well-oiled machine. Her six small children have bathed in a plastic washbasin, the dirt yard is swept, the bed is made and Mofokeng is dishing out a hot breakfast of scrambled e
GENEVA - The workplace may be the best setting for millions of people with HIV and AIDS to be administered drugs that could extend their lives, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said on Friday. In a report published on World AIDS Day, the United Nations agency said that more than 24 million people in the glob
GENEVA - Surveillance for the HIV virus is weak in most of the world and prevention and treatment programs often fail to reach high-risk drug users, homosexuals and sex workers, the World Health Organization said on Friday. In a message marking World AIDS Day, being celebrated under the theme of Accountability, the WHO
BEIJING - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao invited 15 HIV/AIDS orphans and child victims to tour the ruling Communist Party s headquarters on Friday as a top U.N. official said China needed more education to combat the disease s stigma. Beijing was initially slow to acknowledge the threat, but it has stepped up the fight aga
BEIJING - China is moving in the right direction in the fight against HIV/AIDS, a top U.N. official said on Friday, but needs more education to combat discrimination and stigma, particularly in the nation s vast interior. U.N. China Resident Coordinator Khalid Malik said there was great unevenness in the supply of he
SEOUL - North Korea has relied on the wise leadership of Kim Jong-il to make sure there have been no outbreaks of AIDS in the reclusive country, its official media reported on Friday. North Korean media, which often gives glowing reports of Kim offering expert guidance on subjects as varied as cobbling shoes, firing ho
NEW DELHI - Hundreds of Indians demonstrated on Friday to demand new anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, while health workers in Muslim-majority Indonesia marked World AIDS Day by handing out condoms to prostitutes for safe sex. As people across continents threw a spotlight on the scourge of AIDS, secretive
MOSCOW - Russia on Wednesday denounced as exceedingly cruel the death sentences passed by a Libyan court on six foreign medics convicted of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the virus that causes AIDS. The court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death on Tuesday, saying t
NEW DELHI - India is violating the human rights of its gay minority and undermining a battle against HIV/AIDS by holding on to a puritan colonial-era law that bans homosexuality, the UNAIDS country chief said on Thursday. Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which carries a jail term of 10 years for men having sex wit
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan is in a state of denial about the extent of its HIV/AIDS problem, and political leaders need to understand the reality or it will be very difficult to contain the epidemic, a U.N. AIDS official said. The Pakistani government has reported about 3,500 cases of people with HIV, of whom 367 have develo
BANGKOK - Thailand , faced with ballooning costs for HIV-AIDS drugs, has issued its first compulsory licence to make a cheap version of a foreign-made drug and fired a shot across the bow of big pharmaceutical companies. The action drew a swift riposte from U.S. drug maker Merck & Co Inc, which holds the patent on
BEIJING - On the eve of World AIDS Day, construction workers at the building site of Beijing s CCTV tower put down tools and picked up condoms and brochures touting safe sex and HIV/AIDS prevention. This is a scary disease, said 22-year-old Mao Licai from China s western province of Sichuan. I think we should let more
MANILA - The World Health Organization urged political leaders in the Western Pacific region to step up efforts to stop the spread of the AIDS virus, saying the number of infections continues to grow. In 2006, an estimated 8.6 million people in Asia were living with HIV, nearly 1 million of whom were infected in the pa
ELDORADO PARK, South Africa - Hip-hop anthems pound, coloured lights flash and hundreds of teenagers scream as two young men stride onto the stage. We ve come all the way to tell you guys how great sex can be, they yell into the microphone, drawing whoops of delight from the crowd gathered in this South African townshi
TOKYO - Bono, the Irish rock star and outspoken campaigner against poverty and AIDS, praised Japan s policies on those issues on Wednesday, in a departure from his usual criticism of rich nations for not living up to expectations. Following a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the front man for U2 said th
(The following story is part of a series on AIDS in Africa being issued on Nov. 29 ahead of World AIDS Day.) LUSAKA - A haunting tune plays from a radio at a crowded flea market behind Zambia s main business district, accompanied by a baritone voice urging Africa to rise up against AIDS. That s KK, it s very nice, very
ADDIS ABABA - Shivering under a tattered blanket, a young woman tries to sleep at the foot of the mist-shrouded Entoto Mountain, north of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. Nearby, a mother and child huddle together in the early morning cold. I decided to come to Entoto to seek a cure from the holy water after a docto
MAPUTO - With almost 25 million Africans infected, 2.8 million new infections last year and 2.1 million deaths, the statistics are as grim as ever as Africa readies for World AIDS Day on December 1. But after years of relentlessly negative news about HIV/AIDS in Africa, health experts this year are nursing hopes that a
BEIJING - China has agreed to let state television air an acclaimed foreign documentary on AIDS after an interview with Tibet s Dalai Lama was removed, the film s American director said on Wednesday. China vies with the Dalai Lama for Tibetan hearts and minds and zealously seeks to curb his influence. The Himalayan reg
CAPE TOWN - South Africa will unveil a new plan aimed at fighting its HIV/AIDS crisis on Friday, seeking to calm bitter debate and revamp policies that have thus far done little to stop the epidemic. South Africa s AIDS battle has been two-fold, with doctors and community groups struggling to help an estimated 5 millio
GENEVA - Tobacco-related diseases including cancers and heart disease will kill 6.4 million people a year by 2015, 50 percent more than AIDS, a study said on Tuesday. But the HIV/AIDS epidemic will be the leading cause of illness and disability in low- and middle-income countries by then and take an increasing number o
ALMATY - The number of people living with HIV in Kazakhstan could be three times higher than official figures, a U.N. Children s Fund (UNICEF) official was quoted as saying on Tuesday. At least seven small children died in the Central Asian nation over the past few months due to transfusion of blood suspected of contai
JAKARTA - Indonesia , the world s fourth most populous country, is projecting half a million HIV cases by 2010, and double that if preventive steps are not taken, the health minister said on Tuesday. Current estimates put the number of cases in a range of 169,000-216,000 in Indonesia, which has a total population of 22
AHMEDABAD - Eighteen impoverished Indians with AIDS died in one district in western India in the last two months because the nearest state supply of free drugs is hundreds of kilometres away, an HIV advocacy group said on Tuesday. The absence of a regular supply of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs has claimed 18 lives in th
LONDON - Seven of the world s leading ad agencies have teamed up with MTV to produce for free a campaign to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS, using humour and controversy to attack the stigma and complacency surrounding the disease. In an interview with Reuters, Bill Roedy, President of MTV Networks International (MTVNI
TUGELA FERRY, South Africa - In a country where AIDS kills 900 people each day, full hospitals and beleaguered doctors are nothing new. But at one hospital in rural KwaZulu-Natal province, what could be a new public health nightmare is taking its toll as doctors and nurses grapple with a new, highly drug-resistant form
SYDNEY - Australian biotech firm Virax Holdings Ltd. said on Monday eight big mining companies had agreed to pay for trials of its HIV vaccine in South Africa , which is battling one of the world s worst AIDS crises. Virax applied to South Africa s drugs regulator in September for approval to conduct a clinical trial o
BEIJING - Chinese police freed an AIDS activist on Monday after holding him for days and forcing him to scrap a planned conference, but four other people were still in custody, a non-governmental organisation said on its Web site. Chinese authorities are wary of organisations they cannot directly control, such as indep
SHANGHAI - Chinese police have banned a conference involving hemophiliac activists and are believed to be holding one of the main organizers for questioning, a source close to the organizers said on Saturday. The conference, Blood safety, AIDS and Human Rights , was organized by the Beijing Aizhixing Institute of Healt
VATICAN CITY, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Sufferers of infectious diseases such as AIDS should not be victims of prejudice, rejection and indifference by a society obsessed with personal physical beauty and health, Pope Benedict said on Friday. The Pope, speaking to participants of a conference on the pastoral care of patients
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa s embattled health minister received a rare public boost on Wednesday when hundreds of traditional African healers marched in Johannesburg to support her natural treatments for HIV/AIDS. Several hundred healers, many wrapped in red cloaks and headscarves, praised Health Minister Manto Tshaba
ULUSABA, South Africa - Wealthy tourists jetting into South Africa to stay at luxury safari lodges pay top dollar for the illusion of danger, epitomised by a trumpeting elephant or a lion moving in for a kill. But lodge workers and the impoverished surrounding communities face a threat far more deadly than the leopards
BEIJING - The number of reported HIV/AIDS cases in China has grown by nearly 30 per cent so far this year, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday, warning the virus seemed to be spreading from high-risk groups to the general public. The reported number of cases at the end of October had risen to 183,733, up from 144,089
NEW DELHI - Poems written by a young Indian AIDS patient describing the shame and fear he felt after being diagnosed with the disease have been recorded by a top pop band to help tackle the prejudice sufferers face. In his poems, 26-year-old Ricky Tombing, from the northeastern state of Manipur, gives an insight into t
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A study commissioned by Pope Benedict on the use of condoms to fight AIDS has passed its first hurdle and is now being reviewed by top theologians for possible use in a Papal document, a cardinal said on Tuesday. This is something that worries the Pope a lot, said Cardinal Javier Lozano Barraga
Nearly 40 million people are living with HIV worldwide, 2.6 million more than in 2004, and the number of new infections reached 4.3 million in 2006, according to the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS . Here are some key facts from the latest annual report by the two United Nations agencies: *Two thirds of those
GENEVA (Reuters) - HIV infection is rising in every region of the world and most worryingly in countries like Uganda and Thailand , which had been heralded as success stories in the fight against AIDS, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Nearly 40 million adults and children are infected worldwide.
Immtech Pharmaceuticals Inc. said its drug candidate to treat a type of pneumonia that infects HIV/AIDS and other immunosuppressed patients received orphan drug status from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The company said its drug candidate, pafuramidine, is now in late stage clinical trials in HIV/AIDS patients
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - North America s only sanctioned drug injection site has successfully steered addicts into treatment and not created the crime that critics had feared, according to a study released on Monday. Closing the Vancouver facility, which was opened in 2003 as a research experiment, would also like
GENEVA - Millions of mothers, newborn babies and children die each year in Africa from preventable diseases despite promises of better healthcare by governments and donor countries, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday. Because of AIDS and armed conflicts, the health situation in many countries has not im
NEW DELHI - India must get on top of its HIV epidemic by next year or risk seeing it spiral out of control, the man who controls the richest private anti-AIDS fund in the country and a senior United Nations official warned. The signs are still ominous, Ashok Alexander, the director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Found
MUMBAI - India s western state of Maharashtra is set to introduce a policy aimed at curbing discrimination against HIV-infected workers, a leading newspaper said on Sunday. It would cover areas such as recruitment, transfers and promotions, and would be applied first in all state government offices, the Hindustan Times
WASHINGTON - U.S. prisons should make condoms available to inmates and test for HIV as part of a broader effort to curb the spread of AIDS among blacks, hit disproportionately hard by the incurable disease, experts urged on Thursday. The National Minority AIDS Council advocacy group, backed by U.S. black lawmakers and
LONDON - Poor people in developing countries are still not getting access to many life-saving drugs five years after a trade declaration that rich countries should put patients before profits, campaigners said on Tuesday. British-based anti-poverty charity Oxfam, AIDS campaigners and medical groups said rich nations we
KAMPALA - A temporary truce has raised hopes of an end to Uganda s 20-year war but the lull in the fighting has not led to improved conditions in the country s teeming refugee camps, a top charity said on Monday. The situation in the camps has not changed at all, Alice Uwase Anukur, secretary general of Uganda Red Cros
NEW YORK - Charity Red is the new black this holiday season, but for many companies even a high level of global altruism may not be enough to push their own finances any further into the black. A number of big companies have joined the Red initiative by donating some proceeds from selected products to help The Global F
TAIPEI - A recent explosion of HIV-AIDS cases in Taiwan is coming from China and is being spread by drug users, prompting the island to step up its prevention efforts, medical experts said on Friday. The HIV strain among Taiwan s intravenous drug users was the same as that circulating in we
UNITED NATIONS - A high-level panel called on Thursday for a radical overhaul of a jumble of U.N. development, relief and environmental agencies and programs that waste money in turf battles and duplication. The appeal comes from a group of prime ministers and other officials who recommended greater cohesion between bo
CAPE TOWN - The world as a whole has seen unprecedented growth over the past 30 years, but the prosperity has not been evenly shared and AIDS-ravaged sub-Saharan Africa in particular is stagnating, a U.N. development report said. When it comes to human development, the rising tide of global prosperity has lifted some b
NEW YORK - Drug makers Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , Gilead Sciences , Inc. (GILD.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Merck & Co. (MRK.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Inc. have submitted an application to European regulators to approve a new pill to treat HIV-1 infection, the three compan
LONDON - A monkey virus similar to HIV is endemic in wild gorillas in Africa and was probably transmitted to them by chimpanzees, researchers said on Wednesday. About 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS. The origins of two of the three strains of the virus in humans have been traced back to monkeys in
KOLKATA - Thousands of beggars in eastern India have been recruited to help stem the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus by singing songs and acting in plays about safe sex. Officials in the impoverished state of Bihar say they want to train many of the state s estimated 100,000 vagrants to sing songs in trains and buses and
GENEVA - The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday nominated China s Margaret Chan, its top official on bird flu, as its new chief as it gears up for a feared flu pandemic and battles global scourges such as AIDS. Chan, 59, will become the first person from China to head a major U.N. agency. A former director of
WASHINGTON - An AIDS virus genetically engineered to fight other AIDS viruses worked better than expected, suppressing the virus and renewing the immune systems of a few patients, researchers reported on Monday. The study involved just five people, and such an approach needs years more study, they cautioned -- but the
NAIROBI - Kenya received $70 million funding from The Global Fund on Monday to fund programmes providing antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to people living with HIV in the east African country, officials said. Kenya s AIDS prevalence dropped from 14 percent in 2000 to 6.9 percent in 2006, but an estimated 1.3 million people a
BEIJING - Chinese sociologists said that the country should promote bolder attitudes towards sex, but that wife-swapping was off the agenda, state media reported on Monday. Chinese attitudes towards sex have relaxed in recent decades, triggering a boom in extramarital relationships which the Communist Party has blamed
A Libyan court will deliver its verdict on six foreign medics accused of deliberately infecting Libyan children with HIV on Dec 19, the judge said on Saturday. Following is a chronology of key events in the case. Feb 1999 - Nineteen Bulgarian medical workers in Libya detained in connection with investigation into how c
NEW DELHI - Indian HIV/AIDS activists are to target one of the Hindu religion s biggest congregations in January to spread awareness about the disease infecting millions of Indians, they said on Saturday. More than 60 million pilgrims are expected to gather on the banks of the Ganges river in the northern city of Allah
TRIPOLI, Libya (Reuters) -- A Libyan court will deliver its verdict on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of deliberately infecting Libyan children with HIV on December 19, the judge said on Saturday. The six, who have been in detention since 1999, face a possible death sentence on charges they inte
The 193-state World Health Organisation (WHO) next week elects a new head to lead the fight against scourges such as AIDS and drugs-resistant tuberculosis, and prepare for a feared flu pandemic. The 11 candidates for the job will be cut to 5 by the WHO s executive board on Monday. After a day for interviews, the board
LONDON - Social and cultural factors, not just unavailability or ignorance, influence why young people do not use condoms, researchers said on Friday. Some sexually active under 25s associate condoms with a lack of trust, while others believe carrying them could imply sexual experience, which might be a plus for men bu
NEW DELHI - Indian authorities want to stop the daytime airing of a television advertisement promoting flavoured condoms saying it is obscene and in bad taste, a newspaper reported Friday. The advert promotes DKT s XXX strawberry, chocolate and banana flavoured condoms with the catchline What is your flavor of the nigh
WASHINGTON - Scientists trying to figure out why a few people resist the ravages of AIDS say they have captured a snapshot of an immune system structure that could help them design a drug to boost the body s defenses against the virus. Having an image of the enzyme, called A3G, could help researchers design a drug to m
LILONGWE, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Malawi opened one of Africa s first modern paediatric AIDS centres on Thursday in what officials said was the first step in dealing with an epidemic that has seen many child victims die for want of treatment. Malawi Health Minister Marjorie Ngaunje said the new Baylor College of Medicine Int
LONDON - Tuberculosis is making an alarming comeback in Britain, decades after doctors came close to eradicating the disease, public health officials said on Thursday. More than 8,000 people were infected last year by the airborne disease, one of the biggest killers in the Victorian era when it was known as White Death
GENEVA - The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has postponed until April the selection of a new chief after its board failed to reach consensus on a candidate, it said on Thursday. The United Nations-backed fund, one of the main financiers of efforts to fight the killer scourges, had been due at a mee
KOLKATA - Faulty blood-testing kits for HIV and hepatitis may have been fraudulently sold to government clinics across India , possibly resulting in people receiving transfusions of infected blood, officials said on Thursday. The government is seizing kits across the country and has ordered a probe into the possible fr
NEW YORK - Future treatment for the 40,000 people infected with HIV in the United States every year will cost $12.1 billion annually, a new study showed on Wednesday. U.S. patients infected with HIV can expect medical bills for current care related to the disease of $618,900 during their lifetimes, according to the stu
JOHANNESBURG - Anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela received Amnesty International s 2006 Ambassador of Conscience award on Wednesday for being a moral beacon in a world plagued by human rights abuses. The award was presented by South Africa s Nobel Prize winning author Nadine Gordimer in Johannesburg at the foundation M
LONDON - Millions of women have no access to family planning and undergo unsafe abortions each year because sexual and reproductive health is a taboo subject in many countries, researchers said on Wednesday. Although there are cheap, effective methods to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs), unwanted pregnanc
JOHANNESBURG - The International Red Cross is appealing for $300 million to expand an HIV/AIDS programme in southern Africa that will reach 250,000 patients in rural villages hard-hit by the epidemic. Southern Africa is home to 12 million HIV-positive people, about one-third of the world s total, and the disease is res
HONG KONG - Scientists in Japan say they have identified a compound that appears to stop the tuberculosis bacteria from multiplying, offering new hope in the fight against the increasingly drug-resistant disease. At least a third of the world s population is estimated to be infected with the TB bacteria, which are prot
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa s new coordinator on HIV/AIDS conceded on Tuesday the government had fallen short in fighting the epidemic and promised much better results using life-saving drugs. Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka now heads the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) and is President Thabo Mbeki
TRIPOLI - Poor hygiene and neglect led to the infection of hundreds of Libyan children with the HIV virus, defence lawyers said on Tuesday at the retrial of six foreign medics accused of deliberating infecting the children. Five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor Ashraf Alhajouj face a possible death sentence on c
GENEVA - Drugs showing promise against virulent new strains of tuberculosis should have their regulatory approval fast-tracked because existing medicines are ineffective, Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Monday. Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director of MSF s Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, said that three
SYDNEY - Papua New Guinea has failed to stop abuse by police who beat, torture and rape children, undermining the fight against an escalating HIV-AIDS epidemic, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report on Monday. In its second report in two years on police brutality in Papua New Guinea, the human rights group
LILONGWE - Spending by the United States and its allies on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is undermining global efforts to save millions of lives from the scourge of AIDS, U.N. special envoy Stephen Lewis said. There is a human calamity here.
JERUSALEM - Ethiopian doctors battling an AIDS epidemic are learning new methods of treatment in Israel from local physicians who gained experience caring for HIV-infected Ethiopian migrants to the Jewish state. The Israeli training course, now in its fourth year, is part of a U.S.-sponsored world AIDS relief effort pr
CAPE TOWN - South Africa s cabinet on Thursday endorsed a revised version of its national blueprint to fight HIV/AIDS, which has come under increasing criticism as the epidemic cuts an ever deeper swathe through the population. Sub-Saharan Africa s most powerful economy, South Africa faces a public health crisis as it
NEW DELHI - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have pledged $23 million to help fight HIV/AIDS in India , which has the world s highest number of people living with the disease, India s health ministry said. The funds, to be disbursed over the next three years, will enhance the capacity of the government s HIV preve
KUALA LUMPUR - Ex-convict Jonah Chan is a casualty of Malaysia s losing battle against AIDS. In 1984, he was jailed for three years for robbery. He came out a drug addict and is now infected with the AIDS virus. I contracted HIV by injecting drugs. I shared needles, said 41-year-old Chan who has been in and out of a ho
KOLKATA, India - Activists in eastern India battling to curb HIV/AIDS infections in one of Asia s biggest red light districts have recruited an unusual group of people to help fight the deadly virus -- the customers of prostitutes. Kolkata s notorious red light area, Sonagachhi, is home to about 10,000 prostitutes, who
JOHANNESBURG - A South African cultural rights group on Tuesday urged the government to establish legal ground rules for male circumcision rituals to prevent botched surgeries by traditional healers. Over the last decade some 83 people have died -- including 19 this year alone -- in the Eastern Cape province as a resul
LUSAKA - AIDS and poverty are threatening Zambia s economic gains achieved since independence from Britain in 1964, President Levy Mwanawasa said on Monday. Mwanawasa, in a speech prepared for delivery on state television on the eve of Zambia s 42nd independence anniversary, also said levels of gender violence and chil
LUSAKA - AIDS and poverty are threatening Zambia s economic gains achieved since independence from Britain in 1964, President Levy Mwanawasa said on Monday. Mwanawasa, in a speech prepared for delivery on state television on the eve of Zambia s 42nd independence anniversary, also said levels of gender violence and chil
NEW YORK - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. said on Friday that U.S. regulators approved a single-capsule form of its Reyataz HIV drug to be taken as part of combination drug therapy. Taken once a day, the 300 milligram Reyataz can replace two 150 mg capsules of the drug and will be available within a week, the company said.
AHMEDABAD, India - Two HIV-positive boys have been forced to leave an orphanage in India s Gujarat state after staff said they posed an unacceptable risk to the safety of other children, an official said on Friday. I am sad and sorry for them. Children play, eat and fight we cannot take chances, others can get infected
BEIJING - China has banned an unregistered non-governmental AIDS group founded by university students in the far western region of Xinjiang, an activist and a lawyer said on Thursday. The Snow Lotus AIDS education group, which had over 200 mainly university student volunteers, was closed down on Wednesday by the local
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa , burdened with one of the world s worst AIDS crises, should institute mandatory HIV tests through employers, banks and medical insurance programs, a senior AIDS doctor said on Thursday. I don t think ignorance is a human right, Dr. Francois Venter, head of the South African HIV Clinicians S
DAKAR - More than 18 million children in Africa will be orphaned by AIDS by the end of the decade if more is not done to combat the pandemic among the continent s overwhelmingly young population, the United Nations said. Millions of children already orphaned or infected by the disease were being overlooked as governmen
ASTANA - A seventh child has died in Kazakhstan after receiving blood suspected of containing HIV in a transfusion, the health ministry said on Wednesday. Health officials have tested thousands of children for the virus near the southern city of Shymkent since the outbreak started earlier this year. The number of repor
LUSAKA - Unsafe blood transfusions and contaminated syringes should be a new focus in the fight against AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, which has the world s highest HIV infection rates, the top U.S. AIDS official said on Wednesday. Mark Dybul, the U.S. Global AIDS coordinator, said evidence suggested that sexual transmiss
PRETORIA - Highly drug resistant tuberculosis could become a major killer in AIDS-hit parts of Africa where governments have been slow to roll out TB control programs, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. Urgent efforts are under way to revise global health plans and redirect donor funds to fight virulent str
BEIJING - AIDS in China has spread beyond high risk groups such as injecting drug users, prostitutes and homosexuals and the country is becoming like Africa in how the virus is transmitted, a senior health official says. There are 190 new HIV infections every day ... and in some high-prevalence areas, nearly one percen
Trimeris Inc. (TRMS.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Monday reported higher third-quarter sales for its HIV drug Fuzeon, saying this was the drug s best quarterly sales performance since its launch in 2003. The biopharmaceutical company said in a statement global net sales of Fuzeon were $63 million, an increase of 29 p
BEIJING - An AIDS prevention lecture aimed at Chinese sex workers who were given free condoms has sparked a strong rebuke from police, a newspaper said on Monday. The Center for Disease Control in northeastern Harbin held the lecture last week, calling the group of more than 50 sex workers sisters and telling them to c
LOS ANGELES - Irish rock star Bono went on a shopping spree and appeared on the influential Oprah Winfrey TV chat show on Friday to launch his latest campaign to fight AIDS in Africa. Saying he was convinced that this generation can be the generation that says no to extreme poverty in Africa, the U2 singer and activist
YANGON - A new $100 million fund to fight three killer diseases in army-ruled Myanmar should be operational early next year under the supervision of a U.N.-appointed manager, a senior U.N. official said on Friday. The 3-Diseases Fund is a five-year programme that aims to plug the gap left by the abrupt departure of the
BEIJING - Rapid modernization has given rise to complex health problems in China and it is saddled not only with diseases that afflict developing states but those in advanced countries too, senior Chinese health officials said. China was facing a double burden, Wang Ruotao, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Cente
WASHINGTON - The International Monetary Fund on Thursday urged Lesotho to make itself more attractive to foreign investors as the tiny African kingdom tries to recover from losses to its textile industry. Economic growth is still low and much remains to be done to reduce poverty in view of Lesotho s narrow resource and
Ben Hirschler, European Pharmaceuticals Correspondent
GENEVA - The global drugs industry, battered by controversy over drug safety and access to medicines, needs to go on the offensive to demonstrate its value to society, top executives said on Thursday. Daniel Vasella, Chief Executive of Novartis AG and outgoing president of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical
CHICAGO - Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK.N: Quote, Profile, Research) has agreed to acquire worldwide rights to Canadian biotech firm Ambrilia Biopharma Inc. s (AMB.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) HIV/AIDS protease inhibitor program, Ambrilia said on Thursday. Merck will pay $l7 million on signing and up to $215 million upon
LOS ANGELES - Trimeris Inc. (TRMS.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Wednesday lowered its 2006 outlook for U.S. and Canadian sales of its HIV drug Fuzeon and said efforts to launch a needle-free version of the drug will be delayed. The news sent the company s shares, which fell 2 percent to close at $9.06 on Nasdaq, down
LIPUNGA, Malawi - Pop star Madonna is adopting a one-year-old African boy who has lived in an orphanage since losing his mother shortly after birth, the chief of the Malawi village where the boy is from said on Wednesday. Henderson Geza Dyedyereke, the headman of Lipunga, a village near the Zambian border, said he was
NEW DELHI - Schools in conservative India will teach children as young as five years old about sexual health and drugs from next year to boost awareness of the dangers they face in a changing society, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. India s national examination board is set to introduce a new programme teaching pupi
MUMBAI - Indian drug maker Aurobindo Pharma Ltd. said on Tuesday it had received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration s tentative approval for the oral suspension form of anti-AIDS drug didanosine. Didanosine is the generic version of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. s Videx pediatric
ASTANA - Six children have died in Kazakhstan and at least 76 have been infected after transfusions of blood suspected of containing HIV, officials said on Tuesday. Health Minister Anatoly Dernovoi told a government meeting the virus was also found in eight of the children s mothers. Health officials have tested 10
GENEVA - A Republican congressman, France s AIDS ambassador and a music video executive were among those shortlisted on Monday to lead the U.N.-backed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a well-placed source said. Created in 2002 at the urging of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Geneva-
AMSTERDAM - Dutch biotechnology firm Crucell said on Monday it had secured a $16.2 million U.S. contract to develop a vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The contract is with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the company said in
NEW YORK - Drug makers Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , Gilead Sciences , Inc. (GILD.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Merck & Co. (MRK.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Inc. have submitted an application to European regulators to approve a new pill to treat HIV-1 infection, the three compan
JOHANNESBURG - South African health officials reported 10 new cases of a highly drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis on Friday in a province neighbouring Botswana where it had not been detected before. Laboratory tests confirmed four people have died of so-called XDR-TB -- two since July -- in the North West province,
GENEVA - Princess Stephanie of Monaco , who became a special representative for UNAIDS on Friday, vowed to promote prevention of the killer disease and combat discrimination against people who suffer from it. AIDS has no borders, and knows no social, political, religious or racial barriers
WASHINGTON - U.S. health officials have approved a Gen-Probe Inc. (GPRO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) test to help diagnose the HIV virus sooner, the Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday. The test, called the Aptima HIV-1 RNA Qualitative Assay, helps detect genetic material to diagnose the HIV-1 virus before an
LONDON - A second wave of companies including a major consumer electronics group is set to join the Red product branding alliance as the scheme to raise money to fight AIDS in Africa goes global. Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said on Thursday that severa
ZURICH - Swiss drugmaker Roche AG (ROG.VX: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Thursday that up to 95 percent of patients treated with its drug Fuzeon in combination with another new kind of AIDS drug can achieve undetectable levels of HIV. That compared with 60 to 70 percent of patients who achieved undetectable HIV aft
LOS ANGELES - A spokeswoman for Madonna on Wednesday denied claims by officials in the African nation of Malawi that the pop star had adopted a one-year-old orphan boy there. Spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg called the report completely inaccurate but said Madonna was not bothered by it because it would draw attention to the
CHICAGO - Gen-Probe (GPRO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Wednesday said it won U.S. regulatory clearance for its Procleix Ultrio test to run on the enhanced Semi-Automated Procleix System. The Procleix Ultrio test was approved to screen donated blood, plasma, organs and tissue for HIV-1 and hepatitis C virus in indivi
JOHANNESBURG - The death toll from a highly drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis has risen to 74 in South Africa and a health official on Wednesday predicted more casualties from the deadly disease. The death toll since January 2005 from extremely drug resistant tuberculosis or XDR-TB jumped from a previous tally of 6
LILONGWE (Reuters) - Pop diva Madonna adopted a young boy in Malawi on Wednesday and moved ahead with plans to fund a center for 1,000 orphans, many of whom lost parents to AIDS in the impoverished African nation. The Material Girl and an entourage arrived in the Malawian capital Lilongwe by private plane early on Wedn
LILONGWE - Pop diva Madonna arrived in Malawi on Wednesday to adopt an African child and fund an orphan center for 1,000 children, many of whom lost parents to AIDS. A fleet of cars and trucks specially flown in whisked the Material Girl and her entourage to an undisclosed location soon after their private plane landed
LUANDA - Most mornings, Pierre-Francois Pirlot takes a brisk walk down Luanda s waterfront promenade. But unlike the dozens of others there whose aim is to get fit, he is out distributing condoms. Pirlot, the head of the United Nations Development Program in Angola , hands out up to 1,000 condoms during his hour-long c
HONG KONG - While every human death from bird flu commands widespread attention, some experts are urging the world not to forget killer diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, which claim millions of lives each year. More effort must be put into preventing these diseases, and vaccines -- once they are ready -- must
NAIROBI - Emergency aid to Africa has more than tripled in recent years, but more than 120 million people still live on the edge of emergency because of a lack of long-term solutions, CARE international said on Tuesday. Aid to tackle starvation, malnutrition and other immediate crises rose from 500 million pounds ($940
SURAT, India (Reuters) - Dozens of Indian men and women infected with HIV/AIDS have agreed to marry each other after meeting at a special matchmaking event, hoping to end the isolation the deadly infection often brings. Thirty infected men and women from across the country met at the HIV+ Find a Life Partner session
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - More than 40 percent of people in the European Union take no precautions against AIDS during sex, an EU survey showed on Monday. According to the poll, carried out in September and October of last year, fewer people in the 15 old member states said they practiced safe sex compared to the previous s
LONDON - Nearly 50 percent of men in Scotland who pay for sex at home or abroad have a partner and the percentage could be greater, researchers said on Monday. One in 10 men questioned in a survey in Glasgow admitted that they had paid for sex recently and 27 percent said they repeatedly visited prostitutes. Approximat
NEW YORK - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Thursday they have reached agreement to commercialize a three-in-one AIDS pill in Canada . ATRIPLA won U.S. approval in July, the companies said on Thursday.
NEW DELHI - India s state-run AIDS control agency said on Thursday it had nearly doubled the number of clinics giving free anti-retroviral drugs to tackle the fallout of the infection in the country with the world s most cases. Ninety-one centres were now operational from 54 about six months ago, and the number was exp
EW DELHI - A British colonial era law in India that criminalizes homosexuality is not acceptable and scrapping it is fundamental to the fight against AIDS, the country s top official leading efforts to end the disease said. Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail for men havin
LOS ANGELES - A protein being developed by Sangamo BioSciences Inc. appeared in laboratory testing to make human immune system cells permanently resistant to HIV infection, the company said on Wednesday. Previously, the company had demonstrated only short-term resistance, said company spokeswoman Elizabeth Wolffe.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - New cases of tuberculosis found in South Africa have raised fears there could be multiple versions of a highly drug resistant strain that has killed 62 people and threatens to spread across a region ravaged by AIDS. Health officials said on Wednesday the five new cases were discovered in Gauten
Measuring the amount of AIDS virus circulating in the blood of HIV-positive patients is not a good indicator of the health of their immune systems, researchers said on Tuesday. Physicians often assess the amount of HIV particles in the blood -- known as the viral load -- along with the decline in CD4 cells that help th
ALMATY - Prosecutors in Kazakhstan have charged eight doctors and senior health officials with criminal negligence over the infection of at least 61 children with HIV and the deaths of five, media and officials said on Tuesday. The health ministry confirmed the number of infected children had risen to 61 and said a fif
JOHANNESBURG, Sept 22 (Reuters) - African television and radio stations are planning an on-air campaign in 24 countries to build hope and awareness in the face of the AIDS pandemic, which has hit Africa harder than anyplace else on earth. The aim is to restore confidence in young people who have developed a defeatist a
LONDON - Smoking, already linked to several illnesses, may also increase the risk of infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, researchers said on Thursday. In a review of studies that looked at the association between smoking and HIV, British doctors said five of the six studies they analysed showed smokers had
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government recommended near-universal testing for the AIDS virus on Thursday, saying too many people are missed by the current practice of focusing on people who seem to be at high risk. Nearly everyone aged from 13 to 64 would be screened under the new proposals issued by the U.S. Cente
TRIPOLI (Reuters) - The retrial of six foreign medics facing a possible death penalty on charges they infected hundreds of Libyan children with the AIDS virus was adjourned on Thursday after a defense lawyer failed to show up in court. The trial was postponed until October 31, said the court President Mahmoud Haouissa,
UNITED NATIONS - Five nations launched an initiative on Tuesday to raise at least $300 million next year to buy generic drugs at steep volume discounts to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in developing countries. Leaders from France , Brazil , Britain, Norway and
JOHANNESBURG, Sept 19 (Reuters) - A British tourist in South Africa was forced to take anti-AIDS drugs after a robber bit his finger to steal his wedding ring. South Africa s News24 Web site said two British couples celebrating 30 and 35 years of marriage were attacked in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth and robbed o
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela will be awarded Amnesty International s Ambassador of Conscience award, the highest honor given by the global human rights watchdog, Amnesty said on Tuesday. More than any other living person, Nelson Mandela has come to symbolize all that is hopeful and ideali
JOHANNESBURG, Sept 18 (Reuters) -South Africa s deputy president called for a new spirit in the fight against HIV/AIDS on Tuesday, an apparent olive branch to critics of one of the most contentious government policies. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who also heads South Africa s National AIDS Council (SANAC), said acrimony ov
ASTANA, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Negligence in a blood transfusion centre led to the death of four babies in Kazakhstan and the infection of at least 55 children and one adult with the HIV virus, the Health Ministry said on Monday. The children, and a mother, have been infected in the past few months in a hospital in the so
JOHANNESBURG, Sept 18 (Reuters) - HIV/AIDS is the biggest single killer of new mothers in South Africa , the Health Department said on Tuesday in a grim new statistic of the pandemic s toll on the country. The department released a study on maternal deaths from 2002-2004, illustrating a raft of problems with medical ca
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than a quarter of New Yorkers infected with the AIDS virus are now dying of other causes, researchers said on Monday. An analysis of 68,669 New York City residents infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, found that of those who died between 1999 and 2004, 26.3 percent died of somethin
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa s government long ignored warnings about drug-resistant tuberculosis, putting millions of HIV-positive people at risk now that a dangerous new strain of TB has emerged, AIDS activists say. South African officials have scrambled to react to news this month that extremely drug resistant tuberc
NEW DELHI - Leading Indian writers, artists, lawyers and academics led by author Vikram Seth have written an open letter urging the government to overturn a British colonial era law that criminalises homosexuality. Condemning Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code as an attack on human rights and fundamental freedoms, it
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Countries where AIDS infections are growing among injecting drug users can and should act immediately to curb the spread of infection, a U.S. Institute of Medicine panel said on Friday. Treating addicts, giving them access to clean needles and syringes, and educational programs can all help reduc
LONDON (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the world s leading maker of HIV/AIDS treatments, has struck a deal to supply cut-price AIDS drugs to Russia , it said on Friday. The move is the latest step by the pharmaceutical industry to offer discounted medicines to needy countries, following past criticism that it is more
JOHANNESBURG - South African officials said the spread of highly drug resistant tuberculosis to a Johannesburg hospital was a wake-up call to intensify work on defenses against the possibility of a deadly outbreak. The TB case, which emerged this week in South Africa s economic hub, has served as a reminder that the go
NEW YORK - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Medivir AB (MVIRb.ST: Quote, Profile, Research) announced on Wednesday a collaboration to develop and commercialize MIV-170, a treatment for HIV-1 infection in adults as part of an antiretroviral drug regimen. The agreement includes an upfront p
JOHANNESBURG - South African health authorities went on high alert on Wednesday after officials confirmed a case of a new, deadly strain of tuberculosis in Johannesburg, the country s economic hub. Officials said the case, a woman, had refused to stay in hospital -- stoking fears the TB strain could spread rapidly thro
NEW DELHI - India plans to recruit one young man and woman from every large village in the country to over the next five years teach their peers about safe sex and HIV, a health official said on Wednesday. The army of young people would be part of India s frontline as it tries to slow the spread of the deadly virus, wh
NEW YORK - Billionaire financier George Soros pledged $50 million on Wednesday to help the United Nations tackle extreme poverty and AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. The money will be spent on the Millennium Villages project, which provides bed nets to stop mosquitoes that carry malaria, fertilizers to replenish depleted so
SANTIAGO, Chile - A move to give teenagers public access to the morning-after contraceptive pill without parental consent has polarized Chilean society, with many saying it s a license for kids to have more sex. Chile, where abortion is illegal under any circumstance, announced last week that the morning-after pill w
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa s health department has promised to start distribution as early as next week of a drug to help fight an extremely virulent strain of tuberculosis that has killed 52 people in the country. However, the government warned on Tuesday there was no guarantee the drug will save lives as it may prov
TRIPOLI - Hundreds of HIV-positive Libyan children should each receive 15 million dinars ($11.6 million) in compensation, lawyers on Tuesday told a court retrying six foreign medics accused of deliberately infecting the children. It was the first time since the retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor
EKA, India - Sitting on a wooden bench under a slowly whirring fan, 43-year-old Prempal says he urgently needs anti-retroviral drugs to fight the HIV illness in his body. I just might die before I can start my treatment, Prempal said with a hysterical laugh as he waited in a doctor s consultation room in Eka, a small t
HARARE - President Robert Mugabe s government said on Tuesday it was ready to talk with Zimbabwean unions over their social grievances, but renewed its vow to stop nationwide street protests planned for Wednesday. The opposition-allied Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has called for the demonstrations to protes
WASHINGTON - The most effective way to used AIDS drugs in South Africa would be to concentrate on cities, although this might also be the least ethical approach, an international team of researchers said on Monday. A computer model suggested the most efficient strategy for the country s plan to give triple-drug therapy
NEW YORK - Wearing just a small white towel and a smile, Bob prowls the dark halls of the East Side Club, looking into dozens of its closet-sized rooms and hoping eye contact with another man will lead to sex. It s better than going to a bar and taking your chances, said Bob, a 46-year-old garden supplies salesman from
JOHANNESBURG - A highly drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis that has killed 52 people in South Africa is spreading, opening a deadly chapter in the country s HIV/AIDS crisis, medical experts said on Monday. Tuberculosis is an airborne illness that is particularly deadly for those with immune systems weakened by HIV,
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has done a remarkable about-face in dealing with HIV/AIDS, but good intentions need wider implementation in a country where eight people become infected each hour, a top U.N. official said on Monday. Peter Piot, executive director of the United Nations AIDS agency
WASHINGTON - The U.S. government fined the American Red Cross $4.2 million for failing to ask blood donors proper screening questions and skipping other steps meant to keep the blood supply safe, officials said on Friday. The fine, the largest ever levied by the Food and Drug Administration for a blood safety violation
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa s controversial health minister hit back on Friday at criticism of her unorthodox views on AIDS and stuck to views that traditional medicine can treat AIDS. More than 80 international scientists joined a campaign this week by a leading South African AIDS lobby group urging President Thabo Mb
ASTANA - At least four babies have died in Kazakhstan following transfusion of blood suspected of being infected with the HIV virus, health officials said on Friday. The health ministry said 49 children aged from two months to 10 years have been infected over the past few months in a number of hospitals in the south of
JOHANNESBURG - The World Health Organization urged South Africa on Thursday to act quickly to stamp out a highly-resistant (WHO) form of tuberculosis that has killed at least 52 people and could spread fast. The United Nations body said a response akin to recent global efforts to control SARS and bird flu was needed to
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa vowed on Thursday to step up its fight against HIV and shrugged off calls for the dismissal of its controversial health minister, who promotes garlic and lemon as a treatment for AIDS. More than 80 international scientists this week called for South African President Thabo Mbeki to fire Heal
HARARE - The number of of people infected with the virus that causes AIDS is down in Zimbabwe due to increased awareness but the country still has one of the highest HIV rates in the world, state media reported on Thursday. Health Minister David Parirenyatwa was quoted by the Herald newspaper as saying the government s
SEOUL - Pfizer Inc. (PFE.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the world s largest drugmaker, expects to register its HIV treatment maraviroc with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other countries for approval by year-end, a top executive said on Thursday. It s in the final stages of clinical tests, Joseph Feczko, sen
WASHINGTON - A controversial policy promoting abstinence education to fight AIDS may be the best way to get men to treat women better, which experts agree is key to battling the AIDS epidemic, U.S. government AIDS officials said on Wednesday. But a congressional investigator said a study found that the policy often con
JOHANNESBURG - More than 80 international scientists, including a Nobel laureate, have appealed to South Africa s president to fire his controversial health minister for what they say are pseudo-scientific policies on AIDS. Calls for the dismissal of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang for promoting alternative tr
NEW DELHI - Hundreds of HIV-infected people in India are shedding inhibition and demanding justice against discrimination in the workplace and at home, a leading legal rights group said on Wednesday. But the lack of a specific law to protect millions of people living with the virus was hurting efforts to counter the bi
PIETERMARITZBURG, South Africa (Reuters) - Hundreds of chanting supporters hailed former South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma on Tuesday as a judge began hearings on whether his trial for graft should go ahead. The Zulu politician, fighting for his political life, entered court in the southern city of Pietermaritz
TRIPOLI - The retrial of six foreign medics facing a possible death penalty on charges they infected hundreds of Libyan children with the AIDS virus was adjourned on Tuesday after a defence lawyer failed to show up in court. The court held a very brief session and swiftly postponed the trial to Sept. 12 because the law
KOLKATA - A pregnant HIV-positive woman was forced to abort her own fetus after staff in a hospital in eastern India refused to help her, officials said on Monday. In a separate incident in the region, an infected man was stoned by people who feared he might spread the virus. He later died of his injuries. Investig
PARIS - Paris renamed the square in front of Notre Dame cathedral after Pope John Paul II on Sunday, angering AIDS groups and left-wing sympathisers, who protested against the move because of his strict line against condoms. Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe attended a ceremony to unveil a sign bearing the square s new name
HARARE - Zimbabwe s main labour federation said on Sunday it would hold demonstrations in major towns on Sept. 13 to protest against poor wages and workers lack of access to anti-retroviral drugs to fight HIV/AIDS. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions first warned of protests in May as its members struggled with infla
OTTAWA - Almost 140 delegates to an international AIDS conference in Toronto last month have applied for refugee status in Canada , officials said on Friday. The federal immigration ministry said it could not confirm a report in the Toronto Sun newspaper which said most of the 137 refugee seekers were women from
NAIROBI - Kenya on Thursday accused Senator Barack Obama, a rising star in America s Democratic party, of making inaccurate criticisms about corruption in the country of his father. Obama, who is a role model to many in the east African nation, on Wednesday ended what amounted to a homecoming tour during which he decla
NEW DELHI - India s top court asked the government on Thursday to explain why it had failed to meet its target of providing free drugs for 100,000 HIV-positive people by 2005 and on what basis it delayed the objective by two years. What s the difficulty? Why was the target year shifted? the three-member bench, headed b
ADDIS ABABA, Aug 30 (Reuters) - African countries are making steady progress in tackling some of the deadliest diseases, thanks to support provided by World Health Organisation (WHO) to its members, a senior health official said on Wednesday. The World Health Organisation and its 46-member states in the African region
TRIPOLI - A Libyan prosecutor demanded the death penalty on Tuesday for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor on trial for the second time on charges that they infected hundreds of children with the HIV virus. The act was cruel, criminal and inhuman. It s a human catastrophe, prosecutor Omar Abdulkhaleq told t
ADDIS ABABA - Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi called on international donors on Monday to substantially increase funding to deal with health problems affecting millions in Africa. The magnitude of the challenge we face in the health area and the urgency with which the challenge needs to be addressed makes effecti
LONDON - A commonly used HIV medicine may also help prevent cervical cancer and could be developed into an anti-cancer cream, early laboratory tests by British scientists suggest. Researchers at the University of Manchester said on Friday that test-tube studies showed the drug lopinavir selectively killed hu
SAN FRANCISCO - California lawmakers passed a bill on Thursday to permit condom distribution in the state s prisons, where the HIV infection rate is eight times higher than on the streets of Los Angeles. The bill now goes to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has not yet taken a position on it, according to his office.
JOHANNESBURG - AIDS activists launched protests on Thursday demanding the dismissal of South Africa s health minister as a new study said the country faced as many as 9 million new HIV cases by 2025 if the crisis is not contained. The Treatment Action Campaign, nominated for a Nobel Peace prize in 2003 for its AIDS act
NEW DELHI - Nearly two thirds of parliamentarians in India , which has the world s highest HIV/AIDS caseload, wrongly believe the virus can spread by sharing clothes with an infected person, a survey said. The poll of 250 MPs in India s lower and upper houses of parliament, roughly a third of the total, showed that 56
TORONTO (Reuters) - Theratechnologies Inc. said on Wednesday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has agreed to a design for a major clinical trial of a drug to combat a side-effect of taking anti-HIV drug combinations. In a statement, Montreal-based Theratechnologies said it had received a special protocol assessment
CHICAGO - The proportion of Americans with the herpes virus has declined, due perhaps to a curb in promiscuity among young people following earlier jumps in rates of infection, researchers said on Tuesday. While U.S. infection rates have declined 19 percent among 14- to 49-year-olds since the early 1990s,
Barack Obama, the only black United States Senator, criticised South African leaders on Monday for their slow response to HIV/Aids, saying they were wrong to contrast African science and Western science . Aids activists say Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is creating deadly confusion by pushing traditional med
CAPE TOWN - Zackie Achmat, one of South Africa s top AIDS activists, appeared in court on Tuesday on trespassing charges after leading a protest against government policies to fight the disease. Achmat and dozens of Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) activists were arrested last week for demonstrating in a government buil
JOHANNESBURG - Africa s biggest generic drug maker Aspen posted a 235 percent jump in headline earnings per share (EPS) to 185.5 cents, driven by rising sales in a range of products from milk formula to anti-AIDS drugs. Aspen said on Monday that ARVs, life-prolonging drugs taken by AIDS patients, would power growth in
CAPE TOWN - Barack Obama, the only black U.S. senator, criticised South African leaders on Monday for their slow response to AIDS and said he planned to be tested for HIV while visiting Kenya later on his African trip. South African AIDS activists say Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has created confusion by pu
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa s health minister on Sunday defended her AIDS policies after a blistering attack by a top U.N. official, but newspapers said she had made the country a laughing stock and demanded her resignation. Manto Tshabalala-Mismang blamed South Africa s poor media coverage at last week s global AIDS c
TORONTO - South Africa s government remains obtuse and negligent in its approach to AIDS and should be denounced, researchers and diplomats said on Friday. Top speakers at the 16th International Conference on AIDS reserved their closing remarks for a long and detailed critique of South Africa and President Thabo Mbeki
DHAKA - A Bangladeshi community group working to educate sex workers in the country shared an international award for its contribution toward prevention of HIV/AIDS. The Durjoy Nari Sangha distributes condoms, gives information about AIDS to sex workers, and provides for the education of their children. The newly launc
BEIJING - A former head of one of China s most AIDS-ravaged counties has been arrested for taking bribes, state media reported. Yang Songquan, former Communist Party secretary of Shangcai county in the central province of Henan, is accused of taking at least 100,000 yuan ($12,500) in bribes over a river treatment proje
JOHANNESBURG - What would Jesus do about AIDS? The question has drawn together thousands of African Christians who are praying God will provide the solution to the epidemic devastating the continent. Organisers of the gathering in Johannesburg say it is time to start an active, faith-based campaign to fight AIDS, urgin
TORONTO - Drastic measures are needed to make sure there are enough health care workers to help treat and prevent HIV in Africa, where 25 million patients with the virus now live, the World Health Organization said on Friday. Lifesaving drugs for AIDS are available and more affordable, big donors are placing renewed em
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa s ruling African National Congress (ANC) on Friday denounced activists it said had stormed the country s exhibit in Canada in a protest against government policy on the AIDS pandemic. South African newspapers widely reported the protest by members of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) who r
JOHANNESBURG - Dozens of South African AIDS activists were arrested on Friday after a sit-in protest at a government office in Cape Town demanding treatment for HIV infected prisoners. The arrests came as the ruling African National Congress (ANC) denounced activists it said had ransacked the country s exhibit in
TORONTO - A U.S. loyalty oath that aims to curb prostitution and prevent sex trafficking has stymied one group s efforts to educate sex workers in Bangladesh and left thousands of women without support, a local activist said on Thursday. Her eyes filling with tears, Hazera Bagum said her group, Durjoy Nari Shangha, had
TORONTO - Deep pockets are not so deep when it comes to the AIDS epidemic, Canadian researchers said on Thursday. They released a study showing that for every person who died in the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, about $35,336 was donated, while $3,333 was given for every person affected by the disaster. For Hurri
TORONTO - Delighted that prevention is finally at the front of the AIDS agenda, researchers backing microbicides and male circumcision cautioned on Thursday that they have years of hard work ahead of them before anyone will benefit from such methods. Activists urged the outside world to keep up the pressure on politica
TORONTO - Condoms are very much in style as a fashion accessory at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, showing up on strait-laced men, shy teenagers and African grandmothers. There s a great need to de-stigmatize condoms around the world, especially in Africa, said Franck DeRose, executive director of The Con
TORONTO - U.S. drug giant Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. is sending 250 pediatric doctors over the next five years to sub-Saharan Africa to fight HIV/AIDS, part of a growing push to target infants and children in the battle against the epidemic. The initiative is a joint venture with the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa s drive to promote garlic, lemon and beetroot as AIDS treatments has fanned anger at home as activists accuse the government of misleading public opinion at a global conference on the epidemic. South Africa s exhibit at the Toronto AIDS conference -- featuring displays of garlic and other na
LUSAKA - Sweden and the Netherlands will give Zambia a grant of about $155 million to fight AIDS and improve health services, a Swedish diplomat said on Thursday. Sweden s ambassador in Zambia Christina Rehlen said the Dutch would give Zambia around $79 million while Sweden would provide $76.
TORONTO - Developing countries with few resources to fight AIDS could take their lead from Thailand s prevention programs of recent years, which have allowed it to provide nearly free drug treatments to patients, the World Bank said in a report on Wednesday. A former hot spot for the virus, Thailand has more than halve
TORONTO - Drugs are no good without food in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and the essential role of proper nutrition has been forgotten, the United Nations World Food Program said on Wednesday. Organizers of the 16th International AIDS Conference marked a small victory with the announcem
TORONTO - Canada s government-funded public health system falls short on timely and equal access to medicines for HIV/AIDS patients, a health advocacy group said on Wednesday. An unwieldy drug review process and a patchwork of federal, provincial and territorial drug reimbursement plans, each with different coverage st
TORONTO - Sex workers and their supporters from 21 countries marched on Wednesday through the 16th International AIDS Conference to demand their own place not only at the conference, but in their own societies. Wearing turquoise T-shirts, they marched from a gauze-draped bed in the Toronto conference s Stiletto Lounge,
TORONTO - Ten times more people in Africa are getting life-saving AIDS drugs than just three years ago, but still most get no treatment and the pandemic continues to spread, the World Health Organization reported on Wednesday. A total of 1.04 million people in sun-Saharan Africa get the antiretroviral drugs that preven
MUMBAI - India s Strides Arcolab Ltd. (STAR.BO: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Wednesday it had received tentative approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its HIV drug nevirapine in tablet forms. Strides also said U.S.-based Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD.O: Quote, Profile, Rese
TORONTO - There is no vaccine against AIDS and none of the dozens of vaccines being tested is likely to completely protect people from the deadly virus, but the future looks bright for AIDS vaccine development, researchers said on Tuesday. Scientists will learn from the vaccines now being tested, and the developing wor
TORONTO - AIDS is spiraling out of control in Asia among men who have sex with other men, activists warned on Tuesday -- and the epidemic is likely to spread because many of these men also marry or have sex with women. And because the issue of homosexual sex is taboo in many Asian cultures, these men are difficult to i
TORONTO - Former President Bill Clinton leaped to the defense of the Bush administration s AIDS efforts on Tuesday, saying the United States is spending more to fight HIV than any other government. Clinton joined Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in praising President George W. Bush s President s Emergency Program for AI
TORONTO - Maclarka Jeanet Rakhiba did what any good grandmother would do: she told her HIV-positive grandson a white lie to make him feel less alone and afraid. She told the orphan she was infected too. I didn t know how to tell him, said Rakhiba, from Katlehong, South Africa , where she was counseled at a local wor
TORONTO - Circumcision, microbicides and drugs all offer promising new possibilities for battling the AIDS pandemic, but it will not be easy to roll out this arsenal of prevention methods, experts said on Tuesday. And the ultimate goal of a vaccine is still far away, although vaccine researchers said they were making p
TORONTO - Doctors trying to treat HIV-infected newborns in sub-Saharan Africa are being held back by over-priced treatments, an absence of diagnostic tools, and a general lack of focus from policymakers and international organizations, Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Tuesday. Most of the 2.3 million children infected
BANGKOK - Nearly a year after Thailand rolled out Asia s biggest AIDS drug program, Boripat Bonmon is among those who slipped through the cracks. The 43-year-old shopkeeper turned activist went off treatment eight months ago after his daily cocktail of antiretroviral drugs stopped working. He needs expensive secon
TORONTO - The light scent of marijuana wafted among exhibits at the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto on Monday, as activists took advantage of Canada s comparatively pot-friendly policies to make a pitch for the drug as a pain-killer. This is the first time that an exhibit of this kind has been at the AIDS
HONG KONG - Mainland Chinese prostitutes, who flock to Hong Kong in large numbers to make a living, are failing to protect themselves, and the number of HIV/AIDS infections is expected to rise, social workers say. Groups that counsel sex workers say prostitutes are frequently questioned by police, searched, detained an
HONG KONG - Meng Lin, who is HIV positive and an AIDS activist in Beijing, relies on friends to send him drugs from overseas every month -- medicine he needs to stay alive. There are days when he despairs as he watches his cache of drugs dwindle with no replenishment in sight. I feel very troubled when the supply drops
BUSELENI, Swaziland - If it takes a village to raise a child, AIDS-ravaged Swaziland is showing the way. It has to -- its parents are dying. The tiny African kingdom, sandwiched between South Africa and Mozambique , is among the hardest hit countries in the world by the HIV/AIDS epidemic with an
TORONTO - Researchers, activists and major funders have agreed to a shift in the fight against AIDS to focus on prevention and especially helping women protect themselves. With big pharmaceutical companies making their HIV drugs available cheaply to developing nations and with generic drugs available, speakers at the 1
JOHANNESBURG - More than 15 million children in sub-Saharan Africa will have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS by 2010, straining social safety networks as poor countries battle the epidemic, a report said on Monday. The report by the U.N. Children s Fund (UNICEF), UNAIDS and the U.S. President s Emergency Plan for
FRANKFURT - German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim s AIDS drug Aptivus helped reduce amounts of the virus in children, according to results of a study, the company said on Monday. Boehringer said results from a 48-week analysis of the 115-child trial showed that patients achieved a decrease in virologic load, which meas
WASHINGTON - India s transient sex trade is one of South Asia s biggest challenges in the fight against HIV, with difficulties tracking sex workers and customers, the World Bank said in a report on Monday. A high proportion of female sex workers in India move, often as frequently as every two weeks, said the bank s A
CHICAGO - GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L: Quote, Profile, Research) (GSK.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Shionogi and Co. Ltd. (4507.T: Quote, NEWS, Research) on Monday said they have completed the initial clinical study for an experimental HIV/AIDS drug that blocks viral replication by preventing its integration into the gen
JOHANNESBURG - Southern Africa s AIDS pandemic, the world s worst, is being fueled primarily by low condom use among people with multiple concurrent sexual partners and low levels of male circumcision, a new study said on Monday. The report by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said men s sexual attitude
BEIJING - A disease control office in Beijing has opened the city s first officially sanctioned online gay chatroom, but most of the posts come from the Web site s managers, a newspaper reported on Monday. A link marked comrade forum -- comrades being Chinese slang for gay men -- on the Chaoyang District Disease Preven
TORONTO - Committed treatment with free testing and free drugs has saved the lives of thousands of Zambian HIV patients, researchers said on Sunday. They said their new approach proves wrong the perceived wisdom that it is simply not possible to provide sophisticated AIDS care to patients in the poorest of countries.
TORONTO - A cream, gel or pill that women can use to protect themselves from the AIDS virus is key to stopping the AIDS pandemic, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has given hundreds of millions of dollars to HIV programs, said on Sunday. Gates said he would step up funding for prevention research but said governments
TORONTO - Simpler drug combinations can control the AIDS virus well, researchers said on Sunday in several reports that will help in trying to mix and match nearly two dozen different HIV drugs in lifesaving cocktails. The reports published in the Journal of the American Medical Association , and presented to the In
LOS ANGELES - Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday they have agreed to distribute a new triple-combination AIDS pill in developing countries. The once-daily drug, Atripla, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration l
TORONTO - The AIDS virus has an accomplice that helps it infect the immune system cells it attacks -- other immune system cells, U.S. researchers reported on Saturday. In fact, these other cells, known as B cells, may be key to infection, the University of Pittsburgh researchers told an international AIDS conference.
TORONTO - An experimental HIV drug in a new class called integrase inhibitors helps control the virus well combined with other drugs commonly used in AIDS cocktails, its maker Merck and Co. reported on Saturday. The findings, to be presented at an international AIDS meeting, offer a potential new weapon in the growing
South Africa plans to introduce a new law that will broaden the legal definition of rape in a bid to clamp down on widespread sexual offences, the justice ministry said on Wednesday. South Africa has one of the world s highest rates of violent crime, including rape. According to the latest police data, more than 55 0
BEIJING/HONG KONG -- Lexy Zhang laughs nervously as he talks about his first experiences picking up men for sex in a country where condoms are widely available for family planning but not always promoted to prevent AIDS. I was just having unsafe sex all the time, said the 26-year-old, sitting in a fashionable Beijing b
NEW YORK -- A growing number of countries are supporting coercive or discriminatory HIV testing programs that fail to ensure confidentiality, a U.S. human rights group said on Thursday ahead of an international AIDS conference. Human Rights Watch called on the World Health Organization and the U.N. Joint Program on
JOHANNESBURG -- Obesity is on the rise among black women in South Africa , possibly in part due to fears of looking like an AIDS patient, a top health expert on Friday. Tessa van der Merwe of the International Association for the Study of Obesity said around one in three black South African women is now seriously overw
LOS ANGELES - A proposal in Congress to require that more of the federal money spent on uninsured AIDS patients go to drugs and doctor visits is drawing criticism from some AIDS groups, who say it will force cuts in basic services like meals and housing. Opponents, including the Gay Men s Health Crisis and New York Dem
ATLANTA - Fewer U.S. high school students are having sex, and the ones who do are less likely to have multiple partners, according to a report issued on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some 46.8 percent of students said they engaged in sexual intercourse in a 2005 survey, down from 54.1 perc
ATLANTA - Only one in five people with HIV in poor and middle-income countries receives the drugs that treat the virus, said a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday. That is despite a 200 percent rise in the number of people receiving the drug treatment between 2003 and 2005 as indiv
MBABANE - A government AIDS awareness campaign that mimics text messages between lovers has angered activists in HIV-ravaged Swaziland , who say it implies people living with the disease are promiscuous. The Makhwapheni Uyabulala campaign, which means Secret lovers kill , features pictures of a mobile phone screen bear
CAPE TOWN - Nokhwezi Hoboyi never imagined she would live to see her 25th birthday. The petite woman s playful smile masks memories of her life slipping away just two years ago, when she lay in a hospice on the brink of becoming yet another South African AIDS death statistic. I had given up ... I would say to my parent
NEW DELHI - The drugs Shyamal Kumar Dey takes to fight AIDS don t work anymore. The 38-year-old father of one has been swallowing antiretroviral pills for the last five years, enough time for the HIV virus to mutate into a drug-resistant form. Since then, the virus has found a new lease on life in his body, sapping bot
The world s largest international AIDS conference opens in Toronto, on Sunday, 25 years after the epidemic was first reported. Here are some key facts about AIDS, the world s leading cause of death among adults aged under 60: WHAT IS AIDS AND WHAT CAUSES IT? * AIDS stands for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. It is
NEW DELHI - An HIV/AIDS epidemic may kill 11 million people in India over the next 20 years, the Times of India reported on Wednesday, citing official census figures. Along with the 5 million children not born to women who died young because of the virus, India s forecast 2026 population of 1.4 billion would be trimmed
TORONTO, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Canada , host to what organizers bill as the largest global gathering on AIDS and HIV, has not taken seriously its avowed effort to help defeat the pandemic, a top AIDS advocate said on Wednesday. U.N. envoy Stephen Lewis urged Canada to follow through on legislation passed in 2004 that allow
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Can the drugs that keep HIV-positive people alive also make it safer to enjoy carefree sex -- much as during the pre-AIDS 1970s? Health officials in the United States , Thailand , Botswana and elsewhere are now trying to find out by conducting trials in which healthy peop
TORONTO (Reuters) - ConjuChem Biotechnologies Inc. s (CJB.TO: Quote) shares jumped more than 24 percent on Tuesday after the Montreal-based drug maker said studies showed that an Argentine AIDS patient did not die from toxic effects while participating in its clinical trials. The shares climbed 21 Canadian cents, or 24
Trinity Biotech Plc (TRIB.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Tuesday said it has reached a settlement in its dispute with Inverness Medical Innovations Inc. (IMA.A: Quote, Profile, Research). Inverness has granted Trinity a royalty bearing licence to its lateral flow patents for all diagnostic uses, but with the exception
WASHINGTON - More people are getting tuberculosis because of AIDS and more die of AIDS because of TB, yet doctors fail to recognize the respiratory disease in AIDS patients and governments do little about it, according to a report released on Tuesday. Sexier topics like avian flu get immediate attention while 2 million
BANGKOK - Thai cultural watchdogs have banned a line of condoms whose name translates as Good Penetration , saying the suggestive label could draw youngsters into having sex earlier, newspapers reported on Tuesday. The condoms are actually named Tom Dundee after the stage name of a popular country singer, but Culture M
TRIPOLI - Someone deliberately infected hundreds of children with HIV/AIDS at a Libyan hospital, Libyan experts on Tuesday told a court retrying five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of causing the outbreak. The retrial, as well as questions over Libya s human rights record, have been seen as hurdles t
NEW DELHI - Indian health groups welcomed a government plan on Tuesday to involve tens of thousands of rural politicians in the fight against an HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has made deep inroads in the countryside. India recently overtook South Africa as the country with the most number of people living with HIV/AIDS, acc
BANGKOK - Hundreds of Thais living with HIV/AIDS rallied against drug maker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) on Monday to protest a patent application they say would raise the cost of a key life-saving drug. Waving placards and shouting slogans outside GSK s office in Bangkok, the demonstrators demanded the company withdraw a nin
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Local leaders from across rural India are to draw up an action plan to help stem the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in villages, where the majority of new infections are occuring, officials said on Monday. AIDS agencies say that of the 5.2 million people infected between the ages of 15 and 49 yea
LONDON - Hundreds of Britons are being urged to attend what is being branded as Europe s first Masturbate-a-thon , a leading British reproductive healthcare charity said on Friday. Marie Stopes International, which is hosting the event with HIV/AIDS charity the Terrence Higgins Trust, said it expected up to 200 people
LONDON - Some patients taking AIDS drugs can benefit from breaks in their treatment without adverse effects, researchers said on Friday. But the drug holidays should only be taken by patients whose immune system has been restored and who will be monitored regularly. I would recommend treatment interruption in patients
NEW YORK - Tanox Inc. said on Thursday U.S. regulators will require an additional dosing study before considering approval of its experimental HIV/AIDS drug. The Houston-based biotechnology company said it will discuss design of a clinical dose finding study for its drug, TNX-355, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administra
Chinese city-dwellers are ignorant about their risk of contracting AIDS and may be primed to spread the fatal and incurable virus, according to an Internet poll scheduled for release on Friday. The Zogby poll shows more than a third of Chinese men who answered admitted they go to prostitutes and found that men and wome
Ten years after they were introduced in Europe and North America, HIV/AIDS drugs are still effective but many patients are not being put on them soon enough, scientists said on Friday. Experts had feared the AIDS virus would become resistant to the treatments and deaths would increase but research published ahead of an
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A Cambodian court has jailed an HIV-positive man for 10 years for raping his wife without using a condom, the first conviction under landmark AIDS laws introduced in 2003, court officials said on Friday. Meas My, a 40-year-old sailor, was arrested in January last year after his wife complained to
HONG KONG - Hong Kong s former health director, who is running for the top post at the World Health Organisation, said on Wednesday that she would focus on chronic diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis. Margaret Chan, who joined the WHO in 2003 and is now its assistant director-general for communicable diseases, said
Thousands of HIV-positive children face discrimination in Romania , where vast, filthy orphanages were a breeding ground for AIDS before the 1989 fall of communism, a human rights group said on Wednesday. A report by U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said Romania s failure to promote the integration of more than 7,200 sick
PARIS - French health test company BioMerieux will supply Botswana , one of the most Aids-afflicted African countries, with tests to detect HIV, it said on Tuesday. This is the first time BioMerieux has agreed to supply such tests to Botswana. The company already operates in South Africa
TORONTO - Developing countries with few resources to fight AIDS could take their lead from Thailand s prevention programs of recent years, which have allowed it to provide nearly free drug treatments to patients, the World Bank said in a report on Wednesday. A former hot spot for the virus, Thailand has more than halve
TORONTO - Doctors are finding new uses for HIV drugs, with one study showing they might safely protect women at high risk of infection and a second showing that people can safely skip the most toxic pills. Research to be presented at the 16th International Conference on AIDS, which opens on Sunday, shows new benefits f
OTTAWA - Canada said on Monday it needed to do more to fight the spread of the HIV virus and AIDS after new data showed the number of victims infected was growing steadily. The number of people with HIV/AIDS is now about 58,000 -- 0.2 percent of the population -- compared with 50,000 in 2002. More than a quarter of suf
WASHINGTON - The AIDS virus hides out inside people s intestines, researchers said on Saturday in a report that offers new understanding of the incurable infection. The virus replicates in the lining of the gut and does much of its damage to the immune system there, Satya Dandekar, chairwoman of the Department of Medic
SINGAPORE - United Nations official Shashi Tharoor, one of the candidates in the race to succeed U.N. Chief Kofi Annan, said education for girls in developing countries would be his main mission if he were to head the agency. As the saying goes, when you educate a boy, you educate a person. But when you educate a girl,
NAIROBI - The United Nations said on Thursday children in Kenya were suffering intolerable violence as the east African country launched a campaign to fight abuse. Kenyan media often carry horrific stories of children who have been sexually and physically abused. In March, a teenager was murdered with a garden fork by
OTTAWA, Canada - still struggling with the after-effects of a long-running scandal over tainted blood, said on Tuesday it planned to pay a total of C$1.1 billion ($965 million) to around 5,500 people who had contracted hepatitis C from transfusions. The victims had been excluded from an earlier compensation plan that p
NAIROBI, July 25 (Reuters) - Hundreds of Kenyan AIDS activists marched through the capital Nairobi on Tuesday protesting at a proposed law they say will make life-saving drugs unaffordable for millions living with the virus. Carrying placards that read MPs, save our lives, You talk, we die and Life before profit, the
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan encouraged executives from nine drug companies on Monday to lower prices of AIDS medicines and step up efforts to develop AIDS drugs and diagnostics for children. Annan for the first time included generic drug makers in his latest in a series of meetings with top drug makers at U.N. he
TRIPOLI - The retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV was adjourned until Aug. 8 on Tuesday after defence witnesses failed to attend. The retrial, as well as questions over Libya s human rights record, have been seen as hurdles to improved rela
LAGOS - A first shipment of a new HIV drug that has critical advantages for patients in poor countries arrived in Lagos on Tuesday in what a humanitarian organisation described as a big success in its access-to-drugs campaign. The drug Kaletra , made by U.S. firm Abbott Laboratories
NAIROBI, Kenya , July 23 (Reuters) - Food emergencies in Africa are occurring three times more often now than in the mid-1980 s, but the global response to famine continues to be too little, too late, the international aid agency Oxfam said Sunday. Conflict, AIDS and climate change are all exacerbating food shortages f
LOME - The small West African state of Togo has almost halved its HIV/AIDS infection rate in the past year, but less than a third of those needing life prolonging treatment are getting it, a cabinet statement said on Saturday. The number of people infected with HIV fell to 3.2 percent of adults in 2006, from 6 percent
JOHANNESBURG, July 21 (Reuters) - A children s charity Nelson Mandela founded is having trouble attracting donor cash now that the ageing statesman and former South African president has stepped out of the limelight, officials said on Friday. At the moment the fundraising has gone down because he s not around, Boitumel
JOHANNESBURG, July 21 (Reuters) - South Africa s HIV/AIDS epidemic appears to be stabilising with new data showing only a marginal increase in new infections over the last year, the Department of Health said on Friday. A national survey of pregnant women visiting ante-natal clinics showed an infection rate of 30.2 perc
ISLAMABAD, July 21 (Reuters) - Pakistan has recruited Muslim clerics in a new campaign to raise AIDS awareness to reach out to tens of thousands of people suffering either in silence or ignorance because of taboos in its conservative Islamic society. Although there are only 3,297 reported cases of HIV/AIDS in Pakistan,
LONDON, July 21 (Reuters) - Crumbling health systems and chronic staff shortages are hampering efforts to provide AIDS sufferers with life-saving drugs, the head of the World Health Organisation s (WHO) HIV division said on Friday. Dr Kevin De Cock said Africa, which has been hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic, is short
LOS ANGELES - Gilead Sciences Inc. on Thursday said it expects 2006 sales of its HIV drugs to total between $1.95 billion and $2 billion, up from a previous target of $1.825 billion to $1.875 billion, due to strong sales trends and recent U.S. regulatory approval of triple combination pill Atripla. On a conference
NEW DELHI, July 20 (Reuters) - An HIV/AIDS epidemic in India will cut nearly one percentage point a year from economic growth over the next decade as higher health spending eats into investment and workers fall sick, an economic think tank said. India has the largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS, according to
NEW DELHI, July 20 (Reuters) - The Indian government s HIV/AIDS control body is backing demands for homosexuality to be legalised, saying that making it a crime is driving infections underground and hampering efforts to curb the virus. The National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) filed a statement in the Delhi High Co
WASHINGTON - Doctors are more likely to use anesthesia in newborn circumcisions than they were eight years ago, researchers reported on Thursday. And a second study found that letting babies nurse during other painful procedures might help ease their discomfort. At one time, doctors believed that infants were too young
KIGALI - Microsoft founder Bill Gates has donated $900,000 to set up a training facility for health professionals working with AIDS in Africa s Great Lakes region. On a low-profile visit to Rwanda on Sunday and Monday, Gates offered the funds to set up the Center for Training and Operation Research to serve five nation
NEW DELHI, July 19 (Reuters) - A six-year-old boy in eastern India was forced to leave school on fears he was HIV positive after his father was discovered to have been infected, newspapers reported on Wednesday. The boy, Sourav Majhi, had his name struck off the rolls days after he was admitted to the school in a villa
WASHINGTON - The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $287 million in grants on Wednesday to create an international network of 16 labs to try new approaches to making a vaccine against AIDS. The foundation says it wants the program to transform the so-far unsuccessful AIDS vaccine effort by rewarding individu
LONDON - World leaders missed a major opportunity to boost basic health in poor countries this week when G8 leaders failed to adopt a lead vaccine for a novel advance purchase scheme, drug companies said on Tuesday. The Group of Eight major powers had originally hoped to select a lead project for an advanced market com
NEW YORK - Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Tuesday said it is on track to meet its goal, stated last year, of achieving 10 to 13 new drug applications or drug approvals by the end of 2007. The diversified healthcare company told industry analysts it aims to seek U.S. approval next year for HI
ABUJA (Reuters) - An AIDS charity set up by former U.S. President Bill Clinton signed a deal with Nigeria on Monday to make cheap AIDS drugs available to fight the disease in Africa s most populous nation. The signing was witnessed by Clinton, who said that testing for HIV/AIDS was crucial to curbing the infection rate
ST PETERSBURG, Russia , July 16 (Reuters) - The Group of Eight industrial nations renewed their pledge to fight the AIDS virus on Sunday but offered no detailed plan on how they would fund the ambitious targets they have set. Campaigners say rich countries must increase AIDS funding urgently or they will miss their own
LILONGWE - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton on Friday urged African governments to encourage people to take voluntary AIDS tests, saying it was the only way that newly available drugs would have an impact on the epidemic. People living with HIV and AIDS can live a normal life if they go for testing to know their stat
NEW DELHI - Jitendra Shekhawat has never been to a condom party before, but he has a great idea for an ice-breaker -- he blows up a condom until it explodes. The party, in a wooden shack festooned with condom balloons in the middle of a sprawling truck parking lot, is one of many approaches increasingly used by Indian
TORONTO - ConjuChem Biotechnologies Inc. (CJB.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) shares dropped almost 50 percent on Friday before recovering slightly after it said it has halted clinical tests of its HIV lipodystrophy treatment and will stop further doses in its Phase 2 trial following the death of a patient. The Montreal-
WASHINGTON, July 12 (Reuters) - The first once-a-day AIDS pill that combines three current medicines into a single tablet won U.S. approval on Wednesday, offering patients a more convenient alternative to current multiple drug cocktails. Atripla, which contains Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. s drug
WASHINGTON - Circumcising men routinely across Africa could prevent millions of deaths from AIDS, World Health Organization researchers and colleagues reported on Monday. They analyzed data from trials that showed men who had been circumcised had a significantly lower risk of infection with the AIDS virus, and calculat
Prostitutes in southern India are being given discount shopping cards in return for having regular checks at a sexual health clinic as part of a project to raise HIV/AIDS awareness. UNAIDS , the United Nation s AIDS-prevention agency, recently said India has the highest HIV caseload in the world, with an estimated 5.
JOHANNESBURG - African scholars have launched the continent s first bible commentary which tackles issues like female circumcision, HIV/AIDS and ethnic violence to make the scriptures more relevant for Africans. The African Bible Commentary was launched this week in Kenya and is meant to interpret the bible for African
Warren E. Buffett said he was making a bet on a couple of outstanding minds when he recently donated $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And as he did so, one of those minds emerged from the shadow of her husband to become a full-fledged partner in the world s largest foundation. Melinda Gates is far
JOHANNESBURG - Like soap opera divas around the world, Nandipha Matabane has had a tumultuous life of tragedy and triumph. Nandipha, a character on the South African soap drama Isidingo, has been kidnapped, raped and lost her baby in a bomb blast. She was diagnosed with HIV before launching a glamorous new career as a
TRIPOLI, Libya - Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor denied infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV, saying Tuesday at their retrial that they had been beaten or tortured to make them confess. I am innocent, Nasya Nenova said at the hearing s first full day of testimony. This is a scenario constructe
BLANTYRE, Malawi - Malawian widow Akice Kunkhoma makes just pennies a day as she looks after five grandchildren orphaned by AIDS, but she still owes the world s richest nations $240 -- with interest. With her 12 million countrymen, she lives in one of Africa s poorest countries and one that, so far, has benefited littl
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Small South African pharmacies say they are being squeezed out of business by new medicine pricing rules drafted by the government to make drugs more affordable in Africa s biggest economy. The health department says capped prices will save consumers up to 3 billion rand ($427.1 million) a year
GENEVA (Reuters) - With less than a decade left to meet its development targets, the United Nations said on Monday there were staggering obstacles to succeeding and conditions in some poor African countries had actually worsened. The eight Millennium Development Goals include targets on health, poverty and the environm
SAN FRANCISCO, July 3 (Reuters) - A person who has reason to believe he or she has HIV may be sued by sexual partners if they become infected, the California Supreme Court ruled on Monday, broadening the state s view of when liability arises from the disease. Knowingly passing along HIV, which leads to AIDS, is already
LONDON, July 3 (Reuters) - Abbott Laboratories Inc. said on Monday the European Commission had approved a new formulation of its HIV drug Kaletra that will allow patients to take fewer pills and will not need to be refrigerated. The approval had been expected following a positive opinion from a panel of E
MOOMBA, Zambia , July 3 (Reuters) - Zambian high school student Bibian Phiri will conduct her first science experiment this year -- a small but important breakthrough paid for by a massive poverty relief plan for Africa. Critics have used the July 8 anniversary of last year s Group of Eight (G8) Africa plan to highligh
A 15-year-old Indian boy has died after setting himself ablaze on hearing his parents were infected with HIV, police said on Monday. The boy said in his dying declaration he was worried about his future, said C.M. Mudaliyar, a police officer in Ahmedabad, the main city in the western state of Gujarat, where his death o
WASHINGTON - India s Aurobindo Pharma Ltd. won tentative U.S. approval on Friday to sell a three-in-one HIV-fighting pill, a decision that makes the drug available for purchase under a global AIDS relief plan. The Food and Drug Administration said the pill includes the active ingredients in the drugs lamivudine, zidovu
KINGSTON, Jamaica - Jamaica has decided not to distribute condoms in prisons, where violence has broken out in the past over mere suggestions that men have sex with men in the facilities, an official said Thursday. The Jamaican government had been divided over the issue of handing out condoms to prisoners. The Heal
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India planned to verify United Nations estimates it had overtaken South Africa as the country with the highest number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the world, a government official said on Friday. UNAIDS , the U.N. s AIDS prevention agency, said last month there were about 5.
LONDON - Although he has HIV, living with the virus that causes AIDS is not Nikk Bowden s major concern. He is lucky enough to have the drugs that have turned HIV/AIDS from a death sentence into a treatable illness, and like many in his position what now worries him most are the long-term toxic effects of the medicatio
WASHINGTON - The world s richest countries are falling short on pledges made to Africa a year ago on providing life-saving AIDS drugs, expanding trade and boosting aid, said activist rock star Bono. Bono and fellow Irish rocker Bob Geldof have used their fame to fuel a global campaign for more aid to Africa, organizing
JOHANNESBURG - Rich nations in Europe, the Middle East and Asia need to contribute more to finance the global fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, where cash is still desperately short, a finance body said on Thursday. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which relies primarily on governmen
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The relentless toll of HIV/AIDS means southern Africa faces more food shortages this year, with some 3 million people in need of aid despite improved harvests, the U.N. World Food Programme said on Wednesday. Southern Africa is the epicentre of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, with some countries
JWANENG, Botswana - Three years ago Mmameja Gafiwe was wasting away from the virus that causes AIDS in a desolate mining town in Botswana s Kalahari desert. It was bad. I couldn t walk. I thought I was dying, said the 39-year-old as she waited in a clinic that provides the drugs that probably saved her life. These
WASHINGTON, June 27 (Reuters) - U.S. authorities said they gave tentative approval on Tuesday to India s Aurobindo Pharma Ltd. s generic form of AIDS-fighting abacavir oral solution for children ages 3 months to 13 years. The Food and Drug Administration action makes the drug available for purchase under President Geor
NEW YORK - Shares of OraSure Technologies Inc jumped on Tuesday after the company said New York City health officials had signed a multi-year contract to buy its rapid HIV diagnostic tests. OraSure, which is based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, said it will sell the city its OraQuick Advance Rapid HIV-1/2 antibody tests u
WASHINGTON - U.S. health officials on Friday approved the use of a new HIV drug, made by Johnson & Johnson , in combination with related therapies to help treat patients who do not first improve with other treatment. The drug, Prezista, is a protease inhibitor designed to treat resistant strains of HIV, the virus t
WASHINGTON - A quick saliva test for the AIDS virus has helped many more people discover whether they are infected, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday. A program in which the CDC distributed nearly 800,000 OraSure Technologies Inc. tests to community groups and prisons brought in m
NAIROBI - Abused Kenyan women, many of whom have little control over their sexual encounters, are six times more likely to become infected with HIV/AIDS than men of the same age, a United Nations report said on Thursday. Kenya s HIV/AIDS prevalence rates have declined from 14 percent in 2000 to 7 percent in 2004, accor
NEW YORK - Bayer AG (BAYG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) on Wednesday said U.S. regulators approved its fully automated test for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The German healthcare company said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared the test, called EHIV, which works by detecting antibodies to the virus. It is
TRIPOLI (Reuters) - The retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV was postponed on Tuesday for a third time to give lawyers more time to prepare evidence. The retrial, and questions over Libya s human rights record, have been seen as obstacles to
LONDON (Reuters) - A woman was jailed for 36 months on Monday for deliberately infecting her lover with HIV. Sarah Jane Porter, 42, was sentenced at Inner London Crown Court after admitting grievous bodily harm recklessly. One of her victims, a 36-year-old man, said she did not reveal she was HIV positive and encourage
MUMBAI (Reuters) - The Indian housewife is facing a tremendous threat from HIV/AIDS as age-old social customs and a lack of awareness restrict access to protection from sexually-transmitted infections, experts warned on Monday. Recent studies carried out at clinics have revealed higher than expected HIV infection rates
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mutations in a single gene may have turned the AIDS virus from a fairly benign infection of monkeys and apes into a global pandemic that has killed more than 25 million people in 25 years, researchers said on Thursday. The virus in humans appears to have lost a genetic characteristic that protect
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa s best-known Zulu weatherman who won the hearts of millions of viewers with his cheery Good Luck! sign-off has died of AIDS, the national broadcaster said on Thursday. Jabu Sithole became one of the handful of South African celebrities to publicly admit he had HIV in March, saying he wanted
BLANTYRE (Reuters) - Africans increasing openness about HIV/AIDS is helping to turn the tide against the epidemic although tens of thousands still die needlessly, the top U.N. AIDS official said on Wednesday. Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS , said he is seeing more Africans go public with their HIV-positiv
TRIPOLI - The trial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV was postponed for a second time on Tuesday to give lawyers more time to prepare evidence. The trial is postponed to June 20 and will resume with one hearing per week to avoid tiring the defend
DURBAN, South Africa (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush s $15 billion program to fight the global AIDS epidemic is scoring victories promoting basic sexual behavior change, reducing HIV prevalence in several badly affected countries, the top U.S. AIDS official said on Monday. Dr. Mark Dybul, acting U.S. Glob
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A large number of South African public servants believe AIDS is curable, the domestic news agency SAPA reported on Monday. SAPA quoted results of a survey by the public Service Commission conducted in the country s 9 provinces in which the agency was shocked to find that some government officia
ST PETERSBURG, Russia - At least three G8 countries will propose on Saturday the launch of a pilot project to finance development of a vaccine against pneumococcus for poor countries, a senior G8 official said. The project, to be discussed by Group of Eight finance ministers in St. Petersburg, would cost the world s we
NAIROBI - The world s Group of Eight industrialised nations are falling short on promises they made last year to increase aid to poor countries by $50 billion annually by 2010, aid agency Oxfam said on Friday. Half of the aid, agreed at Gleneagles, Scotland last year, was destined for Africa, the world s poorest contin
A shot that helps keep AIDS-infected monkeys alive may offer the best clues yet about how to make an effective HIV vaccine, researchers reported on Thursday. The experiment provided important clues about how the AIDS virus destroys the immune system, and how to track the health of infected people, the researchers said.
UNITED NATIONS - Cuba complained on Friday that the United States denied a visa to the head of its delegation to a U.N. AIDS conference, but a U.S. spokesman said he applied too late. Cuba s Public Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer Cabrera did not receive a visa, while four other members of the Cuban delegation were
UNITED NATIONS - A U.N. global AIDS conference pledged on Thursday to more than double funding to fight the disease, as U.S. first lady Laura Bush and others chided world leaders to be frank about how AIDS is transmitted. More people need to know how AIDS is transmitted - and every country has an obligation to educate
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States plans to propose a global annual HIV Testing Day modeled on a U.S. campaign encouraging at-risk individuals to determine if they have the AIDS virus, first lady Laura Bush said on Friday. Despite gains in preventing and treating HIV infection, life-saving treatment never re
UNITED NATIONS - The president of the United Nations General Assembly sought on Thursday to break the deadlock over a U.N. declaration on AIDS, with Islamic countries objecting to empowerment for girls and the United States and others resisting defining financial targets. Under pressure from more than 800 advocacy grou
SAN FRANCISCO - San Franciscan Michael Lynch has been living with HIV for six years and expects to live many more years with the virus that causes AIDS as long as he takes his medication - a marked contrast to when an HIV diagnosis was a death sentence. My doctor told me the toxicity of the drugs will probably kill me
NAIROBI - Kenya will start providing free AIDS drugs in government hospitals and health centres, President Mwai Kibaki said on Thursday, scrapping fees activists say have kept some poor patients from receiving treatment. I am pleased to announce that the government has waived with immediate effect, the 100 Kenya shilli
UNITED NATIONS - Twenty-five years after AIDS was first recognized, the world is still falling short in its battle against the disease with severe gaps in prevention and treatment, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Despite some notable achievements, the response to the AIDS epidemic to date has been nowhere near adeq
UNITED NATIONS - A growing number of companies around the world are providing treatment for their employees and their families with AIDS, but far more are not, a business coalition reported on Wednesday. Many companies understand their responsibilities, but many, many more do not. It is as simple as that, said Richard
UNITED NATIONS - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday challenged the United States and Islamic nations to involve prostitutes, drug users and homosexuals in AIDS treatment programs. Annan and General Assembly President Jan Eliasson opened a high-level three day conference on AIDS that included thousands of ac
BANGKOK - While Thailand is a success story in the battle against HIV/AIDS, Myanmar and Vietnam threaten to emerge as new regional hotbeds of a disease which has killed more than 25 million people, experts said on Wednesday. The failure to work hard enough on prevention and a dearth of access to tr
JOHANNESBURG - Africa s leaders are failing the continent in their response to HIV/AIDS, with lack of political will a key reason the epidemic is still killing millions after 25 years, UNAIDS said on Tuesday. There is need for much greater and stronger leadership, said Mark Stirling, director of the Eastern and Souther
UNITED NATIONS - Everyone engaging in the near-universal activity of sex is at risk of getting AIDS, but women and girls often do not have a choice of when to have sex and are catching up to men in new HIV infections, experts say. Women as well as the infants born to them are rapidly becoming the missing link in the su
LONDON - The South African former deputy president s admission to having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman was a sad event in the war on AIDS, former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda said on Tuesday. Jacob Zuma, acquitted this month of raping a family friend infected with the virus, outraged AIDS activists whe
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Twenty-five years after AIDS was first recognized, the world is in better shape than ever to put an end to the disease but is falling short on many fronts, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Despite some notable achievements, the response to the AIDS epidemic to date has been nowhere near ad
GENEVA - The World Health Organization said on Saturday it would examine whether the international drug patent system prevents developing countries from obtaining needed medicines, vaccines and diagnostic tests. Spurred on by Brazil and Kenya , the 192 WHO members agreed at an annual meeting i
BERLIN - A knife-wielding German teenager stabbed in a drunken frenzy at people leaving a ceremony to dedicate Berlin s new central rail station just before midnight on Friday and injured 28 before he was stopped. Police said on Saturday six of those injured in the 10-minute long attack on a crowded street in the cente
UNITED NATIONS - Some 2.3 million children under 15 years of age are living with HIV, with little access to treatment, according to a report by child advocacy groups. Children are the missing face of the AIDS pandemic, Ann Veneman, executive director of UNICEF, the UN Children s Fund, told a news conference on Friday i
LONDON - Fewer children in sub-Saharan Africa are dying from measles, diarrhea and respiratory infections but improvements have been offset by HIV/AIDS and malaria, researchers said on Friday. Countries have made progress in improving infant and maternal health and tackling infectious but a new report on the global bur
WASHINGTON - Researchers who picked up and analyzed wild chimp droppings said on Thursday they had shown how the AIDS virus originated in wild apes in Cameroon and then spread in humans across Africa and eventually the world. Their study, published in the journal Science, supports other studies that suggest people some
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rich countries would have to give $25 to $70 billion more each year so developing nations can meet the health care needs set out in the Millennium Development Goals, a World Bank study showed on Thursday. Beyond the targets set by the Group of Eight rich country leaders last July for 2015 is the
NEW DELHI - Plans to toughen India s laws to prevent human trafficking could drive prostitutes underground and jeopardize HIV-prevention in a country suffering the world s second-highest caseload, health officials said on Thursday. The legislation, which would make it an offence to visit a brothel to have sex with a vi
LONDON (Reuters) - A quarter of a century after the first cases were identified, public health experts are starting to see declines in HIV infections and momentum building in the battle against the epidemic. But Dr. Peter Piot, the executive director of UNAIDS that has spearheaded a 10-year battle against the global ep
GENEVA (Reuters) - World Health Organization chief Lee Jong-wook of South Korea died on Monday two days after suffering a blood clot on the brain, the United Nations agency said. Lee, 61, was spearheading the organization s fight against global threats from bird flu, AIDS and other infectious
LONDON (Reuters) - Four leading companies pledged to do more in the fight against AIDS in Africa on Monday, in a move designed to spur other corporations into action. The initiatives come on the heels of rock star Bono s Red scheme, under which companies with global brands -- from credit cards to clothing -- agree to c
LONDON - Leaders of the G8 group of rich countries should take the lead and fill a funding gap in the global battle against tuberculosis, a World Health Organisation (WHO) official said on Friday. Dr Wieslaw Jakubowiak, WHO s TB Control Programme Coordinator in the Russian Federation, urged the G8 heads of state to set
NAIROBI - Kenyan first lady Lucy Kibaki risked the wrath of anti-AIDS campaigners by advising young people against using condoms, saying they should practice abstinence instead. Those still in school and colleges have no business having access to condoms, Lucy Kibaki said in a speech carried on the government s Web sit
KIGALI - Rock star Bono on Wednesday pledged to maintain pressure on the United States and other wealthy nations to keep funds rolling for aid to Africa. In Rwanda on a six-nation tour of Africa, the U2 lead singer and activist said there were already signs the elite Group of Eight club of industrial countries were bac
BEIJING - A group of non-governmental organizations in China say the government has excluded them from participating in a global initiative against HIV/AIDS and are electing their own representative despite Beijing s opposition. The more than 60 groups say the government imposed their own delegate on the Chinese coordi
WASHINGTON - India s Aurobindo Pharma won tentative U.S. approval to sell a generic version of GlaxoSmithKline Plc s AIDS drug Ziagen , the Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday. The drug, known generically as abacavir , will be available for sale und
BUTHA BUTHE, Lesotho (Reuters) - Irish rock star Bono, in Lesotho on an African tour, visited a rural AIDS clinic on Wednesday that he says shows how global resources can be used to provide HIV/AIDS sufferers with free testing and treatment. In this small town, which has a single factory making T-shirts sold at U2 conc
China needs to manufacture pediatric HIV drugs for its tens of thousands of children suffering from the disease, an AIDS activist said, adding that the state was not giving enough help to the most vulnerable. Antiretroviral drugs help prevent HIV replication and prolong the lives of people with the disease. But pedia
MASERU (Reuters) - Irish rock star Bono began a new African tour on Tuesday in Lesotho -- a tiny, impoverished kingdom he said embodied Africa s struggle for debt relief, better access to world markets and AIDS treatment. In a small African country the three issues -- debt, aid and trade -- come together in an unholy t
LONDON (Reuters) - Irish rock star and Third World campaigner Bono turned guest newspaper editor on Tuesday with Britain s Independent daily agreeing to give half its revenues for the day to fight AIDS in Africa. Bono got to interview British Prime Minister Tony Blair and finance minister Gordon Brown while U.S. Secret
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Oscar-nominee Naomi Watts on Monday joined the UN fight against AIDS, saying she could no longer stand by and watch people die. Watts, 37, who starred in King Kong and Muholland Drive, was appointed special representative for UNAIDS , the umbrella UN coordinating body for HIV-AIDS, which rece
JOHANNESBURG - The woman who accused South Africa s former Deputy President Jacob Zuma of rape has fled into exile after a judge acquitted Zuma of the politically explosive charge, a local daily reported on Thursday. Johannesburg s Sunday Times said at the weekend authorities had decided to send the woman into exile ov
SOFIA - Lawyers for five Bulgarian nurses accused of infecting Libyan children with HIV will seek their release on bail at a new trial opening on Thursday after their previous death sentences were overturned, Trud daily reported. The nurses, detained since 1999, had been sentenced to death by firing squad along with a
WASHINGTON - Young women risk being infected with Chlamydia more than once, researchers reported on Tuesday in a series of studies showing just how vulnerable younger women are to the disease. But other studies presented at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention STD prevention conference showed that screening p
NAIROBI - An apology by South Africa s former deputy president for having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman will not make up for the harm done to efforts to fight AIDS there, a top UN official said on Wednesday. I don t think anything can compensate for the damage he has done, said Stephen Lewis, the United Na
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Former Deputy President Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday he was willing to run for election as South Africa s next president, wasting no time launching a political comeback attempt after his acquittal on rape charges. Zuma said he was immediately resuming his duties at the ruling African National Con
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The acquittal of former Deputy President Jacob Zuma on rape charges has set South Africa back by decades in its fight against sexual violence and a brutal AIDS epidemic, activists said on Tuesday. Zuma was cleared of raping an HIV-positive family friend on Monday after a trial that delved into
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s former Deputy President Jacob Zuma apologized on Tuesday for having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman and said he was resuming his duties at the ruling ANC party after his acquittal on rape charges. I apologize. I have no doubt about it and it (was) a mistake. The war ag
DAKAR - A U.S. rower hoping to cross the Atlantic in a wooden boat to raise awareness of Africa s AIDS crisis was forced to abandon his trip hours after he set off when his boat took on water and sank, his Web site said. The Senegalese navy and an ocean freighter rescued Victor Mooney, a 41-year-old public affairs offi
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African judge on Monday acquitted former Deputy President Jacob Zuma of raping an HIV-positive family friend, keeping alive the political hopes of a man once seen as the country s next president. I find that consensual sex took place between the complainant and the accused, Judge Willem
GOREE ISLAND, Senegal - A 41-year-old New Yorker set off from West Africa in a 24-foot wooden boat on a 3,000 mile solo row across the Atlantic on Sunday, hoping to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and commemorate the slave trade. Victor Mooney crawled on his hands and knees through the colonial slave house on Goree Isla
LOS ANGELES - A California hospital was contacting some 300 morbidly obese patients after learning they may have been exposed to hepatitis or HIV by poorly cleaned instruments used in stomach-reduction operations. Administrators at Scripps Memorial Hospital in San Diego said on Wednesday the patients had been asked to
ABUJA - Many young Africans are losing their virginity later, having fewer sexual partners and using more condoms -- signs that the campaign against AIDS is finally hitting home, a world authority on the disease said on Thursday. HIV infection rates among young people are falling in many parts of East Africa for the fi
HARARE - Zimbabwe s is running out of anti-retroviral drugs to treat HIV/AIDS as a foreign currency shortage hobbles government efforts to provide 20,000 people with the life-saving medicine, state media said on Wednesday. The acting director of Zimbabwe s National Pharmaceutical Company said his firm was struggling to
JOHANNESBURG - More children in eastern and southern Africa are undernourished now than in 1990, showing an alarming trend as wars, AIDS and drought plague vast stretches of the world s poorest continent, UNICEF said on Tuesday. In part of a global report on child nutrition, the U.N. Children s Fund said only one count
WASHINGTON, May 2 (Reuters) - Women with AIDS, who tend to be urban and poor, get less benefit from medicines for the disease if they smoke, no matter if they smoke a lot or a little, according to a new study released on Tuesday. The study of 924 women in America found those who smoked while taking a cocktail of anti-A
JOHANNESBURG - Defense lawyers began a final push on Friday to acquit former Deputy President Jacob Zuma of rape, calling his accuser a liar as South Africa s most sensational trial since the end of apartheid neared its end. Lead defense lawyer Kemp J. Kemp said the man once seen as South Africa s likely next president
GENEVA - One of the biggest funders of HIV/AIDS programs in Nigeria suspended disbursement of $50 million in assistance on Friday, citing the country s failure to meet performance targets. The board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria voted to halt payment on two five-year grants after just two y
GENEVA - Treatment for people suffering AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria would be threatened if new grants are not handed out by the Global Fund set up to tackle the diseases, activists said on Thursday. The Global Fund, launched four years ago with the backing of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, has already approved g
NEW YORK - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and partner Gilead Sciences Inc. said on Thursday they have filed for marketing approval for their combination HIV treatment. The companies said they have filed an application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market a product that combines in a once-daily tablet the HIV
GENEVA - The agency spearheading the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria has agreed to new funding for Kenya despite the country s delay in submitting an audit for a first tranche, a spokeswoman said on Wednesday. The Global Fund has approved a $70 million, three-year HIV grant and is negotiating the terms and
JOHANNESBURG - Prosecutors urged a South African court on Wednesday to convict former Deputy President Jacob Zuma of rape, saying his HIV-positive accuser would never have consented to sex without a condom. Beginning final arguments, prosecutor Charin de Beer said evidence proved Zuma raped a 31-year-old family friend
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African pharmaceutical firm Enaleni s generic drug maker Cipla Medpro unveiled on Monday a three-in-one combination of a first-line HIV/AIDS treatment regimen in the country. The company said in a statement that the drug Triomune was the first ever three-in-one combination of a first line
Researchers are closing in on a breakthrough microbicide gel to help prevent HIV infection in women, scientists said on Monday, but a lack of funding by major pharmaceutical companies is hampering research. I think for many years the microbicides research field was a little bit tentative about making too much noise abo
ROME, April 23 (Reuters) - The Vatican will soon publish a statement on the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, an issue highlighted by a call from a leading cardinal to ease its ban on them, a Catholic Church official said. Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the head of the Vatican s Pontifical Council for Hea
MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin ordered officials on Friday to tell Russians about the dangers of AIDS, as the Kremlin pours new money into tackling a disease experts say it has failed to take seriously enough. Russia s levels of HIV-infection are nothing like as high as in sub-Saharan Africa, but health charities sa
SHANGHAI - When Lao Li was a boy, sex was never discussed at home or school. Little wonder, then, a visit to Shanghai s Sex Culture Museum with its exhibits of 1,000-year-old dildos and Ming dynasty pornographic porcelain stunned him. It s the first time I ve seen anything like this, said 30-something Li. This should b
NAIROBI - Several hundred Kenyan AIDS activists took to the streets of Nairobi on Thursday to protest at the killing of an HIV-infected boy, whom they say was hacked with a garden fork by his uncle because of his status. A week after 15-year-old Isaiah Gakuyo was killed in Nyeri in central Kenya, police were still look
JOHANNESBURG - A top AIDS activist group on Thursday pulled out of South Africa s delegation to a U.N. forum on HIV/AIDS, saying it could not lend respectability to the government s approach to the pandemic. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which was nominated for a Nobel prize in 2004 and often clashes with Presid
SHANGHAI - Police in the Chinese financial hub of Shanghai broke up a news conference by a group of haemophiliacs who say they contracted HIV/AIDS through contaminated blood transfusions, an activist said on Thursday. Journalists were detained and police surrounded the hotel where the event was taking place, said Wan Y
LOS ANGELES - Gilead Sciences Inc. on Tuesday said its first-quarter profit rose due to higher demand for Truvada , its once-a-day pill to treat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The biotechnology company reported a net profit of $262.7 million, or 55 cents per share, compared with $157.
LONDON - Combining anti-AIDS drugs, an antibiotic and bed nets treated with insecticide could cut the rate of malaria infections in people infected with HIV by up to 95 percent, researchers said on Friday. Malaria and HIV are leading infections in sub-Saharan Africa. In adults and children with HIV, malaria is more com
KIEV - Ukraine wants to restart a $60 million World Bank programme to fight tuberculosis and AIDS suspended by the global lender because the money was misused, Health Minister Yuri Polyachenko said on Friday. Polyachenko acknowledged the problem but said the programme was crucial for fighting the growing threat of tube
KIEV - The World Bank said on Wednesday it was suspending a $60 million programme to reduce rampant tuberculosis and AIDS in Ukraine because it had proved ineffective and the money had not been properly distributed. So far, after three years of implementation, only two percent of the $60 million available under the pro
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa s Health Ministry has reversed a decision to bar the country s top AIDS activist group from a major United Nations forum on the epidemic. The Health Ministry issued a list on Wednesday of groups invited to take part in the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on AIDS (UNGASS) which included
JOHANNESBURG - African leaders have launched a drive to halt new HIV infections, saying prevention may be the best remaining hope to stop the AIDS pandemic from cutting an ever-deeper swathe across the continent. The African Union (AU) said programs on education, counseling, testing and condom distribution could stop 2
NEW DELHI, April 7 (Reuters) - India reported a rise in HIV infections in 2005, a top health official said on Friday, with more than 5.2 million people now thought to be living with the virus, the second largest number in any country after South Africa . That was an increase of 72,000 from 2004, with high risk g
LUSAKA (Reuters) - A critical shortage of doctors and nurses is causing unnecessary disease and death across much of the developing world as health-care workers seek jobs in rich nations, the World Health Organization said on Friday. More than 4 million more health professionals are urgently needed to fill the medical
WASHINGTON - The U.S. government s emphasis on abstinence in a program to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean is hampering prevention efforts in the countries it aims to help, congressional investigators said on Tuesday. President George W. Bush s $15 billion AIDS relief plan requires that two-thirds of funds for pr
KAMPALA - The Ugandan army will halt training for HIV-positive soldiers for fear it could worsen their condition, a military spokesman said on Tuesday. We do not want to put any more stress on our brothers who are already suffering. This move was made out of our concern for their health, Major Felix Kulayigye told Reut
JOHANNESBURG - Former South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, who is fighting to save his political career, told his rape trial on Tuesday that he does not have HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS. Zuma, who led the country s anti-AIDS campaign while in government, remains one of the country s most popular politicians
GENEVA - International drugs companies should seek to reduce prices for medicines sold to the poorest countries and avoid filing for patent protection there, a report prepared for the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday. The 228-page study, drawn up by an independent team led by former Swiss president Ruth D
CHICAGO - Incyte Corp. on Monday said it would discontinue development of its experimental HIV treatment DFC because of safety concerns, sending shares tumbling more than 40 percent to an all-time low. The company said it observed an increase in hyperlipasemia, a marker of pancreatic inflammation, in patients receiving
CAPE TOWN - South Africa s Health Ministry has barred the country s top AIDS activist group from a major U.N. forum on the epidemic, the group said on Monday, sparking a new row over AIDS policy. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), nominated for a Nobel prize in 2004, said the government excluded it from a list of Sou
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s former Deputy President Jacob Zuma took the stand on Monday in his rape trial, launching a personal defense against charges that could explode his hopes of becoming the country s next president. Zuma, who remains one of South Africa s most popular politicians despite facing both
CAIRO - In Egypt HIV and AIDS happen to other people; namely foreigners, the promiscuous, drug addicts and generally the morally corrupt, who should be avoided in case they infect you with a handshake, cough or unwashed cup. Which is why Ahmed Turky s Friday sermon at a small Cairo mosque was unusual. In a Muslim count
NEW DELHI - The number of new HIV infections in four south Indian states home to most of India s 5.1 million people with the virus, has fallen by more than a third, rare good news in the fight against AIDS, a study reported. India has the world s second-highest number of people living with HIV/AIDS -- after
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly 800 poor Americans are waiting for AIDS medications from government-funded programs that serve as the last resort for many patients who cannot afford costly treatments, according to an annual survey released on Thursday. Several U.S. states also have been forced to take cost-savings steps
GENEVA - The agency spearheading the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria risks reneging on promises of help to millions of sufferers worldwide without a stable source of cash, its executive director said on Thursday. Richard Feachem, who has led the Global Fund since it was set up in 2002, said its annual scra
JOHANNESBURG - A South African judge on Wednesday refused to dismiss a rape case against former Deputy President Jacob Zuma, a fresh blow for the onetime presidential frontrunner now fighting separate sex and graft scandals. Johannesburg High Court Judge Willem van der Merwe, ruling on a mid-trial defense bid to have t
LONDON - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton called on Tuesday for mandatory testing for HIV/AIDS in countries with high infection rates and the means to provide lifesaving drugs. When the AIDS epidemic began two decades ago mandatory testing was frowned on because of the stigma attached to the deadly illness and the la
GENEVA - Nearly 2,000 babies are born with HIV each day because their virus-infected mothers do not get the treatment needed to stop transmission, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. The WHO said fewer than 10 percent of HIV-positive women in developing countries got antiretroviral therapy during pregn
LOS ANGELES - Biotechnology company Panacos Pharmaceuticals Inc. on Monday said it has filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a prelude to making an offering of up to $100 million of equity securities. The company plans to use proceeds from the sale to fund internal programs including the clinic
NAIROBI - Five-year-old Unis Nyambura waves her yellow lollipop while waiting for treatment in a tuberculosis clinic in Nairobi s sprawling Kibera slum. Wearing starred pyjama bottoms under her green-and-white dress, she grimaces as she waits for an injection. Like many in Africa, Nyambura s TB status is complicated by
JOHANNESBURG - Bible studies about safe sex, openly HIV-positive priests and sermons against stigmatising victims: Africa s Anglican church has come a long way from the days it preached AIDS was God s punishment for the promiscuous. But activists and top clergy say Anglicans must do more to right past wrongs, and urged
HANOI - The United Nations called on governments on Friday to take immediate steps to better protect children from HIV/AIDS and ensure better treatment for those infected. At the end of 2005, an estimated 30,000 children in East Asia and the Pacific were living with HIV or AIDS, nearly 11,000 of them newly infected, th
LONDON - GlaxoSmithKline Plc has begun distributing one of its main HIV/AIDS medicines tagged with a tiny electronic chip, as part of an effort to fight counterfeiting. The British-based group, which is the world s largest producer of AIDS treatments, said on Thursday that radio frequency identification (RFID) tags wou
COLOMBO - Asia must break down taboos about sex and stop discrimination if it is to halt the world s fastest growing HIV rates, an expert warns, with half of all new cases in the continent aged between 14 and 24. Professor Myung-Hwan Cho, President of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific, said Asia s 8.3 million HI
BEIJING - China s top AIDS official said on Wednesday that he had no idea where a missing Chinese activist was, but said the government had a very good relationship with private groups involved in fighting the disease. Hu Jia, 32, went missing after going on a hunger strike with several others to protest what they said
KAMPALA - Uganda s Health Minister Jim Muhwezi denied he was responsible for the misuse of funds to fight AIDS in the poor east African country, a scandal which has gripped the nation and is being watched by western donors. An inquiry was set up after the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria temporarily
BEIJING - The wife of a Chinese AIDS activist missing for over a month said on Tuesday she was no closer to discovering his whereabouts despite repeated requests to the police and state security apparatus for information. The 32-year-old Hu Jia went missing after going on a hunger strike with several others to protest
LONDON - Increasing nurses pay in Britain and ensuring the supply of U.S. doctors meets demand could stem the brain drain of healthcare workers from poor countries to rich ones, researchers said on Tuesday. The exodus of doctors and nurses seeking better pay has caused a crisis in low-income nations, particularly in su
JOHANNESBURG - Some 9 million children in Africa have lost a mother to AIDS, British charity Save the Children said Monday, calling on donors to sharply increase aid to meet their needs. Incredibly, the impact of HIV and AIDS on children is still being ignored, Save the Children Chief Executive Jasmine Whitbread said i
LAGOS (Reuters) - Humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) urged U.S. drugmaker Abbot Laboratories Inc. on Wednesday to make a new HIV drug accessible in developing countries, especially Africa. MSF (Doctors Without Borders) said a new formulation of Abbot s lopinavir /
LAGOS, March 14 (Reuters) - Nigeria has opened 41 new AIDS treatment centres to give wider access to free anti-retroviral therapy for people who are HIV positive, the government s anti-AIDS agency said on Tuesday. About 3.5 million people are living with the deadly virus in Africa s most populous country of around 140
BEIJING - China should ban all medical advertising to protect public health, members of parliament were quoted by state media as saying on Friday, accusing most ads of cheating and misleading consumers. Advertisements promising cures for everything from haemorrhoids to balding are plastered all over Chinese cities, on
LUSAKA, Zambia - The children have trekked through mud and overgrown grass to sit under a guava tree and be taught by a radio. A cool breeze lifts their spirits as a brilliant blue, solar-powered radio perched on a tree branch crackles with basic lessons in arithmetic or biology, tutoring Zambia s future doctors, accou
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa announced new draft medicine pricing rules on Thursday, seeking to balance the economic interests of pharmacists with its broader drive to make drugs more affordable in Africa s largest market. The government faced a storm of protest in 2004 when it tried to set narrow caps on the
PRETORIA - Bird flu in Africa is more likely to spread through poultry than migrating wild birds, experts said on Thursday, as the deadly H5N1 form of the virus was found in more chickens in Nigeria . In Europe, experts believe migratory birds carrying the virus are the greater threat to poultry than the poultry trade
GENEVA - The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday that it had added anti-retroviral drugs made by Merck Sharp & Dohme and by Gilead Sciences to its list of recommended drugs. The United Nations agency said that Merck s Efavirenz , in two strengths, and Gilead s
BEIJING - An official from a poverty-stricken area of China where some believe hundreds of thousands of villagers have HIV/AIDS said on Wednesday the number is less than 8,000 and they are doing well with government help. International groups estimated that a botched blood-selling scheme in the 1990s had infected a mil
CHICAGO - Gilead Sciences Inc. on Wednesday said U.S. regulators had granted traditional approval status for two of its HIV treatments, a move that would allow the company to beef up its drug labeling. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted the changes for once-daily
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration s choice to lead the top agency for foreign assistance said on Tuesday the White House remains committed to combating AIDS and poverty even as it puts an increasing emphasis on combating national security threats from developing countries. Earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State
LONDON - Merck & Co. Inc. is cutting the price charged for its Stocrin anti-AIDS drug by 20 percent in poor countries, bringing it within pennies of the cost of generics, the U.S. drug maker said on Tuesday. The lower price reflects new efficiencies and cost savings resulting from improved manufacturing processes a
WASHINGTON - Nearly two-thirds of more than 1,200 post-approval drug studies promised by the manufacturers have yet to start, according to U.S. government statistics released on Friday. An annual report by the Food and Drug Administration showed little change from recent years in the percentage of studies that remain u
JOHANNESBURG - An HIV-positive AIDS activist testified in court on Monday that South Africa s former Deputy President Jacob Zuma raped her without a condom, in a case that could end the charismatic leader s political career. The 31-year-old woman, a longtime Zuma family friend, gave graphic testimony as she took the st
NEW YORK - Drug maker Schering-Plough Corp. on Friday said five patients taking its investigational AIDS drug vicriviroc in a mid-stage clinical trial developed cancer, but that a causal relationship could not yet be established. The company said it will continue the trial, involving 118 U.S. patients with advanced AID
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa is making progress against the world s worst AIDS epidemic, cutting the rate of new infections and extending drug delivery to those already sick, the country s health minister said on Thursday. More than 5 million South Africans, or one in nine of the population, are estimated to be infected
PARIS - Thirteen countries forged an alliance on Wednesday to adopt a levy on plane tickets to help poor countries fight AIDS and other killer diseases, despite resistance from airlines. A further 25 countries opted not to impose the tax but promised to contribute to a central pot which the core group of 13 will create
NAIROBI - In a dimly lit ward at Nairobi s Kenyatta Hospital, Florence explains why she has lost heart in what was once a revered profession. Shutting the door on fretting relatives who wander the corridor with steaming pots of porridge for the sick, she says it was all so different when she qualified 20 years ago.
PARIS - President Jacques Chirac urged rich states on Tuesday to follow France s lead and adopt a one-euro levy on plane tickets to help poor countries buy drugs they need to fight AIDS and other killer diseases. Chirac said the surcharge would help spread the benefits of globalization to people living on less than a e
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States , Switzerland and Singapore have proposed countries eliminate tariffs on medicines and medical devices as part of a new world trade deal, U.S. trade officials said on Monday. It is ironic that many of the countries that are in urgent need of cheap medicines
WELAMASONGA, Tanzania - With billions of dollars pouring in to fight Africa s HIV/AIDS epidemic, Tanzanian AIDS counsellor Gandencia Bazil has a simple request. We need a bicycle, said Bazil, who heads the AIDS committee in this village near Lake Victoria, an area where an estimated 12 percent of people are infected wi
JOHANNESBURG - South African President Thabo Mbeki said in a newspaper interview on Sunday that research needed to be done to determine what impact HIV/AIDS was having on the country s public sector. We need to do some research to say what the level of deaths is in the public service as a result of natural and non-natu
SITHOBELA, Swaziland - Dreaming of leafy spinach and rows of juicy beetroot, 13-year-old Cinisile Mamba yanks withered weeds from the ground and prepares to plant. Life has not been kind to Mamba. Her parents died of AIDS before passing on crucial farming skills, leaving her to care for three younger siblings in a coun
MBABANE - It s not every day that hordes of men fight to forego their foreskins -- especially not in a country where circumcision was banned by a 19th century king. But in the tiny African kingdom of Swaziland , circumcision is making a comeback after research showed the age-old rite may help stop the spread of HIV. Vo
LOS ANGELES - Gilead Sciences Inc. expects its share of the market for HIV drugs to keep rising after favorable clinical data for its two-drug combination pill and the launch this year of a triple-drug pill, the company s chief executive said on Thursday. We are confident that we will continue to gain market share, CE
LOS ANGELES - New Zealand-born filmmaker Lee Tamahori, arrested last month on a sex charge while wearing a woman s dress and wig, was placed on probation after pleading no contest on Thursday to a lesser offense of criminal trespass. Tamahori, 55, best known for directing the James Bond hit Die Another Day, was also or
SYDNEY - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Australia announced plans on Wednesday to combat AIDS in China , Vietnam and Papua New Guinea , warning that 40 percent of all new infections could be in the Asia-Pacific
BEIJING - When Dawei first started having sex, he had no idea that using a condom could help protect him from AIDS. Now he never leaves home without putting a few in his bag. I didn t use condoms, said the 23-year-old. I thought that because we were comfortable with each other, we didn t have to. I had only a very hazy
NEW YORK - Progenics Pharmaceuticals Inc on Wednesday said its PRO 140 investigational treatment of AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus received fast-track status from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. PRO 140 is part of a new class of HIV drugs that aim to protect healthy cells from viral infection and is c
SAO PAULO, Brazil - Serial kissers at Brazil s racy Carnival parades can now swap saliva with even more revellers thanks to a mouth spray designed to fight germs, just one of many weird products companies have launched to profit from traditionally libidinous revelry. The spray was launched by a local company for Carniv
BEIJING - Blood for transfusions in China is still not routinely tested for HIV/AIDS despite a legal requirement to do so, triggering a hidden epidemic, an AIDS activist said on Tuesday. The health ministry should offer free HIV tests to all people who have received blood transfusions since 1987 -- about the time that
CHICAGO - Monogram Biosciences Inc. on Tuesday said it is providing testing technologies to Merck & Co. Inc. for use in Merck s Phase III study of MK-0518, its experimental HIV drug. MK-0518 represents a new class of anti-retroviral therapy called integrase inhibitors. Monogram said it is providing its PhenoSense a
DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Bird flu poses a major threat to Africa s fight against its AIDS epidemic, challenging overburdened healthcare systems and stretching economies already hit by the impact of HIV, the U.N. s AIDS chief said. UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot said a human outbreak of bird flu in Africa - where
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and the Indian government announced on Sunday a joint plan to train nurses in AIDS care in a country which has the world s second-largest number of HIV/AIDS cases. Of India s billion plus people, more than 5.1 million are living with HIV/AIDS, making it the secon
MUMBAI (Reuters) - A Bollywood film about a single mother and her young son s struggle to live with HIV/AIDS opened in cinemas across India last week, marking the first foray by the Indian Catholic church into commercial cinema. The Hindi-language Aisa Kyun Hota Hai (Why Does This Happen?) is made with church money and
NAIROBI - The United States will spend more than $208 million to prevent new HIV infections and provide life-prolonging AIDS drugs in Kenya in 2006, its embassy in Nairobi said on Friday. The funding aims to prevent 32,000 new-born babies from being infected with the AIDS virus and also expand Kenya s capacity for safe
CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - A South African man was jailed for life on Thursday for raping an AIDS activist and beating her to death after she told him she was HIV positive. Lorna Mlosana, a trainee educator with the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), South Africa s largest AIDS lobby group, was raped in the outside toilet of
LONDON (Reuters) - Elton John won undisclosed libel damages and an apology from a British newspaper on Thursday over a story which said the singer had acted in a self-important, arrogant and rude manner at one of his AIDS charity functions. At London s High Court, John s lawyer told the judge the rock star had sued ove
JOHANNESBURG - Africa s biggest generic drugs maker, Aspen Pharmacare, has signed a deal with Bristol-Myers Squibb to manufacture and distribute a version of the U.S. firm s HIV/AIDS treatment Atazanavir /Reyataz, the group said on Thursday. Aspen said in a statement that the deal showed the South African-based gro
CHICAGO - Bristol-Myers Squibb on Wednesday said it cut a deal with two generic drugmakers to allow cheap versions of its newest AIDS drug to be made in sub-Saharan Africa and India , where millions suffer from the disease. Bristol-Myers said it will license and lend technical expertise for its drug Reyataz to generic
BEIJING - China on Sunday issued its first detailed regulations on AIDS, banning discrimination against sufferers and requiring regional authorities to provide free testing and treatment. China has lowered its estimate of the number of people with HIV/AIDS to 650,000 from 840,000, but international experts have warned
In Feb 6 DENVER story headlined Drug combination prevents HIV infection in monkeys please read in fifth paragraph ... That happened weekly for 14 weeks ... instead of .... daily for 14 days (A corrected version follows). DENVER (Reuters) - An injection of two drugs normally used to treat HIV patients completely protect
MOUND HOUSE, Nevada - In a small Nevada town, a sign at the end of a poorly lighted street lined with warehouses bears an unusual message: Warning-Sexual entertainment 300 yards ahead. If sex offends you, get out of here. At the Bunny Ranch in Mound House, men travel many miles to spend hundreds or even thousands of do
BOSTON - Schering-Plough Corp. said on Friday data from a discontinued trial of its experimental HIV treatment helps shed light on a newly-evolving class of drugs that drugmakers hope will be the next big wave in HIV therapy. Schering-Plough last year terminated a study of its experimental drug vicriviroc in combinatio
BOSTON - Merck & Co. Inc. said on Thursday that interim results of a mid-stage trial of its experimental HIV drug showed promise in patients who had failed multiple therapies. The drug, MK-0518, was tested in combination with an optimal background therapy and showed that patients taking the Merck drug saw a greater
LONDON - Hundreds of thousands of HIV positive children are dying every year because they do not have access to drugs, many of which are at least six times the price of treatments for adults, AIDS experts said on Thursday. They called for pharmaceutical giants to bring down the cost of children s anti-retrovirals (ARVs
LONDON - Children affected by HIV/AIDS are being neglected and not receiving the care and support they need, UN health experts said on Thursday. By 2010, about 18 million children in sub-Saharan Africa will be orphaned by the illness but less than 10 percent who have already lost a parent are being helped. Although pub
MUMBAI - India has put a group of volunteers on a year-long watch after giving them a trial vaccine against the HIV virus, marking a key phase in the search for a drug to prevent AIDS, a scientist said on Thursday. Home to the second-largest number of people living with the killer virus after
DENVER (Reuters) - Male circumcision, which has been shown to protect men from infection with the AIDS virus, appears to protect women, too, U.S. and Ugandan researchers reported on Wednesday. Circumcising men reduced infections in their female partners by 30 percent, the researchers found. One said the difference may
DENVER - When it comes to fighting the AIDS virus, the sooner patients start taking powerful drug cocktails, the better -- even when it comes to side-effects known as toxicities, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday. Deaths, the rate of opportunistic infections and side effects all were the lowest in patients who start
BEIJING - China s crackdown on domestic non-governmental organizations has forced an AIDS activist to quit the group he set up after international funding dried up and some volunteers resigned in the face of intimidation. Hu Jia s activism set him on a collision course with the Communist Party, which has stepped up cur
NEW YORK, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Roche Holding AG (ROG.VX: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday it will discontinue U.S. sales of its HIV drug Fortovase as another version of the medicine is available in a more convenient and desirable form. The Swiss drugmaker had previously announced its plan to halt sales of the soft
Which particular kind of HIV virus an AIDS patient has may be more important than other factors in how quickly death comes, U.S. and Ugandan researchers reported on Monday. They found that people infected with a clade, or subtype, of HIV called D died more quickly that those with infections from the A clade. Clade was
LUSAKA - Impoverished Zambia plans a mass recruitment of teachers and doctors using funds freed by debt relief, Finance Minister Ng andu Magande said on Monday. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said last month its debt cancellation for 19 of the world s poorest countries including Zambia had officially taken effec
DENVER - Just over half of new infections with the AIDS virus in the United States are in blacks, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. A study of detailed data from 33 states shows that of 156,000 new cases of HIV infection between 2001 and 2004, 51 percent were in non-Hispanic blacks -- although blacks made up just 13
WASHINGTON - People in Zimbabwe , a country hard hit by AIDS, have been able to slow the spread of the virus by changing their sexual behavior, including limiting partners, delaying sex and using condoms, researchers said on Thursday. They found the spread of HIV dropped the most among women aged 15 to 24, with a 49 pe
AHMEDABAD, India - An HIV-positive man has been arrested in India s western state of Gujarat after his wife accused him of concealing his disease for over four years, police said on Wednesday. Police arrested Harish Kantharia at his home in the city of Surat and have charged him with committing a negligent act that co
Gilead Sciences Inc. on Monday said its fourth-quarter profit more than doubled due to increased demand for its pills to treat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The biotechnology company reported a net profit of $281.6 million, or 59 cents per share, compared with $110.2 million, or 24 cents per share, a year earlier.
DURBAN, South Africa (Reuters) - Six-month-old Matthew Coetzer bounces on his mother s knee. The bubbly blond and blue-eyed child is ready for his next meal of breast milk. But Matthew s mother is not just feeding her own son. In the family refrigerator are bottles of frozen milk, donations for a bank designed to bri
DAVOS, Switzerland - Rock star Bono joined three leading fashion groups and American Express on Thursday to launch Product Red, an ambitious branding and fund-raising scheme with the declared aim of beating AIDS. This is really sexy to me. It is sexy to want to change the world, said Irish singer Bono, holding aloft a
DAVOS, Switzerland - Greater economic incentives are needed for companies to accelerate development of vaccines against killers like AIDS and bird flu, according to the head of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Dr Seth Berkley, president of the non-profit group, said the threat posed by bird flu highlighted th
TRIPOLI - Families of over 400 Libyan children with HIV asked for 4.4 billion euros ($5.3 billion) on Saturday from donors trying to end a standoff over six foreign medics accused of giving them the disease. Libya s supreme court overturned death sentences against the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor last
TRIPOLI - Libya is in talks with Bulgarian officials over a 4.4 billion euro ($5.3 billion) fund for families of children infected with HIV in Libya. One Libyan official said a deal had been done, but another said talks were in fact continuing and Libya had yet to agree with Bulgaria on details of a payout. There
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Thursday chose the U.S. global AIDS coordinator, Randall Tobias, to lead the top agency for foreign assistance, the U.S. Agency for International Development, as part of an overhaul of how America handles aid. The State Department has for months been looking into how i
SOFIA - A fund aimed at defusing a standoff over six medical workers accused of giving Libyan children HIV will start operating this week in Tripoli, its Bulgarian representative said on Wednesday. Analysts said it may provide a potential exit from a dispute in which Libya blames five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Argentina and Brazil will begin producing their own anti-AIDS drugs in a jointly owned factory to try to lower the cost of treatment, Argentina s Health Ministry said on Wednesday. Construction of a $10 million plant, possibly to be located in Argentina, will begin within a few months, the min
The U.S. government stopped a trial of AIDS drugs on Wednesday aimed at finding out whether patients could take breaks from treatment, saying people were much more likely to become ill or die if they took breaks. The trial quickly showed that patients do better when they continuously take the drugs, said the National I
ABUJA, Nigeria - The United States will commit $163 million this year to help fight AIDS in Nigeria, First Lady Laura Bush announced on Wednesday as she delivered a shipment of life-saving drugs to a rural Catholic mission. Winding up a four-day trip to Africa, Bush and her daughter Barbara visited St Mary s Hospital,
WASHINGTON - A genetic mutation that protects people from AIDS may make them more susceptible to the West Nile virus, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday. The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, underscores the theory that any genetic mutation that offers an advantage in one area usually has some
ACCRA - U.S. first lady Laura Bush opened a four-day trip to West Africa on Sunday full of praise for the continent s first elected woman president but irritated by criticism of promoting abstinence to help combat AIDS. She serves as a very important role model for little girls on the continent as well around the world
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton announced on Thursday an initiative with nine drug companies he said would cut the cost of HIV/AIDS testing and treatment in 50 developing countries and help save hundreds of thousands of lives. The agreement between the Clinton Foundation and the drug companies a
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa s blood donor service has banned blood from sexually active homosexual men due to a higher risk of HIV, it said on Thursday, provoking an angry response from gay activists. A man who has had sex with another man within the last five years, whether oral or anal sex, with or without a condom .
NAIROBI - With Iraq and the Asian tsunami dominating international headlines in 2005, scant airtime was devoted to other major and devastating conflicts and crises from Haiti to Chechnya, a global aid agency said on Thursday. Silence is the best ally of injustice, said Nicolas de Torrente
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Gay activists held a rare and noisy protest in the Indian capital on Thursday demanding the release of four men arrested for homosexuality and running an online gay club. Homosexuality is banned in India under a 19th century law but is prevalent undercover. About two dozen gay men and women and th
ZURICH (Reuters) - Drug maker Roche Holding AG said on Thursday it would help generic drug makers in the developing world produce versions of HIV drug saquinavir, a second-line treatment for the virus. Roche will offer manufacturers in sub-Saharan Africa and the world s least developed countries the technical expertise
LONDON - Companies around the world are becoming increasingly concerned about AIDS, with 46 percent now expecting some impact on their operations in the next 5 years, according to a study released on Wednesday. That is a marked increase on the 37 percent of respondents who foresaw an impact in the same survey a year ag
The arrest of four people on charges of homosexuality and running an online gay club in northern India has triggered criticism by NGOs and the United Nations AIDS body, UNAIDS . Police in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state, said the young men arrested last week had dozens of members in their secret Internet cl
CHICAGO - Drugmakers Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Gilead Sciences Inc. on Monday said they had new data to support a combination AIDS treatment, and that they plan to file an application with U.S. regulators in the second quarter of 2006. The companies said the new data supports bioequivalence of Bristol s
ABUJA - Nigeria will double the number of government centers where AIDS patients can get free drugs in the next three months as part of a major drive to widen access to treatment, the government anti-AIDS agency said on Friday. Nigeria started distributing anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) for free this month from 33 govern
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s national youth HIV/AIDS programme faces a funding crunch following a move by the global AIDS funding organisation to stop financing it, which the programme head blamed in part on U.S. interference. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced last month it wa
CHICAGO - A major AIDS advocacy and treatment group on Friday asked drugmaker Pfizer Inc. to pull advertisements encouraging use of the impotence pill Viagra on New Year s Eve, blasting the ads as recklessly encouraging recreational use of the drug. What are you doing on New Year s Eve? a smiling gray-haired man asks
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