Thai Women Keep an Eye on Microbicide Trials
Vaginal microbicides trials are set to begin in 2007 in Thailand, and local women are asking whether Thais will have access to the HIV prevention gels when they reach market.
South Carolina’s Deadly Waiting Game Three hundred and fifty poor HIV positive South Carolinians are biding
time on the country’s longest drug waiting list, according to an
in-depth look by The New York Times at that state’s ongoing money crisis.
December 28, 2006
HIV Tests Come Home “Dr Thom” home HIV tests now on sale in the UK allow Brits to mail in saliva samples and receive results by email.
Ganging Up on the Gag Rule More than 25 public health and human rights organizations filed a legal brief last week arguing that the U.S. AIDS Leadership Act hurts the global fight against HIV.
December 27, 2006
Bar-Hopping for Vaccine Volunteers
Today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer spotlights efforts in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood to recruit HIV negative patrons of both gay and straight bars to volunteer for an HIV vaccine trial.
Condoms by Bayelsa
The Nigerian state government of Bayelsa is partnering with an American company to produce condoms for the local population to combat the state’s high rate of HIV infection.
December 26, 2006
PEPFAR Won’t Get Far President Bush’s four-year-old global AIDS prevention policies will
face close scrutiny in the new Congress convening in January, and
possibly a full overhaul through passage of the Pathway Bill, according
to an analysis today by the Council on Foreign Relations.
AIDS on the Pakistan-Afghanistan Border The Pakistani government reports a surge in HIV/AIDS cases in the tribal region on its border with Afghanistan and has set out to measure the problem and organize an awareness campaign.
December 22, 2006
Circumcision vs. Abstinence? Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni rejected new findings this week that male circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection by almost 50%.
Computer Chip to Track CD4s U.S. scientists have designed an inexpensive chip to monitor CD4 levels in people with HIV with the prick of a finger.
December 21, 2006
Garden State OKs Needle Exchange
New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine officially legalized needle exchange yesterday—the last state in the U.S. to do so.
Americans Just Do It Over 95% of Americans have had premarital sex, according to a report by the Guttmacher Institute that questions the validity of Bush administration policies promoting abstinence until marriage among 12- to 29-year-olds.
Bush Signs Ryan White President Bush officially reauthorized the Ryan White CARE Act yesterday, green-lighting $2.1 billion in yearly federal AIDS funding.
December 19, 2006
Back on Death Row in Libya A Libyan court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death today for deliberately infecting 400 children with HIV, despite strong evidence that the kids were infected before the medical workers arrived in the country.
Clinical Trials Stay in L.A.
The National Institutes of Health announced yesterday that funding would not be cut after all to a clinical trial program at LA’s Rand Schrader HIV Clinic at County-USC Medical Center that gets cutting-edge treatment to low-income patients.
December 18, 2006
D.C. Failing the Test? Washington D.C. officials have allowed oral HIV tests to expire before using them and otherwise mismanaged resources in the city's new testing drive, according to a report by the D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice.
Drug Users Already Know Their HIV Status
A new study concludes that the Centers for Disease Control’s new focus on encouraging HIV testing is not the most effective prevention strategy among injection drug users.
December 15, 2006
Hard Times for Viagra L.A.’s AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is calling on Pfizer to pull a Viagra ad campaign that AHF claims promotes using the erectile dysfunction drug recreationally, thereby increasing risky sexual behavior.
Gilead Subpoenaed for Marketing Practices Federal prosecutors have served Gilead Sciences with a subpoena for documents related to marketing of HIV meds Emtriva (emtricitabine), Viread (tenofovir) and Truvada (a combination of the other two).
December 14, 2006
Operation Iraqi AIDS Epidemic HIV positive foreigners are being deported from northern Iraq under orders from Baghdad because of a shortage of antiretroviral drugs and other treatment resources.
Baroness Paisley Warns the Lords In her first speech to the British House of Lords, Baroness Paisley of St. George’s warned of skyrocketing HIV rates, with 4,000 new infections in the UK during 2005, compared to 840 nine years before.
December 13, 2006
The Circumcision Link Two studies investigating the link between circumcision and HIV infection were abruptly halted when the research began showing that circumcised participants were about 50% less likely to be infected with HIV.
Ukraine Gets Serious About HIV The Ukrainian government announced plans to establish the first ever national body to coordinate efforts to combat HIV and tuberculosis and get treatment to 50,000 people.
December 12, 2006
India’s Little Ryan Whites A four-year-old HIV positive boy was kicked out of a government-run nursery school in southern India after parents complained, following a series of such incidents around the country.
Tackling HIV on the Job Policies on HIV testing, treatment and education are a scarcity in the U.S. workplace, reports the Washington Post, even at organizations working directly on HIV issues.
December 11, 2006
Death No. 4 in South Carolina
A fourth person has died among the 324 HIV positive South Carolinians on a waiting list to receive treatment through the federal AIDS Drug Assistance Program.
BMS Campaign Catches Fire
Over a million people have lit virtual candles on Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Light to Unite website, which claims to donate $1 to the National AIDS Fund for each participant—but the Star Ledger reports that the company will only be giving $100,000.
December 08, 2006
Malaria Fuels HIV Infections Malaria boosts HIV viral load in people infected with both diseases, making them more likely to pass on HIV and possibly helping to fuel the epidemic across Africa, according to a new report in Science.
1 of 4 Zimbabwean Kids Orphaned by AIDS
Twenty-five percent of children in Zimbabwe have lost at least one parent to AIDS, the highest rate in the world, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.
December 07, 2006
New Evidence Supports Bulgarian Nurses The HIV subtype found in 400 HIV positive Libyan children infected them long before the 1998 arrival in the country of the five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor accused of deliberately infecting them, according to a new report in Nature.
Clinton Signs Deal in Vietnam The Vietnamese government signed an agreement with former President Bill Clinton yesterday to help get low-cost AIDS meds to all HIV positive children in 2007.
December 06, 2006
Senate Passes Ryan White The Senate passed the Ryan White CARE Act renewal yesterday, after striking a compromise between small states that wanted more AIDS money and big states that stood to lose funds.
LA Treatment Program Gets a Boost Los Angeles County supervisors called yesterday for emergency measures to get HIV treatment to the uninsured through clinical trials, following a decision by the federal government to cut millions of
dollars going to the Rand Schrader HIV Clinic at County-USC Medical
Center.
December 05, 2006
Congress Eyes Abstinence-Only Programs
Democrats on the House International Relations Committee hope to overturn a Bush administration requirement that one-third of foreign AIDS prevention funds go to abstinence-only education.
HIV Ravages Global Job Market Approximately 1.3 million jobs are lost every year to HIV, a problem that thwarts many developing countries’ ability to fight poverty, according to a report by the International Labor Organization.
December 04, 2006
Bush Eases Immigration Ban
On World AIDS Day, December 1, President Bush announced that the ban on HIV positive foreigners entering the U.S., in place since 1987, would no longer apply to short-term visitors.
Fighting AIDS in a Chador Fourteen doctors from Iran met with U.S. health experts in Washington last week to discuss challenges in fighting HIV, including Iranian efforts to deliver treatment and education despite extreme stigma.
December 01, 2006
Thailand Breaks a Drug Patent The Thai government has issued a compulsory license for production and importation of an inexpensive version of second-line HIV med Efavirenz, without consulting the drug’s patent-holding maker, Merck.
Indian Sex Workers Fill the Streets Thousands of sex workers, pimps and brothel owners took to the streets of Kolkata (Calcutta), India yesterday to raise awareness about HIV in their industry and in the general public on the occasion of World AIDS Day.
World AIDS Day Magic Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Abbott launched a national “I Stand With Magic: Campaign to End Black AIDS” today.
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