South Africa to treat all HIV-positive babies 
PRETORIA, South Africa — South Africa announced ambitious new plans Tuesday for earlier and expanded treatment for HIV-positive babies and pregnant women, a change that could save hundreds of thousands of lives in the nation hardest hit by the virus that causes AIDS.
President Jacob Zuma — once ridiculed for saying a shower could prevent AIDS — was cheered as he outlined the measures on World AIDS Day. The new policy marks a dramatic shift from former President Thabo Mbeki, whose health minister distrusted drugs developed to keep AIDS patients alive and instead promoted garlic and beet treatments. Those policies led to more than 300,000 premature deaths, a Harvard study concluded.
The changes are in line with new guidelines issued a day earlier by the World Health Organization that call for HIV-infected pregnant women to be given drugs earlier and while breast-feeding. By treating all HIV-infected babies, survival rates should also improve for the youngest citizens in South Africa, one of only 12 countries where child mortality has worsened since 1990, in part due to AIDS.
S. Africa to treat all HIV-positive babies
PRETORIA, South Africa — South Africa will treat all HIV-positive babies and expand testing, the president announced Tuesday, a dramatic and eagerly awaited shift in a country that has more people living with HIV than any other.
President Jacob Zuma's speech on World AIDS Day was viewed as a definitive turning point for a nation where the previous administration distrusted drugs developed to keep AIDS patients alive and instead promoted garlic treatments. One Harvard study said that resulted in more than 300,000 premature deaths.
Zuma compared the fight against AIDS to the decades-long struggle against the apartheid government, which ended in 1994 with the election of Nelson Mandela in the country's first multiracial elections.
South Africa's leader announces new AIDS policies
PRETORIA, South Africa — South Africa will treat all HIV-positive babies and expand testing, the president announced Tuesday on World AIDS Day in a dramatic and eagerly awaited shift in a country that has more people living with HIV than any other.
President Jacob Zuma's speech Tuesday was viewed as a definitive turning point for a nation with a legacy of leaders who rejected treatment based on medical science and delayed lifesaving measures.
Zuma compared the fight against AIDS to the decades-long struggle against the apartheid government, which ended in 1994 with the election of Nelson Mandela in the country's first multi-racial elections.
Fall Wave of Swine Flu Has Peaked, Data Confirm
New swine flu infections continue to drop across the United States, confirmation that the pandemic’s fall wave has peaked, according to figures posted online Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But the number of children and teenagers killed by swine flu is still rising. An additional 27 deaths in lab-confirmed cases of it were reported among children and teenagers in the week ended Nov. 21, raising the total to 234 since April. In a typical flu season, there are fewer than 100 deaths among that segment of the population.
And since the C.D.C. believes that there are actually two to three deaths for each fatal lab-confirmed case, the total is presumably creeping toward 700.
Second wave of swine flu pandemic falls in US
The level of flu activity across the nation has dropped for the fourth week in a row, federal health officials reported Monday, indicating that the second wave of the swine flu pandemic in the United States had peaked.
While officials warned that the number of people getting infected with the H1N1 virus remained high, and cases could surge again, the extended period of falling activity suggested the intensity of the outbreak had reached a high.
"We're certainly on the downward slope of the curve," said Thomas Skinner, spokesman for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
HIV-infected Chinese children struggle with stigma
By Royston Chan
FUYANG, China, Dec 1 (Reuters) - The second storey of this nondescript building in Fuyang city in China's central province of Anhui houses HIV-positive orphans, but unlike many other similar establishments, there are no signboards outside.
Heavy stigma still surrounds the disease in China, and children -- probably the most vulnerable group among AIDS patients -- are almost invariably barred from schools and even abandoned by their parents and relatives [ID:nPEK36499].
UNAIDS chief in South Africa for AIDS Day
JOHANNESBURG — South Africa has more people infected with the AIDS virus than any other country, but it also has a new government determined to end the crisis, the head of the U.N. AIDS program said Monday.
"If I am not in South Africa for World AIDS Day, I don't know where I should be," UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe told The Associated Press on the eve of the day when the world takes stock of efforts to fight the epidemic and remembers those who have died.
South Africa, a nation of about 50 million, has an estimated 5.7 million people infected with HIV — more than any other country in the world. Nearly 1,000 South Africans die every day of AIDS-related diseases.
China city government opens gay bar to fight AIDS
BEIJING (Reuters Life!) - A Chinese city with one of the nation's highest rates of AIDS has opened a government-funded gay bar in an outreach effort that has stirred debate over the use of taxpayers' money.
The health department in Dali, a picturesque city on a lake in southwestern Yunnan province, funded the bar to reach out to China's increasingly open gay community. Dali is one of the 10 cities in China most affected by AIDS.
Same-sex transmission accounts for about one-third of new HIV infections in China, the minister of health said this month.
us to drop HIV ban, host 2012 AIDS meeting
*U.S. to end 22-year ban on HIV-positive visitors
*Officials commit to strengthen U.S. fight vs. HIV/AIDS
By Andrew Quinn
New WHO guidelines urge phaseout of major HIV drug
* WHO urges countries to phase out use of Stavudine or d4T
* Says drug causes long-term, irreversible side-effects
* Urges adults, adolescents to start antiretrovirals earlier
