A series of articles critical of past trials of an important AIDS drug has created a furor in Africa, causing many public health experts to worry that some countries will stop using the drug, which prevents mothers from infecting their babies with the virus that causes AIDS. Articles by The Associated Press last week d
Once a week in the shadow of City Hall, a leaf blower blasts air into tubes, lifting up a big bright yellow tent. A line of the homeless, addicts, the mentally disabled and people who say they are in transition wait, seemingly oblivious to the cold. They shout to one another good-naturedly. A passer-by might think that
This year, once again, the annual report from the Joint United Nations Program on H.I.V./AIDS and the World Health Organization tragically documents the way the global AIDS epidemic is still killing millions of people and spawning hot spots in Asia and Eastern Europe. The most striking news is that AIDS is fast becomin
It was the most unlikely of friendships -- an 11-year-old Zulu boy from South Africa and a 63-year-old television reporter and son of the American South -- and it had the most unlikely of beginnings. But the reporter was immediately captivated by the boy, as millions of others around the world would be, as he became a
With the second-highest H.I.V. infection rate in the world, after sub-Saharan Africa, many Caribbean nations have been working hard to improve their public health and AIDS education efforts. Jamaica , however, needs to work harder. A disturbing new report from Human Rights Watch suggests that Jamaica cannot win the bat
Thirteen million Americans have been convicted of felonies and spent time in prison. The prison system now releases an astonishing 650,000 people each year - more than the population of Boston or Washington. In city after city, newly released felons return to a handful of neighborhoods where many households have some p
JOHANNESBURG - Zambia s president has pledged to make good on a promise to extend antiretroviral drug treatment to 100,000 AIDS sufferers by the end of 2005, up vastly from the current 12,000, despite a health-care system crippled by mounting financial problems. In a national address on Saturday, on the eve of the 40th
The novelist E. Lynn Harris has become a fixture on the best-seller list and a favorite among black women by writing steamy books about men who live on the down low - men who cheat on wives and girlfriends by having sex with other men. The fear of men on the down low is now palpable among black women, who are more than
The number of girls in school and women in parliaments has risen, and their overall access to contraception has improved in the past decade, according to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund. The report cites 23 countries, including Zambia , Bangladesh ,
Many young doctors dream of having an article published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Hacib Aoun achieved this, but not in the manner he expected. Dr. Aoun s piece, When a House Officer Gets AIDS, appeared in the Sept. 7, 1989, edition of the journal. It told the story of how, in 1983, as a 27-year-old medica
Edson Muchenjekwa says he spent three weeks persuading Alista Bhero to overcome her rage at her husband, Khemist, for infecting her with H.I.V., which has rendered her all but immobile at 42. He does not intend to waste her time discussing a treatment. In Zimbabwe , where 1.8 million people are H.I.V. positive and 360,
RALEIGH, N.C. - Fiddling with a cigarette, Louise, a straight-talking 23-year-old who has been living with H.I.V. for four years, grimaced as she discussed life in the black neighborhood of her small town, a sleepy outpost east of the state capital. The only jobs, she said, were generally at fast-food places, farms or
A few years after the antiretroviral cocktail became available in 1996, turning AIDS from a death sentence into a chronic disease, unsafe sexual practices began to surge in the United States and Europe. New diagnoses of H.I.V. in the United States, which had been steady, rose 5 percent from 1999 to 2002, with a 17 perc
BANGKOK - For the 15th time in some 20 years, thousands of people from around the world have gathered to discuss the AIDS pandemic, this time in Bangkok. If these gatherings are good for anything, it is to offer a window on the course of the world s worst plague, which has by now infected some 70 million people, killin
Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois signed a bill on Thursday allowing people who are H.I.V. positive to donate organs to others infected with H.I.V., a provision that he called the first of its kind in the United States . State Representative Larry McKeon, the Chicago Democrat who wrote the bill, said the decision was
The first large-scale study of AIDS patients receiving fixed-dose combinations of generic antiretroviral drugs in poor countries documented their effectiveness, scientists reported at the 15th International AIDS Conference here on Wednesday. The combinations consist of three antiretroviral drugs formulated into one pil
BANGKOK - Nelson Mandela came to the 15th International AIDS Conference here Thursday to lend his prestige to the battles against tuberculosis and AIDS, two deadly diseases that are intricately linked. Mr. Mandela, the former president of South Africa , contracted tuberculosis while in prison, where he spent 27 years f
The South African government has rejected a common treatment used to reduce the transmission of the AIDS virus by pregnant women to their babies, recommending instead a more complicated drug regimen that many experts say will reach fewer women. South African officials said Tuesday that the Medicines Control Council, wh
Classes of drugs used to treat patients with H.I.V. are being tested for the first time as microbicides to protect women from becoming infected during sex, a scientist at the 15th International AIDS Conference said here on Tuesday. The tests -- some of them under way, others expected to begin by the end of 2004 -- invo
BANGKOK - As spending to stop the global H.I.V. epidemic rises, waste and inefficiency from the duplication of efforts by donors are a major obstacle, a panel of experts said at the 15th International AIDS Conference here on Monday. In a session about why donors fail to work together, participants agreed about some ste
The World Health Organization asserted here on Saturday that its goal of delivering antiretroviral therapy to three million people infected with H.I.V. in poor countries by the end of 2005 could still be met despite obstacles that had severely limited the number now under treatment. The program, known as 3 by 5, has b
For years, Advocates for Youth, a Washington-based organization devoted to adolescent sexual health, says, it received government grants without much trouble. Then last year it was subjected to three federal reviews. James Wagoner, the president of Advocates for Youth, said the reviews were prompted by concerns among s
A combination of two inexpensive drugs is the best way to keep mothers in poor countries from passing the AIDS virus to their children, new studies have found. The drugs, nevirapine and AZT , are relatively cheap and widely available in generic form.
So many pharmaceutical companies in Asia are racing to produce anti-H.I.V. drugs, a leading AIDS organization is warning, that, on the continent, where the infection is rapidly spreading, widespread misuse could create epidemics from drug-resistant strains of the virus. At least 27 Asian companies are manufacturing ant
To unzip the blanket of fat encasing the body and step free is the fantasy of many overweight people. For a few people, though, life without that layer of fat is a sobering and not very pleasant reality. They are the victims of a disease called lipodystrophy, which strips the body of fat either in just a few areas, or
The first clinical trial of generic AIDS drugs in a simple 3-in-1 pill has found that they work as well as brand-name drugs, researchers are reporting today. Because of patent problems, brand-name drugs for first-line treatment do not come in 3-in-1 pills, and medicines that are deeply discounted for poor countries by
A simple daily vitamin pill can delay the progress of AIDS in H.I.V.-infected women, an eight-year study by Harvard researchers has found. Vitamins are by no means a cure or a substitute for antiretroviral therapy, the researchers said. But for malnourished women in Africa or Asia with little hope of getting better dru
David E. Sanger and Donald G. McNeil Jr.; Donald G. McNeil Jr.
The New York Times - June 24, 2004 President Bush said on Wednesday for the first time that the United States should learn from the experience of countries like Uganda in fighting AIDS and embraced the use of condoms to prevent its spread, a sensitive issue among conservative groups that have fought the adoption of any
The murder of 20-year-old Raul Tinajero at the Los Angeles County Jail in April focused national attention on the violence that dominates much of the American correctional system. Mr. Tinajero had testified for the prosecution at a murder trial and had been guaranteed special protection that never materialized. The inm
When a Long Island hospital revealed last week that it might have inadvertently exposed 177 patients to H.I.V. and hepatitis during routine endoscopies, hospital officials said the lapse was an embarrassing aberration. But some scientists, health officials and patients said the problems at the hospital, North Shore Uni
Nearly 180 patients of North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset were informed last week that they might have been exposed to H.I.V. or the hepatitis virus because instruments used for routine endoscopies might not have been properly disinfected. Eighty-six of the patients have returned to the hospital, on Long Isla
The World Health Organization has pulled two generic antiretroviral drugs from its list of approved H.I.V. drugs that are most often used in poor countries, saying a routine check found the manufacturer had not proved that they were biologically equivalent to patented drugs. It is the first time that W.H.O. has removed
Sixty-four blue plastic chairs snake from the entrance to the exit of the new AIDS clinic at the hospital in this town and, on this Friday in May, each one was filled. There was an elderly man with a cane, a nurse in a starched white uniform and an unemployed, worn-looking middle-aged mother. There were a disturbing nu
As H.I.V. therapy becomes available to more people in poor countries, prevention may be neglected and even more cases may develop, a team of AIDS experts working to combat the disease warned in a report issued yesterday. The report appealed to countries to bolster prevention programs and combine them with treatment eff
When the experts say H.I.V. is transmissible through the exchange of body fluids, does that include saliva? A. Saliva by itself is not known to spread H.I.V., but the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases urges caution when kissing anyway. Although researchers have found H.I.V. in the saliva of infected
After months of badgering by AIDS activists and health officials, the Bush administration has finally come to its senses and found a way to provide cheap generic drugs and single-pill combinations of drugs to millions of people infected with the AIDS virus in Africa and the Caribbean. It is a welcome shift that could s
The Bush administration s enlightenment on AIDS treatment has not, alas, been matched in AIDS prevention programs. Spurred by the religious right, the administration and Congress have fenced off one-third of the nation s international AIDS prevention funds to be used for abstinence programs starting in 2006, even thoug
WASHINGTON -- Thee Bush administration announced a significant shift in its AIDS policy on Sunday, expediting the approval process for generic and combination antiretroviral drugs so they can be purchased at lower prices and provided more efficiently and safely to millions of infected people in Africa and the Caribbean
BEIJING -- The Chiinese government warned on Sunday that AIDS was continuing to spread rapidly here in the world s most populous country, and it announced urgent measures to improve prevention and education efforts that include holding local officials directly responsible for curbing the disease. Those officials breach
To say AIDS in Kenyan Sign Language requires placing the index finger and thumb of both hands close to the face, which is supposed to be a re-creation of the skeletal appearance of a victim on the verge of death. In other parts of Africa, other signs are used for the disease. AIDS can be conveyed by pretending to pluck
Three years after the United Nations declared a worldwide offensive against AIDS and 14 months after President Bush promised $15 billion for AIDS treatment in poor countries, shortages of money and battles over patents have kept antiretroviral drugs from reaching more than 90 percent of the poor people who need them.
The Food and Drug Administration approved yesterday the first H.I.V. test that uses saliva rather than blood and delivers results in 20 minutes. Public health officials hope the new test will encourage wider and more frequent testing. About 25 percent of all Americans carrying H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, do not
The Bloomberg administration plans today to release an ambitious health initiative for New York City, setting aggressive four-year goals for residents to control their blood pressure, keep up their vaccinations and cancer screenings and have regular visits with the same doctor. Among the changes the administration says
Forty percent of the country s population has contracted AIDS or carries its virus, giving the nation of 1.1 million people the world s highest H.I.V. infection rate, state radio quoted a United Nations official as saying. Stephen Lewis, the United Nations special envoy for H.I.V. and AIDS in Africa, was reported to ha
Imagine receiving a letter from a renowned hospital, telling you that one of your sexual partners has tested positive for H.I.V., and that you might be infected. Now add another, disturbing layer to this dark tale: the letter is a fake, and someone has picked you to be the target of a hoax. That is what has happened si
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Nicole and Chalome Bergan had given up any hope of attending the hottest concert around, a show featuring the Grammy winners Beyoncé, Alicia Keys and Missy Elliott. But five hours before the concert began on Friday night, the sisters learned that they were getting in. Free. All they had to do fo
BABELEGI, South Africa - When Tiger Wheels opened a wheel plant six years ago in this faded industrial town, the crush of job seekers was so enormous that the chief executive, Eddie Keizan, ordered a corrugated iron roof to shield them from the midday heat. There were hundreds and hundreds of people outside our gate, j
PHILADELPHIA - The expanding recreational use of crystal methamphetamine and Viagra is apparently fueling increases in syphilis, H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases among gay and bisexual men in the United States , according to new studies reported here on Wednesday. At a meeting on preventing sexually trans
Jennifer Steinhauer (NYT); Compiled by Anthony Ramirez
New York City has received the largest Ryan White Title I grant ever awarded from the federal government. The grant, $122 million, was awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services to finance H.I.V.-AIDS services and is $18.2 million more than the city received last year. The increase in funding was merited by
ALLAN CLEAR, the executive director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, has spiky graying hair that suggests it came into contact with an electric socket. At age 44, with pierced earrings and lace-up Doc Martens, Mr. Clear looks as if he has not quite gotten over his English youth as a working-class punk rocker. Yet Mr. C
ATLANTA - Teenage brides in some African countries are becoming infected with the AIDS virus at higher rates than sexually active unmarried girls of similar ages in the same areas, the director of Unicef and other United Nations officials said here on Saturday. The studies are the first to show such differences among m
HERE S the denouement of the epic drama over gay marriage. It s going to happen, it s going to happen within a generation, and it s going to happen even though George W. Bush teed off his re-election campaign this week by calling for a constitutional amendment to outlaw it. As the country has now had weeks to digest, i
Scientists have discovered that monkey cells have innate protection against infection with the human AIDS virus, a clue that may help explain why some people are susceptible to certain viral infections while others are not. The finding, reported in today s issue of the journal Nature, offers one of the first concrete e
Officials belatedly rolled out a plan to supply antiretroviral drugs to the nation s 5.3 million H.I.V.-positive citizens, saying that nutritional supplements and anti-H.I.V. drugs would be made available at least one center in every health district within a year and in all towns within five years. The drugs will be wa
President Bush s new global AIDS coordinator, Randall L. Tobias, announced the release of the first share of aid -- $350 million to finance antiretroviral treatment for 50,000 AIDS patients in sub-Saharan Africa -- as he gave a five-year, $15-billion plan to Congress. He said the initial outlays would focus on 14 or 15
In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we battle cancer; we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation. If we are fortunate, we beat the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having succumbed after a long battle. If you accept the war metaphor
Three months ago, the South African government promised to provide free antiretroviral medication to AIDS victims, planning to supply as many as 1.4 million people within five years. But only last Friday did the government solicit proposals from pharmaceutical companies that supply the life-prolonging drugs, pushing ba
SAN FRANCISCO - Now that all states are reporting newly identified H.I.V. infections in addition to AIDS cases, the picture of this country s AIDS epidemic could change significantly. On Jan. 1, Georgia became the last state to start reporting H.I.V. infections. H.I.V. reporting is expected to provide a clearer and mor
TALLINN, Estonia - The virus first crept in at the Russian border and, for a time, nobody in Estonia blinked. For more than a decade, beginning in 1988, only a handful of people in Estonia tested positive for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Those who did were easily ignored -- young, Russian-speaking heroin users i
The city s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, recently looked at a map of New York neighborhoods with high rates of drug use and H.I.V. infection, and was struck by the fact that all but three communities -- all of them in Queens -- have programs to replace drug users dirty needles with clean ones. As a result
After a long, clumsy war against AIDS, Romania has finally declared itself the winner. Yes -- at this moment, we have a victory, said Dr. Adrian Streinu-Cercel, president of the National AIDS Committee. Everyone who needs triple therapy is getting triple therapy. The country, which became infamous in 1990 for the squal
BUCHAREST, Romania - After a long, clumsy war against AIDS, Romania has finally declared itself the winner. Yes -- at this moment, we have a victory, said Dr. Adrian Streinu-Cercel, president of the National AIDS Committee. Everyone who needs triple therapy is getting triple therapy. The country, which became infa
SAN FRANCISCO - A new H.I.V. test has led health workers in North Carolina to identify what they and federal officials say is the first outbreak of the infection ever among college students. The outbreak, reported here on Tuesday at the 11th annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, involved 84 H.
FOCSANI, Romania - The public face of AIDS in Romania is Christina, a pretty and vivacious 16-year-old. She does television interviews about being H.I.V. positive, appears in schools and sends encouraging e-mail messages to other infected children. But Christina is not her real name, and her parents do not allow her fa
The minister of health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimangagain, insisted that a diet of garlic, olive oil and lemon juice helps fend off the effects of AIDS, repeating a message denounced last year by a leading national medical journal as ill-considered advice not backed up by scientific data. Ms. Tshabalala-Msimang scolded rep
SAN FRANCISCO - Highly successful efforts to use combination drug therapy to stop transmission of the AIDS virus from mothers to their babies carry a troubling consequence for the mother: the development of resistance to H.I.V. drugs now recommended to fight their own infections. The findings, reported here on Monday a
Of all the mind-numbing statistics about H.I.V. and AIDS, the most staggering -- and important -- is this: 95 percent of those infected worldwide do not know they are harboring the most deadly virus in history, and are therefore spreading it, however unintentionally. The primary reason for this is that routine AIDS tes
WASHINGTON - The budget submitted on Monday by President Bush was good news for some departments and agencies and not-so-good news for others. In international affairs, President Bush s $31.5 billion budget gives a strong push to counterterrorism spending, international AIDS programs, foreign military assistance and em
For the first time since the 19th century, when New York was a far different, far smaller place, fewer than 60,000 people died in the five boroughs in 2002, continuing a steady decline that began in the early 1990 s and setting a record low for the city s death rate. Infant mortality, too, reached a record low -- less
WASHINGTON - President Bush plans to scale back requests for money to fight AIDS and poverty in the third world, putting off for several years the fulfillment of his pledges to eventually spend more than $20 billion on these programs. Hardest hit would be the United Nations-supported Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tubercul
AIDS is a disease that still makes headlines. AIDS in China . AIDS in prisons. AIDS ravaging African countries. But AIDS in Westchester County? Most residents worry more about threats like whooping cough, flu or West Nile. Yet AIDS is Westchester s most challenging health crisis, according to Dr. Joshua Lipsman, the co
SAG HARBOR - AFTER a holiday break to cool tempers, things are getting back to normal at the Pierson Middle School. The sixth-grade AIDS lecture that loosed a barrage of criticism from parents over what they called inappropriate material has given way to more traditional topics of student gossip. But some parents here
A children s hospital in Montreal was flooded with 4,500 phone calls from parents in response to a warning that a physician there had performed thousands of surgeries while infected with the AIDS virus. Officials at Ste.-Justine Hospital said the risk of contracting the virus from the doctor was low but asked 2,614 for
One of the nation s most prominent AIDS researchers is partly retracting a scientific paper in which he claimed to find an elusive substance that protects some people from the disease. In addition to being an embarrassment to the researcher, Dr. David Ho, the admission means that one of the great mysteries of AIDS -- w
Limestone Correctional Facility in Harvest will stop isolating H.I.V.-positive prisoners from the rest of the prison s population, allowing them to participate in educational and vocational programs with other prisoners. Alabama is the only state still to segregate H.I.V.-positive prisoners, said Margaret Winter, assoc
Next month on The Parkers, a comedy on the UPN network, one of the lead characters will meet the girl of her dreams, only to find out that she s H.I.V.-positive. The story may have been dreamed up by the show s writers, but they got a little nudge from Mel Karmazin, president and chief operating officer of Viacom Inc.,
Former President Bill Clinton announced yesterday that his foundation had negotiated deals with five major medical companies to steeply discount the price of two crucial diagnostic tests for H.I.V./AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. Those price reductions come just three months after Mr. Clinton s foundation brokered an
KYOTERA, Uganda - There is no word for depression in Luganda, the local language, but until about a year ago Josephine Namaganda was most certainly suffering from just that. She shunned her grandchildren, preferring to cry alone in her hut. She lacked the energy to work, which meant that her fertile farmland became ove
People infected with the AIDS virus live longer if they are in stable sexual relationships, a new study reports. The findings, which also show a slower progression of the disease for people in these relationships, are in keeping with past studies that have established links between emotional health and physical health.
Bob looked haggard but was feeling fabulous. Chewing gum at a manic clip, circling the labyrinthine halls of the West Side Club on a recent Sunday afternoon, he had been awake since Friday, thanks to a glassine pouch of crystalline powder he had tucked beneath the mattress of a room he rented in this Chelsea bathhouse.
NEW BRUNSWICK - LYNN S arms are a map of addiction. Her skin is pocked by needle marks, scored by more than a decade of abuse. Small knots of scar tissue cover the thin lines of her veins; a jagged patch of missing flesh marks a runaway infection and a surgeon s knife. A fresh needle track burns dead center, a glowing
BENGHAZI, Libya - Nesma Wershefani looks at visitors warily, with piercing black eyes. Last fall, at age 6, she went to first grade with a backpack and a brightly colored tunic, full of excitement about learning. Now she is back at home because the other children teased her about having the virus that causes AIDS, a di
An American priest who runs East Africa s largest orphanage for AIDS-affected children won a court battle yesterday that will force the Kenyan government to admit 72 children from the home into public schools. The priest, the Rev. Angelo D Agostino, from Providence, R.I., took the Kenyan government to court after sever
GABON, SOUTH AFRICA - At first blush, the jumble of corrugated-steel shacks sprouting from 123 acres of flat countryside is a mirror of thriving towns all over the nation. Thousands of barren yards, marked by chicken-wire fences and festooned with clotheslines, face dirt lanes dignified by hand-lettered wooden street s
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