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Grave warning about the state of AIDS treatment scale-up

The new AIDS treatment access numbers released by the World Health Organization (WHO) today are a grave warning about the state of AIDS treatment scale-up.

18 Apr 2007

Global Fund must fund salaries of health workers to deliver HIV, TB and malaria treatments

In this week's PLoS Medicine, a team of international health experts issue a bold call to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria: fund the salaries of health workers or else risk a situation in which medicines for these three diseases are made available in poor countries but there are no health professionals to deliver them.

18 Apr 2007

Vaccination week in the Americas

The countries of the Americas are preparing a huge promotional effort for the fifth year of Vaccination Week in the Americas, which this year aims to immunize some 55 million persons.

18 Apr 2007

Towards universal access: scaling up priority HIV/AIDS interventions in the health sector

Access to antiretroviral therapy for advanced HIV infection in low- and middle-income countries continued to grow throughout 2006, with more than 2 million people living with HIV/AIDS receiving treatment in December 2006, a 54% increase over the 1.3 million people on treatment one year earlier in these countries.

18 Apr 2007

Staph infections among hospitalized patients are on the rise

The study, conducted by Gary Noskin, MD, infectious disease specialist and associate chief medical officer at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, also revealed that the increase in staph infections is resulting in millions of dollars of excess healthcare costs due to longer hospitalizations.

17 Apr 2007

Johns Hopkins to test all children for 'superbugs'

Infection control and critical care experts at The Johns Hopkins Hospital have ordered testing for the two most common hospital superbugs for every child admitted to its pediatric intensive care unit.

17 Apr 2007

Controlling impact of Ebola - new vaccines could control impact of Ebola on wild apes

Why have large outbreaks of Ebola virus killed tens of thousands of gorillas and chimpanzees over the last decade? Observations published in the May issue of The American Naturalist provide new clues, suggesting that outbreaks may be amplified by Ebola transmission between ape social groups.

17 Apr 2007

H5N1 western genomes sequenced

In a paper in the May issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases , an international team of researchers report the first ever large-scale sequencing of western genomes of the deadly avian influenza virus, H5N1.

17 Apr 2007

Too many of the world's poor still denied HIV drugs

According to a new report by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNAIDS and UNICEF, only 28% of the world's poor with HIV have access to the antiretroviral drugs that could save their lives.

17 Apr 2007

U.S. ready for bird flu

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States has approved for the first time a vaccine to prevent bird flu in humans.

17 Apr 2007

CDC warns about threat of drug resistant gonorrhoea

According to the U.S. Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), gonorrhoea affects as many as 700,000 Americans each year and the sexually transmitted disease has now become so drug resistant doctors are running out of options with which to treat it.

16 Apr 2007

USAID provides assistance to Burkina Faso for outbreak of meningitis

The United States Government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), will provide $450,000 through the U.S. Embassy in Ouagadougou to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) for vaccines urgently needed to maintain control of an outbreak of meningitis.

15 Apr 2007

Should stocks of smallpox virus be destroyed?

Smallpox was eradicated in 1980, but the virus still exists in WHO controlled depositories. In this week's BMJ , two experts go head to head over whether these stocks should be destroyed.

15 Apr 2007

Eradicating polio a better option than extended control of the disease

Concerns about the high perceived costs of eradicating the relatively low number of polio cases worldwide have led to recent suggestions that it is time to shift from a goal of eradication to control—abandoning eradication and allowing wild poliovirus to continue to circulate, which proponents of control believe can sustain the low number of cases.

15 Apr 2007

A wavering commitment to polio eradication is not a good option!

Concerns about the high perceived costs of eradicating the relatively low number of polio cases worldwide have led to recent suggestions that it is time to shift from a goal of eradication to control-abandoning eradication and allowing wild poliovirus to continue to circulate, which proponents of control believe can sustain the low number of cases.

12 Apr 2007

New vaccine to prevent type-1 polio three times as effective as standard vaccine

The study found that each dose of the new monovalent oral poliovirus vaccine, known as mOPV1, protected 30% of susceptible children in northern India against paralytic poliomyelitis. The standard trivalent vaccine in the same setting protected just 11% of children per dose.

12 Apr 2007

New CDC data show increases in E.coli, salmonella and vibrio

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's latest report shows that infections from E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella, and Vibrio are all on the rise. E. coli cases reported to CDC's FoodNet rose 50 percent since 2004, and Vibrio, another potentially deadly pathogen in shellfish, rose a whopping 78 percent since FoodNet began (1996-1998).

12 Apr 2007

AIDS Healthcare Foundation commends the passing of HIV testing bill

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the US' largest provider of HIV/AIDS healthcare, prevention and education, and operator of the largest non-government HIV testing program in California which conducts more than 15,000 HIV tests annually, today lauded the California Assembly Health Committee for its unanimous vote (12/0) in favor of Assembly Bill 682, California's Routine HIV Screening Bill, which will now move on to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

11 Apr 2007