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Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Ebola quarantine policy is drawing strong opposition from people who work closely with him on another infectious disease: AIDS. New York State’s imposition of a 21-day quarantine on health workers who have had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa “is not supported by scientific evidence” and “may have consequences that are the antithesis of effective public health policy,” according to a letter released Monday with signatures from over 100 H.I.V. activists, researchers and clinicians. They consider the state’s quarantine policy unacceptable even though, as Governor Cuomo announced Sunday night, affected people will be able to serve...

Ebola virus disease (EVD) was first identified in 1976, in what was then called Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The name comes from the Ebola River, a tributary of the Congo River in central Africa, where the majority of EVD epidemics have occurred. However, recent outbreaks are now in Western Africa, and involve major cities, as well as rural areas. WHO pegs the average EVD case fatality rate at around 50%. Outbreaks in the past have logged case fatality rates of 25 to an astonishing 90 percent. Recently, symptoms of this dread disease have been well-publicized. Indeed,...

The largest U.S. gay-rights organization Saturday endorsed efforts to promote the use of a once-a-day pill to prevent HIV infection and called on insurers to provide more generous coverage of the drug. Some doctors have been reluctant to prescribe the drug, Truvada, on the premise that it might encourage high-risk, unprotected sexual behavior. However, its preventive use has been endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and many HIV/AIDS advocacy groups.The Human Rights Campaign, which recently has been focusing its gay-rights advocacy on same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination issues, joined those ranks with the release...

<p>MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — After listening to his sermons for 24 years, parishioners of the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church probably thought they knew the Rev. Juan D. McFarland.</p> <p>But from the very pulpit where he preached about God's love and service to the community, he delivered some stunning revelations: He had had affairs with women in the parish — and neglected to tell them he had AIDS.</p>

Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Tom Frieden compared Ebola with AIDS at a United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund forum held Oct. 9, in Washington, D.C. He stated: “I would say that in the 30 years I've been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS,” Dr. Frieden is right asserts radio talk show host and author Chuck Morse. Ebola and AIDS are similar in terms of the politically correct approach by which both epidemics are being handled. We should learn from the mistakes of history and recall that back in the 1980's the...

The Ebola outbreak has been escalating in the past few months, but could it cause a global pandemic similar to that of AIDS, as was suggested today by a top public health official? Speaking at a meeting in Washington, D.C., today (Oct. 9), Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared the two diseases. "In the 30 years I've been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS," Frieden said, referring to the Ebola outbreak. "And we have to work now so that this is not the world's next AIDS." Ebola...

The widening Ebola epidemic is reminiscent of the health threat caused by AIDS, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday, urging action so Ebola "is not the world's next AIDS." "In the 30 years I've been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said at a World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meeting in Washington, D.C., where many countries pledged funds and services to try to stem the virus ravaging West Africa. "And we have to work now so that this is not the...

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/risk_HIV_AfricanAmericans.pdfThe estimated rate of new HIV infections for African American women was 20 times that of white women

Late last month, the journal Pediatrics, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, released a policy statement entitled Contraception for Adolescents. The statement is an update to the Academy’s 2007 statement on the same topic. The update “provides the pediatrician with a description and rationale for best practices in counseling and prescribing contraception for adolescents,” according to the journal article. The abstract says: The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that pediatricians develop a working knowledge of contraception to help adolescents reduce risks of and negative health consequences related to unintended pregnancy. The American Academy of Pediatrics seems to have taken...

The outbreak of Ebola that has become a humanitarian crisis in West Africa finally reached the U.S. last week when a patient in Dallas, Texas was diagnosed with the virus. Ebola is not an airborne disease and is only transmitted through close contact with bodily fluids like saliva, feces and urine, but that hasn’t stopped a minor panic from setting in now that it has reached American shores. Global health experts are concerned that now, in the U.S., stigmatization of people from the three most affected countries in the region — Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia — could follow. “On...

Three decades after the world witnessed HIV begin to take its devastating human toll, scientists have isolated where the pandemic started in Kinshasa, in what was then Zaire, and now the Democratic Republic of Congo. The revelation is outlined in the journal Science, which dated the origin of the pandemic as early as the 1920s. While the virus is thought to have crossed into the human population years earlier, the Guardian notes, it remained largely localized until it reached Kinshasa, which catapulted throughout the region, and then world. A confluence of social factors led to what the authors call a...

The origin of the Aids pandemic has been traced to the 1920s in the city of Kinshasa, in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, scientists say. An international team of scientists say a "perfect storm" of population growth, sex and railways allowed HIV to spread. A feat of viral archaeology was used to find the pandemic's origin, the team report in the journal Science. They used archived samples of HIV's genetic code to trace its source, with evidence pointing to 1920s Kinshasa. Their report says a roaring sex trade, rapid population growth and unsterilised needles used in health...

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has issued a new report that highlights the potentially lethal dangers of anal sex. In their most recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the health agency said that while men with same-sex attraction make up only 2 percent of the total population, they accounted for 63 percent of all newly-diagnosed HIV/AIDS cases in 2010.  More than half of all AIDS-sufferers in the U.S. are homosexual, and most of them contracted it by engaging in anal sex. “Most gay and bisexual men acquire HIV through anal sex, which is the riskiest type of sex for...

We agree to meet outside Pret A Manger on Southampton Row, central London. Waiting in the distance, through the grimy sunlight and the clatter of lawyers, City workers and literary types – all macchiatos and adrenaline – stands a frail-looking figure, bent over and clutching a walking stick. As I approach he smiles. His name is Hugh, he is HIV positive and he is 35 years old. What follows is a story we never hear. It is a tale of seizures and brain cancers, of mental illness short-circuiting anti-HIV medication. It is a story, far from unique, that has been...

Gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) make up 2 percent of the U.S. population but are the group most definitively affected by HIV, with 63 percent of those newly infected by HIV representing this group. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly “Morbidity and Mortality” report shows that among persons newly infected with HIV in 2010, 63 percent were men who have sex with other men. Among Americans living with HIV, 52 percent were MSM – and a significant number of men with HIV are not receiving treatment. “Gay, bisexual, and other men who...

Gay and bisexual men represent an estimated 2% of the U.S. population but more than half of all people living with HIV and 66% of new HIV infections. They are the only population group in the United States for which HIV infections are rising. Projections have shown that if current trends continue, half of all gay and bisexual men will be HIV-positive by age 50.

In North Korea, political life revolves around Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. Yet Kim appeared to have skipped a high-level governmental meeting Thursday – and no one seems to know quite why. Televised footage of the reopening of North Korea's Supreme People’s Assembly did not show Kim at the meeting, the Associated Press reports. South Korean officials tasked with keeping tabs on the North now believe that it is the first time that Kim has missed a meeting at Pyongyang's parliament since his father died in December 2011. In fact, Kim, usually a focus of North Korean state media, has...

Survey results released Thursday suggest a troubling complacency toward HIV among gay and bisexual men in the United States that public health experts say could undermine efforts to slow down or even stop spread of the disease. Fewer than 20 percent of gay and bisexual men have been tested for HIV in the previous six months — as recommended by national public health agencies — and nearly a third have never been tested at all, according to a survey conducted this summer by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The same survey found that gay and bisexual men were largely uninformed about...

Gov. Rick Scott and Sen. Rene Garcia presented the University of Miami with a check for $1 million for HIV/AIDS research Monday morning. Scott stopped by the university’s Miller School of Medicine to highlight funding in the “It’s Your Money Tax Cut Budget” for HIV/AIDS research.

A West Side priest pleaded guilty this morning to soliciting sex from an undercover ranger at Edgewater Park last October while failing to divulge he was carrying the AIDS virus. Under provisions of a plea bargain reached with prosecutors, the Rev. James McGonegal, 69, the former pastor of St. Ignatius of Antioch Church, will enter an early intervention program. The agreement allows McGonegal to avoid a felony conviction if he successfully completes the program. At that point, the case would be dismissed and his record expunged. He also must perform 50 hours of community service and continue out-patient treatment begun...