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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The first case of Ebola transmitted between patients in America has experts across the country reviewing safety protocols. At Purdue University, Dr. David Sanders has been studying the virus since 2003 – specifically how this particular Zaire strain of Ebola enters human cells. While the virus has thus far only been shown to be transferred via bodily fluids, Sanders argues that it could become airborne. "It can enter the lung from the airway side," Sanders said. "So this argues that Ebola is primed to have respiratory transmission. "We need to be taking this into consideration," he...

A new campaign seeks to eliminate disclosure laws which require HIV positive individuals to inform their sex partners of their potentially deadly infection. The campaign is led by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and UNAIDS, an umbrella group of UN agencies. Notably absent from this campaign is any recognition of the danger posed for the possible victims of a willful refusal to disclose HIV status. As part of the campaign, IPPF released a collection of interviews entitled “Behind Bars”, which implies that such criminal laws fuel stigma against HIV persons. Proponents of criminal laws assert, however, they are designed...

An Indonesian bill that includes a bylaw requiring "sexually aggressive" people living with HIV/AIDS to be implanted with microchips is causing debate between some lawmakers, who argue that the bill is necessary to curb the spread of the virus, and advocates, who say the bylaw is discriminatory and a violation of human rights, the AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. According to John Manangsang, a lawmaker who supports the bill, authorities would be able to identify, track and punish people living with HIV/AIDS in the country's province of Papua who intentionally spread the virus with a $5,000 fine or up to six...

LITTLE ROCK -- The people of the Republic of the Marshall Islands are among the unhealthiest people in the world. An estimated 6,000-8,000 Marshallese immigrants live in Springdale, AR. and the surrounding areas, of whom 867 are children enrolled in the Springdale School District, Pritchard told the House and Senate Interim Committees on Public Health, Welfare and Labor.Deputy State Health Officer Dr. Joe Bates testified that between 2000 and 2005, Northwest Arkansas had nine cases of congenital syphilis, six of which involved Marshallese; 38 people with infectious syphilis, 21 of whom were Marshallese; and nine cases of leprosy, all Marshallese....

In a move believed to be the first by a college campus in the nation, San Jose State University President Don Kassing has suspended all campus blood drives because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration bars any man who has had sex with another man from donating blood. "The FDA's lifetime blood donor deferral affecting gay men violates our non-discrimination policy," said Kassing in an e-mail sent to faculty, staff and students. The suspension, which is effective immediately, applies to blood drives arranged by employees representing the university as well as blood drives organized by student groups. The FDA's ban...

You can’t help but feel a little sorry for Amanda Beck. She’s a reporter from Reuters who was among the first to cover a new study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, which warns about an outbreak of a virulent, drug-resistant, and potentially deadly strain of Staph infection afflicting certain segments of the homosexual community. Although outbreaks of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, have primarily been confined to hospitals in the past, the study determined that, due to “high risk behaviors” beyond hospital walls — such as “anal sex” — men who have sex with men...

As another World AIDS Day dawns this morning, prepare for the usual media blitz of stories designed to promote more spending on failed approaches to HIV/AIDS, and more bashing of the Bush Administration despite increases in spending by the billions each year.  Here are some of the questions that the media probably won’t ask the professional HIV/AIDS lobby, which grows ever fatter while the human tragedy rises: • What have American taxpayers gotten for the $20 billion per year (and rising) government spending on HIV/AIDS? • What has happened to the more than half a billion condoms that the...

All of the employees at the Wayne Farms fresh processing plant in Decatur have received tuberculosis skin tests and 212 of them tested positive. Health workers read and tabulated a final batch of tests Wednesday, said Scott Jones, interim director of the State Department of Public Health's Tuberculosis Control Division. Of the 598 tests administered Monday, 165 tested positive. In skin tests administered to 167 fresh processing employees Oct. 11, 47 tested positive. One of the 47 has active tuberculosis disease, which is contagious. All told, 28 percent of those who received skin tests at the fresh processing plant tested...

FORT LAUDERDALE, August 23, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - At a news conference at City Hall this week, Jim Naugle, the mayor of Fort Lauderdale, Florida has called on homosexual men to end their public sexual encounters in order to curb the local HIV/AIDS rate. "We want to put a stop to that activity," he said. Since his first public comments in July, Naugle has been attacked on all sides for being nearly the only US public figure to oppose on moral grounds the encroachment of homosexual activity in his town. Now Naugle is in the news again for his determination to...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- A man placed in isolation after he was diagnosed with contagious tuberculosis broke a hospital window and fled, health officials said. Unlike the Georgia lawyer who was under a federal quarantine after flying to Europe with what was then believed to be extensively drug-resistant TB, Arkansas health officials said the man who fled has a form of tuberculosis that would respond to treatment. Franklin Greenwood, 50, is still contagious, though, health officials said. Greenwood was placed in isolation at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital on June 29 after he was seen coughing up...

Toddler Was Denied Shower Access as Well: A couple says their vacation was ruined when an RV park owner told them they weren't welcome after discovering their 2-year-old foster son had the HIV virus. Last week, Dick and Silvia Glover went to the Wales West RV Park in Silver Hill, Ala., with their foster son Caleb. When the boy was banned from using the pool and showers, the Glovers said they were offered an uncomfortable and painful choice: They could either keep Caleb out of the water or leave.

131 EXPOSED IN GREENVILLE The number of workers exposed to tuberculosis at a Greenville, S.C., chicken plant has grown to 131, but state health officials cautioned Tuesday only one is suspected of having an active form of the infectious disease. The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control began testing employees at the House of Raeford Farms plant late last month after the agency was told about the infected worker. So far, 286 employees who have been in contact with the worker have been tested. The percentage of positive cases is believed to be high because many of the plant's...

Judge orders man confined in San Antonio for treatment he had refused since April: PORT ARTHUR — A Port Arthur tuberculosis patient was apprehended Thursday without incident after a judge ordered he be confined and treated at a San Antonio hospital, officials said. Police picked up Lemone Yowman, 32, at a relative's home so he could be taken by ambulance to San Antonio with a police escort, said Maj. John Owens of the Port Arthur Police Department. A judge has ordered that Yowman be confined and undergo treatment at a San Antonio facility, according to court documents and a city...

'This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've co-operated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy.'— Man with drug resistant TB says he returned to U.S. despite risks to get treatment A man with a form of tuberculosis so dangerous he is under the first U.S. government-ordered quarantine since 1963 told a newspaper he took one trans-Atlantic flight for his wedding and honeymoon and another because he feared for his life. Hundreds of health authorities around the world including Canada are now scrambling to track down passengers who were seated near the...

Doctors fear TB strain could cause a global pandemic if it is not controlled South Africa is considering forcibly detaining people who carry a deadly strain of tuberculosis that has already claimed hundreds of lives. The strain threatens to cause a global pandemic, but the planned move pits public protection against human rights. The country's health department says it has discussed with the World Health Organisation and South Africa's leading medical organisations the possibility of placing carriers of extreme drug resistant TB or XDR-TB under guard in isolation wards until they die, but has yet to reach a decision. More...

President Bush will ease a long-standing rule barring HIV-positive people from entering the United States without a special waiver, a ban long criticized by human rights groups. Because of the rule, organizers of the biannual International AIDS Conferences have not held a gathering in the United States since 1990, when San Francisco hosted the event. The White House chose Friday, World AIDS Day, to announce that Bush would issue an executive order allowing HIV-positive people to enter the United States on short-term tourist or business visas without having to seek special permission.

Activists Blame Infection Rate, Unchanged Since 1990, on Policies and Funding The number of people in poor countries taking AIDS drugs -- about 1.4 million -- rises by tens of thousands every week. The spread of AIDS in Africa seems to have peaked. Three countries there -- Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe -- report declining HIV prevalence, largely thanks to changes in people's behavior. Even in India, considered AIDS's ticking time bomb, efforts to defuse the epidemic are paying off in some places. Amid these optimistic trends from around the world, however, is another statistic that is stuck in time, right...

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa Mary Goedken (GED'-ken) of Monticello, the matriarch of an Iowa family that lost eight people to AIDS, has died. She died on Monday at a Monticello nursing home following a brief illness. She was 91. Goedken's family says she had been in declining health since suffering a stroke in December. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, no other family in the U-S is known to have lost more members to AIDS than the Goedkens. Six of her seven sons suffered from hemophilia. One son died of complications from hemophilia in 1971. In the 1980s,...

HOME   |   SEARCH   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |   HELP Please sign in for full text and personal services   Previous Volume 353:2397-2402 December 1, 2005 Number 22 Next Applying Public Health Principles to the HIV Epidemic Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., M.P.H., Moupali Das-Douglas, M.D., Scott E. Kellerman, M.D., M.P.H., and Kelly J. Henning, M.D.   PDF PDA Full Text Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited E-mail When Letters Appear Find Similar Articles Although human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection has killed more than half a million people in...

Is a new strain of AIDS developing? The New York Times suggests that this could be the case. Scientists are running tests to see if a man infected with an unusually fast-acting and resistant form of HIV has a new “supervirus.” Nothing has been confirmed yet, but already people are getting alarmed. The Times reports, “While many are calling for a renewed commitment to prevention efforts and free condoms, some veterans of the war on AIDS are advocating an entirely new approach to the spread of unsafe sex, much of which is fueled by a surge in methamphetamine abuse. They...