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Kolkata: A group of organisations have launched a campaign against a move by UN Women, a United Nations organisation dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, to decriminalise pimping, buying sex and brothel-keeping. "Such a move will fuel huge sex-trafficking as those who buy and sell women will get off scot free," Ruchira Gupta of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, an anti-sex trafficking NGO, told reporters here today. More than 1,000 individuals and organisations representing victims and survivors, women and dalits have signed a petition that the NGO would submit to UN Women in Delhi on January 7. The...

... Many health experts hoped that the medication — Truvada, a combination of two antiviral drugs that has been used to treat H.I.V. since 2004 — would be exuberantly embraced by H.I.V.-negative gay men. Instead, Truvada has been slow to catch on as an H.I.V. preventive in the 18 months since the strategy’s approval by the Food and Drug Administration. In some quarters, the idea that healthy gay men should take a medication to prevent infection — an approach called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP — has met with hostility or indifference. “It’s gotten tons of attention at H.I.V. meetings as...

Obama agenda won't tolerate 'preference for heterosexuality' in other countriesHomosexuals, prostitutes, and transgendered people of Central America are about to receive another boost from the Obama administration, which is expanding an HIV program initially launched during the William J. Clinton presidency. But chief among impediments to achieving U.S. policy goals in the region are “conservative gender norms related to sexuality and strong normative preference for heterosexuality,” a revised government planning document says. Organizations that help “Most-at-Risk Populations,” or MARPs, therefore, will be the beneficiaries of this Phase Two initiative, according to the revised Statement of Work detailing the Central America...

Peshawar, Daily 500 kilogram solid waste including infectious injection & drip from different wards came out from lady reading hospital Peshawar. That is all out to roads that spread infection in society but no one takes serious the matter. According to the investigation daily 400 kilogram solid waste of different ward, including emergency, operation theatre and from surgery ward out. That are all goes to the three different sites of the lady reading hospital. Health department installed the incinerator in hospital for the trash of the infectious waste. But the current condition show that incinerator didn’t used since 3 years,...

A coalition of 31 HIV/AIDS organizations is urging the Obama administration to investigate whether some health insurers are trying to discourage HIV-infected patients from enrolling in new policies being sold under the health-care law, a move the groups say could be illegal. The Affordable Care Act prohibits discrimination against people who are sick; insurers can't deny them coverage or charge them more than healthier peers. But in a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius last week, the coalition said it had noticed "a number of disturbing trends" in plans on the insurance exchanges, including plans that...

Data released last week found that 62 percent of American men who self-reported being HIV-positive said they had unprotected anal sex with a male partner in the last 12 months. The Centers for Disease Control report, “HIV Testing and Risk Behaviors Among Gay, Bisexual and Other Men who have Sex with Men,” noted that the population of men having sex with men (MSM) is a small proportion of the US population; however, this group represents the majority of people diagnosed with HIV. The researchers found that some men attempt to decrease their HIV risk by only engaging in unprotected sex...

Researchers announced today that two men they previously believed to be “cured” of HIV are now showing traces of the virus in their blood. Dr. Timothy Henrich, associate professor of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, announced the resurgence of the virus at an international conference on AIDS research in Florida Thursday, the Boston Globe reported. He said the fact that these two men were showing signs of HIV means that the virus can lurk in places in the body where it is hard to find. “This suggests that we need to look deeper, or we need...

The Obama administration is shifting $100 million into research efforts aimed at curing HIV, President Obama announced Monday. A new initiative at the National Institutes of Health will be aimed at "advanc[ing] research toward an HIV cure," Obama said at a White House event marking World AIDS Day, which was Sunday. The initiative is aimed at developing "new therapies," he said. "The United States should be at the forefront of the discoveries how to put HIV in long-term remission without requiring lifelong therapies. Or, better yet, eliminate it completely."

The A3/02 strain combines the two most common HIV strains in Guinea-Bissau and develops into AIDS within five years, up to two-and-a-half years faster than either of its parent strains, said Angelica Palm, one of the scientists behind the study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. This type of strain, a recombinant, appears when a person becomes infected by two different strains, allowing DNA to fuse and create a new one.

USA Today articles are headline and link only.Commentary: Elton blames Southern and religious bigotry for the continuing plague of HIV-AIDS in the U.S. and around the world. John ignores the role of personal behavior, instead he blames others: "Make no mistake: Discrimination and intolerance fuel this disease."John links to a Kaiser Family Foundation study to assert that seven of the ten states with the highest diagnoses of HIV are Southern. However, the study shows only five Southern states in the top ten with the liberal mecca the District of Columbia having an astonishing 177.9 infection rate per 100,000--five to six...

A recent World Health Organization report paints an alarming picture regarding the health implications of Europe’s economic crisis, including how some Greek citizens are infecting themselves with HIV in order to receive 700 euros in government benefits. The findings highlight how startling levels of unemployment and severe, mandated government cutbacks are trickling down to European citizens. The September WHO report concludes that the economic crisis that began in 2008 has “exacerbated” health problems in Europe and “exposed stark social and economic inequities within and between countries.”

When one reads the following stunning, and tragic, excerpt from the World Health Organization's recent report "Review of social determinants and the health divide in the WHO European Region: final report" what can one say but... Grecovery.From the WHO: Case study: countries’ experiences of financial crisis - Greece Suicides rose by 17% between 2007 and 2009 and to 25% in 2010, according to unofficial 2010 data (398). The Minister of Health reported a further 40% rise in the first half of 2011 compared with the same period in 2010. Suicide attempts have also increased, particularly among people reporting economic distress (610)....

The entire resurrection of the Arafat poisoned by Polonium-210 story is complete junk science. I’ve said it before at Israellycool but lets expand on it. The story so far: Nine years ago, on November 11, 2004, Yasser Arafat died. That he could have died from natural causes or some “lifestyle disease” was too unpalatable for his followers so they came up with a rather bizarre theory that he was poisoned with Polonium-210. After decomposing in Ramallah for eight years his wife and followers dug up his corpse to try to prove it. >>SNIP<< With the most amazing measuring equipment, in...

Swiss radiation experts have confirmed they found traces of polonium on clothing used by Yasser Arafat which "support the possibility" the veteran Palestinian leader was poisoned. In a report published by The Lancet at the weekend, the team provide scientific details to media statements made in 2012 that they had found polonium on Arafat's belongings. Arafat died in France on November 11 2004 at the age of 75, but doctors were unable to specify the cause of death. No autopsy was carried out at the time, in line with his widow's request. His remains were exhumed in November 2012 and...

A plea for asylum by an HIV-positive transgender individual is providing a rare glimpse into the complexities of deportation cases and the harsh realities facing federal immigration detainees. Wilfrido “Perla" Lopez-Roque, who is an undocumented Mexican immigrant, has been detained in the Santa Ana Jail since being caught last year by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE at a freeway check in San Diego County. Most undocumented immigrants detained by federal officials are immediately deported under a “voluntary removal” process that sends them back to their country of origin. Some, such as Lopez-Roque, request a judicial hearing for asylum....

A study has found that the antifungal drug Ciclopirox kills HIV in cell cultures -- and the virus doesn't bounce back when the drug is stopped. But the research has yet to be performed on people. A drug commonly prescribed to treat nail fungus appears to come with a not-so-tiny side effect: killing HIV in cell cultures.In a study performed at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, not only does the drug Ciclopirox rid infectious HIV from cell cultures, but the virus also doesn't bounce back when the drug is withheld. The same group of researchers had previously shown that Ciclopirox...

Pinning down an effective way to combat the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus, the viral precursor to AIDS, has long been a challenge for scientists and physicians, because the virus is an elusive one that mutates frequently and, as a result, quickly becomes immune to medication. A team of Drexel University researchers is trying to get one step ahead of the virus with a microbicide they've created that can trick HIV into "popping" itself into oblivion. Previous image Enlarge Close Next image / Like Us on Facebook Its name is DAVEI - which stands for "Dual Action Virolytic Entry...

ST. LOUIS (KTVI) – It was a story that made international headlines, a St. Louis area baby injected with the HIV tainted blood by his father who didn’t want to pay child support. More than 20 years later, Brryan Jackson is amazed by his health, but his positive spirit and faith. Brryan’s story seemed unbelievable in 1992, when he was just 11 months old, his father, a hospital technician, injected him with HIV tainted blood. The goal was to kill Brryan so he could avoid paying child support. “Anyone in my condition would die in three months they gave me...

Myanmar is the world’s primary source of top-grade jade, but the jade mining industry in the Southeast Asian nation remains mired in a humanitarian catastrophe two years after the reform government took over control -- tens of thousands of workers are exploited and heroin is abused on an unprecedented scale, creating the world’s largest HIV-infected community. ... For less than the price of a beer, an injectionist administers the drug directly into the vein of a miner, delivering as many as 800 separate injections from the same dirty needle. Large quantities of the drug are provided by the mine owners,...

A UN report says that there has been a surprisingly large drop in worldwide deaths due to AIDS, and a significant drop in the number of new cases. BBC: Death rates fell from 2.3 million during its peak in 2005 to 1.6 million last year, says UNAIDS. The number of new HIV infections fell by a third since 2001 to 2.3 million. Among children, the drop was even steeper. In 2001 there were more than half a million new infections. By 2012 the figure had halved to just over a quarter of a million. The authors put the fall in...