When Elizabeth Pisani began her career as an HIV epidemiologist, fewer than 1.5m cases of Aids had been reported across the world. Within a year, by the end of 1997, 30 million people were estimated to be infected with HIV. As Pisani wrote in her first report for World Aids Day, that meant one in every 100 sexually active adults aged between 15 and 49 worldwide.

Today, just over a decade later, the global figure is estimated to be closer to 40 million, with more than 1.5m new infections every year. Yet there is a widespread impression that the world is now winning the fight against the virus. The perception that it threatens only sex workers, heroin addicts and gay men has been replaced by the urgent consensus that this is a universal problem - backed by mind-boggling sums.

Read More...

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said Friday that more money is needed for HIV prevention efforts in the African American community, particularly for gay black men, who are disproportionately affected by the AIDS epidemic.

"You have to scale the money to the scope of the problem," Gerberding said during a forum hosted by Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, at a West Oakland community center.

Read More...

A shocking new survey has uncovered that the international community of Aids scientists are giving up hope of finding a vaccine for the virus.

The growing pessimism of scientists comes after the disastrous failure of a trial vaccine. The trial drug, manufactured by pharmaceutical company Merck, has been found not to work and in some cases it has increased the likelihood of being infected with HIV.

Read More...

Rethinking AIDS, an international group of more than 2,500 scientists, doctors, journalists, health advocates and others, has established April 23, 2008, as the first Rethinking AIDS Day.

On April 23, 1984, Dr. Robert Gallo of the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced that he had discovered "the probable cause of AIDS," a new virus later named HIV. The world media and health authorities accepted HIV as the sole cause of AIDS as fact even though no proof was presented, on that day or afterward, that this type of virus can cause or is actually present in AIDS patients.

According to statistics released today by the Minnesota Department of Health, 325 new cases of HIV were reported in Minnesota during 2007. The Minnesota AIDS Project, the leading source for HIV information and services in Minnesota, noted specific areas of concern including:

The Thai Ministry of Public Health has just released figures detailing the dramatic rise of HIV infection among MSM (men who have sex with men). Estimated at 28% in 2005, that number has increased to an all-time high of just under 31% in 2007.