DEVELOPMENT-UGANDA: Little by Little, Week by Week

Uganda is one of Africa's rare success stories in the fight against AIDS, having reduced its HIV prevalence from 30 per cent in the early 1990s to six per cent today. However, the pandemic has still taken a toll on the East African country, causing almost two million children to be orphaned.

HEALTH: TB and AIDS an Increasingly Deadly Combo

Despite the fact that it is a curable disease, tuberculosis killed more people than all wars, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, airline accidents, terrorist acts and murders worldwide in the past year, according to a report released Thursday to mark World Tuberculosis (TB) Day.

HEALTH-CHINA: Waking Up to the HIV/AIDS Reality

After neglecting the danger of an HIV/AIDS pandemic for years, local authorities in several seriously affected regions in China have unveiled aggressive prevention and control measures that are stirring debates about individual rights here.

RIGHTS: Children Bear the Brunt of Donor Hostility to Zimbabwe, Says UNICEF

Carol Bellamy's final trip to Africa as head of the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, has been overshadowed by what she terms the "stark contrast" between aid given to Zimbabwe - and that received by other African countries in need, especially those in Southern Africa.

HEALTH-RUSSIA: AIDS Spreading at Alarming Pace

Health experts and non-governmental organisations are warning of a rapid spread of HIV/AIDS in Russia.

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: A Mixed Verdict for Commission’s Report

A "decisive first step" towards making poverty in Africa history, an "exercise to cover up the Iraq war": reactions to the report issued last week by Britain's Commission for Africa have been many and varied.

HEALTH: Hepatitis-C Virus Hinders HIV Therapy in India’s Northeast

As funds pour into India's ambitious programme of providing free anti-retrovirals (ARVs), it is becoming clear that many HIV-infected people in the north-eastern Manipur state - where the fight against AIDS is threatening to get out of control - will be left out.

HEALTH-THAILAND: Injecting Drug Users Still Ignored in AIDS Fight

For over a week, a Thai language newspaper published in this city has been running an advertisement that spells hope for the men and women hooked on heroin.

HIV/AIDS-CHINA: Henan Orphans Finally Speak Out

When a scandal of stunning proportions unfolded in central China's Henan province in 2001 over the huge number of poor people being infected with HIV through the sale of their blood at a government-run scheme, it marked a slow and painful change for Beijing's complacent - and sometimes hostile - attitude towards an emerging AIDS crisis.

HEALTH-INDIA: Border Town in Losing Battle with Drugs, HIV and Insurgency

Perhaps no place on earth deserves free anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) more than this remote district of 240,000 people in the northeast Indian state of Manipur - just on the porous India-Burma border.

HIV/AIDS-THAILAND: Grandmothers Find It Difficult to Be Mothers Again

Boon Srimai's tranquil life as a grandmother was shattered three years ago when death struck her family twice. Within a space of months in 2002, her 34- year-old son and his wife died of AIDS.

HEALTH: "Just Say No" Called Deadly Advice by Drug Experts

More than 300 groups and individuals from 56 countries released an open letter Tuesday urging delegates of the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) to resist U.S. pressure to withdraw support for syringe exchange programmes.

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: Putting Researchers and Policy Makers on the Same Page

Reports. They gather dust on the desks of journalists and bureaucrats - after having been opened with reluctance, and closed with speed. Months of work may have gone into their production; but all too often, the only use for these weighty tomes seems to be as doorstops.

HIV/AIDS-THAILAND: When the Music is Silenced by Death

''Death becomes a dancing partner when one has HIV/AIDS. First you have to accept it, and then dance with lady death,'' says well-known U.S.-born Thai musician Todd Tongdee Lavelle.

HEALTH-MAURITANIA: Low HIV Prevalence, Widespread AIDS Stigma

In the wooden shanty town of Elmina on the outskirts of Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott, AIDS educators do not let religious or cultural conservatism get in their way.

HEALTH: Breaking the Vicious Circle of Sexism, Poverty and AIDS

An ambitious plan to curb extreme poverty and promote gender equality in the next decade will not get off the ground unless governments in the world's least developed countries put the HIV/AIDS pandemic at the top of their agendas, said U.N. experts yesterday.

HEALTH: Deaths Outnumber Births as AIDS Ravages Southern Africa

The HIV/AIDS epidemic, which continues to devastate mostly the world's poorer nations, has increased the rate of mortality and slowed population growth, according to a new U.N. report released Thursday.

RIGHTS-SWAZILAND: For Women, Constitution Is a Curate’s Egg

There are several reasons why women's rights activists might welcome Swaziland's new constitution, intended to replace the document that was suspended by King Sobhuza in 1973. Then again, there are also reasons why they might not.

HEALTH: Global Poor to Suffer If Denied Indian Generic Drugs – Experts

If the Indian Parliament ratifies a decree on patents that seeks to bring India's massive generic drugs industry in line with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, it will hurt poor patients - especially those suffering from HIV/AIDS - not only in this country but also globally, say activists and experts.

MEXICO: Health Officials Launch Alert as Spring Breakers Pour In

The discovery in the United States of a virulent new strain of the AIDS virus has led Mexican health authorities to sound the alert in Cancún, the beach resort regularly inundated at this time of year with U.S. college students looking for a good time.

HEALTH-SOUTH AFRICA: ARVs Elusive for Refugees and Illegal Immigrants

Every year, thousands of Africans fleeing war and economic hardship make a perilous journey towards the tip of the continent - their sights set on a better life in the regional powerhouse, South Africa.