The team from Vector State Scientific Center of Virology and Biotechnology, Kol’tsovo, Novosibirsk first reported their research on the CombiHIVvac in the journal Doklady Biochemistry and Biophysics in May 2007.

Maraviroc "could broaden the arsenal of treatments to combat resistant forms" of the virus that causes AIDS, Pfizer told analysts last week when it issued first-quarter results. Maraviroc would be the first new oral class of HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, medicines in more than 10 years, Pfizer said.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the specialised agency UNAIDS declared that millions of lives could be saved if circumcision were widely and safely practised.

They issued guidelines at a press conference in Paris following a debate among experts, health officials and grassroots groups in Geneva on March 6-8. 

"The recommendations represent a significant step forward in
HIV prevention," said Kevin de Cock, director of the WHO's HIV/AIDS Department.

When it comes to HIV and AIDS, the discrepancy between knowledge of the disease and actual behavior is widening, German leaders warned this week.

According to government statistics, almost 100 percent of the German population is aware of the most frequent modes of HIV transmission and ways to protect against infection.

The study, published in the April edition of the Journal of Infectious Diseases and already available online, followed 2,500 patients in eight Montreal HIV clinics over eight years. It showed that newly infected patients are eight times more likely to transmit the virus than those in the chronic stage of AIDS given the same behaviour.

Most of us have previously assumed that prolonged survival and advancing age explain much of the increase in these common end-organ diseases" among HIV patients, said Jason Baker, M.D., of the University of Minnesota at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections here.

But in fact, he told an oral abstract session, the increase is related to a patient's CD4 count.

HIV-positive mothers generally are counseled to feed their babies formula to limit the risk of transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus, but that has caused problems in nations where clean water and other needs may not be met.

Dr. Hoosen Coovadia a pediatrician at South Africa's University of KwaZulu-Natal, told the 14th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections that instructing HIV-infected mothers in developing nations to breast-feed would result in about 300,000 children becoming infected with HIV, but would save 1.5 million from dying of other diseases.

Dadzai Gwardzimba, UN Resident Coordinator in the capital Banjul, is due to travel to New York, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said in a statement on Friday afternoon.

President Jammeh announced he had a cure for AIDS in January. It is reportedly made from herbs and bananas. He said he can eliminate the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from people living with the virus and heal people with AIDS in a matter of days. Footage of the president applying his treatment has been widely broadcast on state-run television.

Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov trumpeted the HIV portion of the program as "an essential step forward."

Under the program, the state would provide medical treatment for 30,000 people living with HIV. "A couple years ago, only 700 people with HIV or AIDS could get treatment," Zurabov told the Cabinet while presenting the five-year program Thursday.

The test involving 140 women in the West African country of Burkina Faso found that when herpes was being treated with 500 milligrams of the drug valacyclovir twice daily for three months, the women were less likely to shed, or spread, the AIDS virus.

In addition, the treatment reduced the levels of AIDS virus in the blood, the research group led by Dr. Nicolas Nagot of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found.

A 41-year-old woman's kidneys and liver were taken after she died of a brain hemorrhage at Florence's Careggi hospital and were implanted due "to a tragic human error," the hospital said in a statement Monday. The director of the regional transplants agency said the patients' chances of infection are high.

The HIV test on the organs had come back positive, but "unfortunately the expert who did the report wrote down 'negative' for all the tests, including this one," said Careggi director Mauro Marabini.

He then orders the thin man to swallow a bitter yellow drink, followed by two bananas.

''Whatever you do, there are bound to be skeptics, but I can tell you my method is foolproof,'' President Yahya Jammeh told a reporter. ''Mine is not an argument, mine is a proof. It's a declaration. I can cure AIDS and I will.''

The Treasury says in its budget review that an additional R1,65bn has been committed to provinces over the next three years for their Aids treatment programmes.

The programmes are currently being run at 272 sites, and the health department says over 210,000 patients there are on antiretorviral (ARV) treatment.

A public-private partnership between five member groups of the mobile phone industry and the US government has formed the Phones for Health initiative.

Phones for Health is a $10m scheme aimed at using mobile phone coverage to strengthen health systems in 10 African countries.

Firms working on the project include the GSM Association, the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, Accenture, Motorola, MTN and Voxiva.