HIV-AIDS fundraiser attracts star power
A new Trudeaumania hit Ottawa yesterday with the star power of Justin Trudeau present at the 10th-anniversary launch of A Taste for Life, a successful fundraiser that’s been collecting money to help people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.
Read full article @ Ottawacitizen.com
AIDS Vaccine Testing on Humans Halted Because of Risk
Scientists who have worked for decades to find a vaccine for the HIV and AIDS infections will meet next week at the US National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland to chart a future course for research.
Full article @ VOA News
Potential treatment of AIDS
Scientists at the University of Alberta have uncovered a human gene that stops the spread of HIV, potentially opening the door to new treatments in the battle against AIDS…
View full article @ The Gateway
AIDS experts wonder if focus is right
In the two decades since AIDS began sweeping the globe, it has often been labelled as the biggest threat to international health.
But with revised numbers downsizing the pandemic published last year – along with an admission that AIDS peaked in the late 1990s – some AIDS experts are now wondering if it might be wise to shift some of the billions of dollars of AIDS money to basic health problems like clean water, family planning or diarrhea.
“If we look at the data objectively, we are spending too much on AIDS,†said Dr. Malcolm Potts, an AIDS expert at the University of California in Berkeley, who once worked with prostitutes on the front lines of the epidemic in Ghana.
Problems such as malnutrition, pneumonia and malaria kill more children in Africa than AIDS.
View full article @ Globe and Mail
What is HIV | AIDS?
What is AIDS?
AIDS is an acronym that stands for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome.
- Acquired means that the virus is contracted from an external source. AIDS is not contagious in the same way that the flu is. It has to be contracted by direct exposure to infected bodily fluids. Sexual intercourse, the sharing of needles, and mother to child transmission during birth are the most common means of contraction.
- Immunodeficiency means that AIDS attacks the immune system. It makes the human body incapable of fighting other diseases, and the thousands of germs that we all encounter in our every-day lives.
- Syndrome means that AIDS presents itself not as a single disease, but rather as a whole set of diseases that attack the person living with AIDS as the immune system weakens.
HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. The difference between HIV and AIDS is a subtle one. When a person originally contracts the disease, they are said to be HIV positive. The person is said to have AIDS when the HIV infection has destroyed enough of the immune system that it is no longer able to protect the body from opportunistic infections.