By Lucille SODIPE HIV infections are soaring in the Philippines, with experts blaming online dating, poor sex education and conservative attitudes in the deeply religious country for fuelling the spread of the virus. While less than one percent of the country’s more than 110 million people have been diagnosed with HIV, UN data show it has one of the world’s fastest-growing epidemics. Philippine health officials warn the number of people testing positive for HIV every […]
Tag: HIV
New ‘highly virulent’ HIV strain discovered in the Netherlands
by Lucie AUBOURG WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Oxford researchers announced Thursday the discovery of a highly virulent strain of HIV that has been lurking in the Netherlands for decades, but because of the effectiveness of modern treatments, is “no cause for alarm.” Their analysis, published Thursday in the journal “Science,” showed that patients infected with what they call the “VB variant” had 3.5 to 5.5 times higher levels of the virus in their blood […]
Tests of HIV vaccine using mRNA technology have begun
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Testing in humans of an HIV vaccine that uses messenger RNA technology has begun, the biotech firm Moderna and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative said Thursday. This Phase 1 trial is being carried out in the United States among 56 healthy adults who are HIV negative. Despite four decades of research, doctors have yet to develop a vaccine to protect people from the virus that causes AIDS, which kills hundreds […]
HIV drugs touted as weapon in war on coronavirus
BANGKOK, Thailand (AFP) — As doctors scramble to contain the fast-spreading coronavirus, a potent brew of anti-retroviral and flu drugs has emerged as a possible defence against the mysterious sickness that has killed hundreds. But the science is inconclusive on whether they are actually effective and experts say successful treatment could take years. Here is what we know — and don’t know — about the drugs deployed against the SARS-like virus. – Why anti-retrovirals? […]
DOH awaiting test results if Chinese man who died of pneumonia had nCoV; initial test showed he was HIV+
(Eagle News) – The Department of Health is now awaiting the results of the confirmatory tests on a Chinese national confined at the San Lazaro Hospital, considered a patient under investigation (PUI) for novel coronavirus infection, who died on Thursday, Jan. 29, for pneumonia. The DOH said that the 29-year old man who came from Yunnan province was also HIV positive upon testing, but that a confirmatory test on this too is necessary. San Lazaro […]
Over 600 people test HIV positive in Pakistan city
Pakistan said on Sunday over 600 people, most of them children, had tested HIV positive in a city in southern Sindh province. Concern grew after hundreds of people were allegedly infected by a doctor using a contaminated syringe in Rato Dero city and surrounding villages of Larkana district. “Some 681 people, of which 537 were children from two to 12 years of age, had been tested positive for HIV until yesterday in Rato Dero,” special […]
US performs first kidney transplant from living donor with HIV
by Ivan Couronne WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The kidney of a 35-year-old HIV-positive woman has been transplanted into another patient with the virus that causes AIDS, US surgeons announced Thursday, in a major medical breakthrough. The surgeons at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore performed the operation on Monday, calling it the first in the world of its kind. “I’m feeling good,” said the donor, Nina Martinez, at a news conference on Thursday following the […]
‘London patient’: second case ever of HIV remission
by Marlowe HOOD and Patrick GALEY Agence France Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — A second person is in sustained remission from HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS, after ceasing treatment and is likely cured, researchers said Tuesday in what was hailed as proof that the condition could one day be cured. Ten years after the first confirmed case of an HIV-infected person being rid of the deadly disease, a man known only as the “London […]
US charity school in Liberia in rape scandal storm; probe says charity co-founder who had died of AIDS raped school girls
MONROVIA, Liberia (AFP) — An acclaimed US charity operating in Liberia has admitted to major failings after girls at a school set up to save them from a life of sexual exploitation were systematically raped. “We are profoundly, deeply sorry,” the charity More Than Me said on its website on Saturday after US investigative media said girls at a pioneering school in a slum had been repeatedly abused by the charity’s co-founder, Macintosh Johnson. […]
UK blood contamination scandal victims can sue: court
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Victims of a contaminated blood scandal in Britain which left at least 2,400 people dead, and their families will be allowed to seek damages following a High Court ruling on Tuesday. A High Court official said it was “appropriate” to issue immediately a group litigation order allowing a potential 500 claimants together to seek compensation. Lawyers acting for the health ministry had argued that the application to the court was […]
World lags badly on targets to slash TB, HIV, obesity: study
by Mariëtte Le Roux Agence France Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Not a single country, out of nearly 200 reviewed, was on track to meet the United Nations target of eliminating new tuberculosis infections by 2030, according to a global health review published Wednesday. At the same time, less than five percent of countries were likely to reach the UN goal of reducing suicides, road deaths and child obesity by that date, and only seven […]
Pia Wurtzbach urges more HIV tests amid UN report that PHL has fastest growing infections in Asia
https://youtu.be/OWsY84JMz00 MANILA, Philippines (AFP) — The Philippines’ former Miss Universe conducted a public HIV test in Manila on Wednesday a week after the United Nations said her country had the fastest-growing number of infections in Asia. Pia Wurtzbach, UNAIDS goodwill ambassador for Asia and the Pacific, took the test in front of reporters as part of her efforts to raise awareness of HIV and remove the stigma surrounding the virus in the conservative nation. The United Nations […]





