In The News

Taiwan's CDC Expands Personal Health Check

Joy Su December 19, 2003
After several months with no new SARS infections reported worldwide, a Taiwanese medical researcher has contracted the disease while working in a lab. Singaporean health officials have ordered 70 people in that country into quarantine because they came in contact with the Taiwanese man during a recent medical conference in Singapore. In Taiwan, national health officials are ordering increased...

China Steps Up to a Global Threat

John Gittings December 5, 2003
World AIDS Day on December 1 was marked in China by an unprecedented openness on the subject of HIV-AIDS. One of the nation's top leaders, Premier Wen Jiabao, visited patients in AIDS wards and proclaimed a new commitment to providing medical treatment for HIV-infected people and to prevention measures and education about the HIV virus. Veteran China watcher John Gittings writes that...

Africa: Gender Inequality Fuels AIDS Crisis

December 3, 2003
Agencies trying to curb the AIDS crisis in Africa need to expand their approach, argues Human Rights Watch. There is a crucial link between gender inequality and the spread of AIDS. Sexual assault, the use of rape as a mechanism of war, the cultural acceptance of domestic violence, and women's lack of voice have kept women at the mercy of the disease in Africa. On that continent, women are...

India Plans Free AIDS Therapy

Amy Waldman December 1, 2003
On the eve of an election day in India, the government announced plans to provide free antiretroviral therapy to H.I.V.-positive new parents and H.I.V.-positive children in the six states most affected by the disease. This is part of a larger initiative spearheaded domestically by Sushma Swaraj, India's Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, and internationally by organizations like...

WHO Unveils Plan to Fight HIV and AIDS

David Brown December 1, 2003
A program that was deemed "too ambitious" two years ago is set to be implemented by the World Health Organization (WHO). By providing instruction, expertise, and written documents, as well as calling for the training of 100,000 workers for 10,000 clinics, the WHO hopes to provide 3 million people with AIDS treatment by 2005. The WHO will not pay for the treatment itself, but it hopes...

Most of the World Still Does Without

November 25, 2003
The world's hungry and sick are more numerous than many may realize. In a survey of 38,000 people in 44 countries - a feat accomplished in large part thanks to globalization - the Pew Foundation finds that hunger and health problems continue to plague people around the globe. Even in the United States, the report notes, medical care is beyond the reach of more people now than it was in the...

MEPs Vote to Support Stem Cell Research

Ian Black November 20, 2003
In a controversial decision, the European parliament decided on November 19 to permit EU funds to be spent on new stem cell research. Despite heavy lobbying from religious groups, the European parliament sided with medical researchers and patients' groups because they do not want Europe to risk falling behind in a lucrative area of biotechnology. Although Catholic countries such as Germany,...