UwidoNews

Clinical trials for phase one of the HIV/AIDS vaccine being developed in India enter the final stage this month with scientists from the Tuberculosis Research Centre (TRC), Chennai, and the National AIDS Research Institute (NARI)

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has announced a $9.7 million grant for poor farmers in India as part of a $120 million programme for the uplift of agriculture in endemically poor regions of the world.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a grant of $41 million to an international humanitarian organisation to work toward improving maternal, new born and child health in six countries, including India. Click on the link for more details.

Pope Benedict XVI said condoms are not the answer to the AIDS epidemic in Africa and can make the problem worse, setting off criticism Tuesday as he began a weeklong trip to the continent where some 22 million people are living with HIV.

The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services boldly announced in 1984 that there would be an AIDS vaccine within two years. The discovery of an AIDS-causing virus (HIV), she said, was already demonstrating "the triumph of science over a dreaded disease."

Partners in Health cofounder and former director of the World Health Foundation's HIV/AIDS department Jim Yong Kim ’82 was named the 17th president of Dartmouth College today. Kim, the chairman of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has long been a leader in bringing health care for such communicable diseases as AIDS and tuberculosis to developing countries. He is the first Asian-American to head an Ivy League school.

Down with malaria, thespian Dilip Kumar was admitted to Lilavati Hospital in Bandra Reclamation early onSunday.The 87-year-old actor, running a high fever on Saturday, tested positive for falciparum or cerebral malaria, said Dr Jalil Parker, who had recently treated Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray.

Scientists who worked the Star Wars anti-missile programme in the United States are building a ray-gun than can kill mosquitoes in a bid to tackle the scourge of malaria. Experts behind the 1980s missile shield idea have helped to develop a laser that locks onto and kills airborne insects.

Researchers in Malaysia have confirmed infections among humans with the Plasmodium knowlesi strain of malaria, which till now was believed to only infect monkeys, in particular the long-tailed and pig-tailed macaques.