During the opening ceremony of the 2008 AIDS Vaccine Conference in Cape Town, Barbara Hogan who was recently appointed Minister of Health following the demise of Dr Beetroot, said “We know that HIV causes Aids”.
It was a “breath of fresh air” reacted Alan Berstein, executive director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise.
Unfortunately I missed this historic moment but the Cape Times reports that Mrs Hogan is confident that a reform of the health system is possible and will scale up treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission. She also challenged scientists and researchers to …

Kgalema Motlanthe sworn in as South Africa’s president replacing Thabo Mbeki has appointed Ms Barbara Hogan as Minister of Health and Dr Molefi Sefularo as the Deputy Minister of Health.
Barbara Hogan who was pushed out of Parliament in 2003 in part for her refusal to accept Mbeki’s denialist stance on AIDS, is taking over Manto Tshabalala-Msimang more commonly known as “Dr Betroot” for promoting the value of lemons, garlic and betroot instead of antiretroviral medicines to combat the spread of AIDS.
In a statement, the Treatment Action Group (TAC) said Barbara …

It is revelation’s time for AIDS Inc. Two months ago Kevin de Cock, the epidemiologist heading the HIV-AIDS program with the World Health Organisation, briefly acknowledged, before recanting, that the threat of an heterosexual AIDS pandemic outside of Africa had disappeared and this month at the XVII International AIDS conference in Mexico, it was finally recognised that “a giant wave of infections moved like a tsunami through communities of gay men in Asia, Africa and Latin America” as The Sidney Morning Herald puts it.
“Men who have sex with men are …

The XVII International AIDS Conference will run from 3 to 8 August 2008 in Mexico City and one can already hear the drums of war beating backstage. As a science editorial puts it, Money matters, and who is going to get it matters even more. Though evidence-based approaches should be favoured, this has not often been the case.
So who should get the dosh?
Children?
Over twenty-five years into the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic, the children in its path remain at grave risk. In 2007, it was estimated that 2.1 million …

Kevin de Cock briefly admitted that the threat of an heterosexual AIDS pandemic outside of Africa had disappeared, but the pandemic is well and alive in Africa where it is affecting more and more heterosexual couples as observed in a study by Dr Kristin Dunkle and colleagues from the Emory Center for AIDS Research in the US and published in The Lancet.
The Atlanta team analysed Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data from 1739 Zambian women, 540 Zambian men, 1176 Rwandan women, and 606 Rwandan men. Using various analyses models they …