Category: HIV / AIDS

Prisons in Maryland have the highest percentage of inmates living with AIDS nationwide, according to a study by the Department of Justice, the Baltimore Sun reports. The study is based on statistics from 41 states at the end of 2005.

First daughter Jenna Bush on Saturday in Annapolis, Md., launched a three-month, 25-city tour to promote her nonfiction book, titled “Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope,” that profiles a 17-year-old single mother in Panama who is HIV-positive, the Washington Post reports (Argetsinger, Washington Post, 9/30).

The Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney, T.D., welcomed the announcement of an insurance scheme for people infected with Hepatitis C and/or HIV through the administration within the State of contaminated blood or blood products. “The infection of people with contaminated blood products was catastrophic for them” the Minister said.

The Irish government on Thursday launched a program to provide life insurance, mortgage protection and travel insurance to people who contracted HIV or hepatitis C through contaminated blood products, Ireland’s Evening Echo reports (Evening Echo, 9/27).

Community groups in Washington, D.C., last week returned up to 70,000 of the condoms given away earlier this year as part of a city program that aims to reduce the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, the AP/Google.com reports. According to the AP/Google.

Comments made last week by Archbishop Francisco Chimoio, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Mozambique, that two European countries make condoms deliberately tainted with HIV as part of a plan “to finish quickly the African people” are “lunatic theories” and “baseless allegations,” a Los Angeles Times editorial says (Los Angeles Times, 9/29).

NIH has awarded the Atlanta-based firm GeoVax Labs a $15 million grant to further its HIV vaccine research and continue human clinical trials, company officials announced Thursday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

KPBS’ “These Days” on Thursday included a discussion with Kenny Goldberg — a KPBS health correspondent who received a fellowship to attend the 4th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention conference in July in Sydney, Australia — about Australian programs to reduce the spread of HIV among injection drug users and commercial sex workers.