Governments'€™ inadequate response to HIV/AIDS came under heavy criticism by global children'€™s rights activist Graca Machel at the world AIDS conference in Barcelona.

US Health Secretary Tommy Thompson was shouted down by AIDS activists and prevented from addressing the World AIDS conference in Barcelona yesterday (Tuesday). Kerry Cullinan reports.

Pressure is mounting against the South African government for continuing to delay a $72-million grant to KwaZulu-Natal from the Global Fund to Fight HIV, TB and Malaria. Speaking at the World AIDS conference in Barcelona yesterday (wed), Global Fund director Dr Richard Feachem said the fund was "concerned" by the delay.

A new drug called Tenofovir is being researched to see whether it can prevent HIV infection if it is taken before a person is exposed to the virus. Kerry Cullinan reports.

In the depressing statistics frenzy that often characterises world AIDS conferences, there is one shining success story that defies the stereotype. Uganda is poor, rural and in sub-Saharan Africa. Those three factors alone should condemn it to being a helpless case in the eyes of the developed world.

Giving pregnant HIV positive women two anti-AIDS drugs rather than one substantially reduces the chances of them passing the virus on to their babies, delegates to the 14th world AIDS conference in Barcelona were told yesterday (Monday).

Competition between drug companies and generic producers has been far more effective in ensuring cheaper anti-AIDS drugs than negotiations with drug companies. This is despite a massive humanitarian initiative launched two years at the 13th world AIDS conference by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and five of the world'€™s biggest pharmaceutical companies aimed at ensuring that developing countries had access to cheaper drugs. KERRY CULLINAN reports.

South African activists and scientists will play a prominent role in the 14th International AIDS conference which opens in Barcelona on Friday.

South African activists and scientists will play a prominent role in the 14th International AIDS conference which opens in Barcelona on Friday.

Cosatu and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) are to table a national HIV/AIDS treatment plan in the National Economic, Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) following the first national treatment conference which concluded in Durban yesterday (sat).

The director general of health, Dr Ayanda Ntsaluba, a keynote speaker at the national HIV/AIDS treatment conference which began in Durban last night, decided at the last minute not to attend the gathering.

South African scientists have made a breakthrough in malaria research which will enable more effective drugs to be developed to treat the parasite-based infection. The breakthrough is based on identifying how the malaria parasite, transmitted to people by the Anopheles mosquito, operates in humans' red blood cells, according to Dr Giovanni Hearne of Wits University's School of Physics.