PARIS - A shortage of money is threatening the AIDS battle at the very time when progress is being made against the epidemic and vaccine research is showing promise.

The 2008 antenatal clinic survey, which measures the prevalence levels of HIV amongst pregnant women attending public health care facilities, shows that HIV in this group is not declining.

Less than half of adults and children needing antiretroviral treatment (ART) in sub-Saharan Africa - where two-thirds of all global HIV infections occur - are receiving it. This is despite the region showing the greatest gains worldwide in terms of access to the lifesaving drugs.

With the economy in a recession, fears abound that government funding of major health programmes, including HIV/AIDS, could diminish. But the country cannot afford to let its citizens go without much-needed treatment, warns the head of the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC).

NAIROBI: (PlusNews) - AIDS activists have praised a decision by the Indian patent office to reject patent applications for two life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, allowing Indian manufacturers to keep on making and exporting generic versions.

JOHANNESBURG: (PlusNews) - An attempt to help educators around the world develop sex-education programmes as a way to reduce unwanted pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among young people has become bogged down in controversy.

Dr Jorge Sampaio, the United Nations Special Envoy on Tuberculosis recently addressed the 59th World Health Organisation Regional Committee for Africa in Kigali, Rwanda. He reminded ministers that putting money in TB is one of the most cost effective public health investments.

NAIROBI: (PlusNews) - Shortages of medical staff in Uganda mean clinical officers, nurses and midwives are prescribing life-prolonging antiretroviral therapy (ART) without proper training, a new studyreveals.

NAIROBI: (PlusNews) - People living with HIV in Kenya do not have adequate access to family planning services, even though most HIV-infected women do not want children in the immediate future.

JOHANNESBURG: (PlusNews) - The debate about the safest and healthiest infant feeding choice for HIV-positive mothers in the developing world should be over, according to one of South Africa's leading HIV/AIDS researchers.

JOHANNESBURG: (PlusNews) - A new book has broken the silence over what really goes on during traditional male circumcisions in South Africa, and the author, a former initiate, says that if is to be made safer and punted to prevent HIV, circumcision as many know it will have to change.

Drug stock-outs are continuing in the Free State with many HIV patients continuing to die while waiting to access anti-retrovirals while scores of patients who are already on treatment are defaulting as health facilities run out of drugs.

Too often, South African men are painted as violent, abusive and dangerous. Brothers for Life is out to promote the silent good guys.