Free Republic

The United States will need more than 1,500 additional experienced HIV health care providers to meet goals for HIV testing and treatment, according to an analysis presented at IDWeek 2025. The study identified substantial geographic and racial/ethnic disparities, with especially pressing shortages in the South. As HIV treatment has improved, fewer people living with the virus are developing advanced immune suppression and opportunistic illnesses. Modern antiretroviral therapy is highly effective and generally convenient and well tolerated, so some routine HIV care can now be managed by primary care providers. But people aging with HIV have a host of coexisting health...

Treatment Action Group (TAG) is profoundly disappointed and outraged at the lack of health care protections for people living with and affected by HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and hepatitis C (HCV) in the bill to end the U.S. government shutdown. With only a promise of a future vote to extend the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits, millions of people now face unaffordable health insurance costs. As we approach World AIDS Day on December 1, we demand that legislators defend access and affordability of health care, especially for those with preexisting conditions. Several of the fiscal year 2026 appropriations bills, which...

President Trump is rejecting visas for fat people. The Trump administration has ordered visa officers to deny immigrants who are obese or have certain health issues, in yet another instance of the president’s strange obsession with fat people. A Thursday directive from the State Department, sent to embassies and consulates around the world, indicates that people applying for visas to the United States may be rejected if they have certain medical conditions, on the grounds that they could take up domestic health care resources. “You must consider an applicant’s health,” the cable read. “Certain medical conditions—including, but not limited to,...

A study presented at the recent 20th European AIDS Conference (EACS 2025) has found that the apparent rise in sexually transmitted infections (STIs), at least in gay and bisexual men with HIV in France, are due to more frequent testing rather than more infections. Dr Sophie Novelli of the Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (CESP) of the French national scientific health research agency INSERM presented data from 2016 to 2023 taken from the PRIMO cohort. PRIMO is a long-standing cohort, founded in 1996, of people diagnosed with HIV during very early infection. It includes men and women of all...

Avi Lewis, the former CBC host and husband of author Naomi Klein, has joined Al Jazeera’s rapidly growing English network as host of a weekly program on the American election. In the first episode of Frontline USA (complete video at the end of this post), which aired on the weekend, Mr. Lewis said the show will follow the election through such themes as race and immigration, and offer “a full-spectrum assault of American voices” to compete with the established networks. Al Jazeera English is not broadcast in Canada, although it has the approval of the federal regulator. Nonetheless, Mr. Lewis’s...

Glad to hear that George Bush is still lukewarm on the United Nations. It appears that the age of bending over for this crowd of quasi-legitimate, whining third-rate bullies is fast drawing to a close. The sooner the better, for the Third World especially, since you and I can dodge the UN quite well thanks. So to George W., I say, let them hand out food and organize medical aid. Anything else? You do it, you're competent. And for heaven's sake, if there are Canadians begging to be included, like I don't know, say, Stephen Lewis, how about a nice...

Just 40 percent of the $110 billion the United States has invested into global HIV/AIDS prevention since 2003 actually went toward on-the-ground deliveries of life-saving medical supplies, with at least two recipients using more than $30 billion in taxpayer money to pay "exorbitant" executive salaries and push "leftwing ideology," a State Department audit found. When the Trump administration unveiled its "America First Global Health Strategy" earlier this month, it contended the nation’s "foreign assistance programs are deeply broken" and often plagued by fraud, mismanagement, and waste. An internal State Department review of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)...

Charlie Sheen is done censoring his truth. The former “Two and a Half Men” star, 60, revealed he’s had sex with men, which began when he started smoking crack. “I flipped the menu over,” Sheen reveals in his upcoming Netflix documentary, “aka Charlie Sheen,” out on Sept. 10, about his same-sex bedroom experience. The actor revealed he’s done hiding his sexual encounters with men. Sheen revealed that his first encounter happened while he was using heavy narcotics, like crack, and he struggled to come to terms with his actions. These days, he’s owning it.

In the early 1980s, AIDS was one of the most feared and misunderstood health crises in America. This News special report, originally broadcast when the epidemic was still new, takes a hard look at the growing menace that had been claiming lives since 1979. The program features the voices of people living with AIDS, giving viewers a rare glimpse into the human cost of the disease at a time when treatments were limited and misinformation was widespread. Some believed AIDS could be spread by casual contact — a reflection of the fear and stigma of the era. More show notes:...

One astonishing element of the second Trump administration is the radical Left’s hapless pattern of choosing to fight on what amounts to political quicksand. In the latest installment of this phenomenon, The New York Times complains that “the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) … has apportioned only $2.9 billion of $6 billion appropriated by Congress for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief [PEPFAR].” That’s right. The Trump administration is saving billions in taxpayer dollars, and the Times wants you to be mad about it. I commend the article for its comedic value. “If Congress does not intervene, the...

Martin Shkreli, who drew national scorn for hiking the cost of a life-saving drug 4,000 percent overnight, has been arrested, according to multiple reports early Thursday.The 32-year-old founder and CEO of Turing Pharmaceutical made headlines in September for raising the price of Daraprim, often used to treat HIV and AIDS patients, from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill after buying the rights to the drug.His arrest is reportedly not related to that price increase.Shkreli is accused of illegally taking stock from a biotechnology firm he launched in 2011 called Retrophin Inc., Bloomberg reported, and using it to pay off...

Louisiana is one of 30 states with criminal penalties related to exposing or transmitting HIV. Most of the laws were passed in the 1980s during the emergence of the AIDS epidemic. Since then, several states have amended their laws to make them less punitive or repealed them outright, including Maryland and North Dakota this year. But Louisiana’s law remains among the harshest. The state is one of five that may require people such as Smith to register as a sex offender if convicted, a label that can follow them for over a decade. And state lawmakers considered a bill to...

There will always be three who give us heartburn. Shockingly, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who has become the new John McCain of the Senate regarding being a thorn in the side, opted not to break ranks on the recissions package, which codifies some $9 billion in cuts. The gutting of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio is included in this package, which barely advanced on a key vote to move the bill forward. Vice President JD Vance had to go up to the hill to break the 50-50 tie. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME), and...

Saturday, November 2, 2002 ©2002 Associated Press URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/11/02/international1651EST0195.DTL (11-02) 13:51 PST JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- A California doctor who committed suicide after being accused in a murder plot gave deadly germs to apartheid South Africa's secret chemical and biological weapons program, CBS' "60 Minutes" reported Sunday. Larry C. Ford met with scientists from South Africa's Project Coast in the 1980s to discuss chemical and biological warfare, Wouter Basson, who headed the project, told the program. He also passed a bag filled with cholera, typhoid, botulism, anthrax and bubonic plague to a South African military doctor during a meeting...

This week, former Presidents Obama and Bush took turns condemning President Trump for eliminating the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as a separate government agency. "Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it's a tragedy," Obama said. "Now instead of doing what they deem is best, USAID workers will be closely scrutinized by the Secretary of State and forced to do what he requires them to do." Bush tried to console reassigned USAID staffers by telling them "you've showed the great strength of America through your work — and that is your good heart. Is it in our national...

On a morning in early April, Geoffrey Chanda's phone was going off almost constantly. Truck drivers were calling him. "They are crying: 'We've got no [HIV] medicine. Where do you get [it] from?' " says Chanda, 54. For 15 years, Chanda has been meeting truckers in dusty parking lots at the border of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to give them their HIV medications. Now, he says, he doesn't know what to tell them. He's lost his job as a community health worker. The U.S.-funded program he worked for — which supported the mobile clinic where he collected...

An Evangelical mission doctor has warned that millions of lives are at stake surrounding the potential dismantling of the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), as country music artists led by Amy Grant have called for the program's reauthorization. PEPFAR, launched in 2003 under President George W. Bush, is the largest global health initiative focused on a single disease, HIV/AIDS. PEPFAR has sent over $100 billion to more than 50 countries in the last two decades, providing antiretroviral therapy (ARVs) life-saving treatment and infrastructure support to regions most affected by the epidemic, particularly in Africa. However, recent aid...

Uganda (or its NGO racket at least) is hopping mad that, as a result of the temporary freeze on funding placed by the Trump administration on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), it is no longer able to secure condoms and lubricants."People will die," said one.Say what?! The freeze has been in effect for just a few days.Moreover, I didn’t know the U.S. was, for some reason, solely responsible for providing Ugandans with condoms and lubricants.Of course, I was also blissfully unaware that Uncle Sam was funding abortions and “transgender care” around the planet, or that we were...

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Four days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing almost all U.S. foreign aid, an email landed in Claris Madhuku’s inbox in rural Zimbabwe. Stop all activities immediately, it said. The message confirmed Madhuku’s fears that Trump’s return to office might affect his organization’s efforts to save African girls from child marriages.

Awareness days help educate the general public and specific communities about HIV and AIDS.