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Russia has 'no anti-AIDS strategy'

There is no government strategy to fight the spread of AIDS in Russia, where the number of deaths caused by the disease continues to grow, a senior healthcare official said on Thursday. "We have no national strategy to fight against AIDS," the director of the Russian Federal Agency against AIDS, Vadim Pokrovsky, told a news conference. The rate of new HIV infections grew 12 percent in 2012 -- 69,849 new cases against 62,384 new cases in 2011, according to the government figures.

One in 10 South Africans HIV positive

One in ten South Africans is HIV positive but AIDS-related deaths are falling as ramped-up treatment begins to have an impact, the country's official statistics agency said Tuesday. After years of dragging its heels on the HIV/AIDS crisis, since 2004 South Africa has developed the world's largest HIV treatment programme. New data indicate that drive is working. The disease will be responsible for 32 percent of all deaths this year. While still high, that is a dramatic fall from 48 percent in 2005.

Second case of deadly SARS-like virus in France

French health authorities said early Sunday that a second person had contracted a deadly new SARS-like virus, after sharing a hospital ward with the first victim identified in the country. The virus, known as nCoV-EMC, is a cousin of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which triggered a scare 10 years ago when it erupted in east Asia, leaping to humans from animal hosts and killing some 800 people.

France fears more cases of deadly SARS-like virus

French health authorities said on Thursday they feared the country's first case of a new SARS-like virus that has killed 18 people, mostly in Saudi Arabia, may have infected two other people. The 65-year-old man who returned to France from a holiday in Dubai was diagnosed with the deadly novel coronavirus, and is in intensive care in a hospital in the northern city of Douai, the health ministry said on Wednesday. "This is the first and only confirmed case in France to date," it added.

WHO says Cambodia can end HIV infections by 2020

Cambodia is on track to become one of the few countries in the world to successfully reverse its HIV epidemic and may eliminate new infections by 2020, the World Health Organization said Friday. The Southeast Asian nation has reduced its HIV prevalence rate from a 1998 peak of 1.7 percent among people aged 15-49 to 0.7 percent in 2012 across the whole population, the WHO said in a joint statement with the Cambodian health ministry.

Third suspected case of SARS-like virus in France

French health authorities said Friday they suspected a third person of being infected after coming into contact with a man confirmed to be suffering from a new SARS-like virus that has killed 18 people, mostly in Saudi Arabia. "We have a third suspected case this morning, a nurse from Douai" in northern France, the deputy director of the regional ARS health agency, Sandrine Segovia Kueny, told France Bleu Nord radio. A 65-year-old man is in intensive care in a hospital in Douai after being diagnosed with the novel coronavirus following a holiday in Dubai.

France reports first case of deadly SARS-like virus

France's health ministry on Wednesday reported the country's first case of a new SARS-like virus that has so far killed 18 people, mostly in Saudi Arabia. A 65-year-old man who came back to France from a holiday in Dubai was diagnosed with the deadly novel coronavirus, and is in intensive care in a hospital in the northern city of Douai, the ministry said. "This is the first and only confirmed case in France to date," it added.

Countermeasures against H7N9 enforced

The government on Monday enforced countermeasures against the H7N9 strain of bird flu, under which patients can be compelled to be hospitalized or to stop working for up to two years. The action is being taken in the face of the rapid spread of the virus in China and at a time when many tourists return home from overseas at the end of Japan's Golden Week holidays from late April to early May, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

Saudi victims of SARS-like virus didn't travel

Five Saudis who died after contracting a new SARS-like virus last week had not travelled abroad, a health ministry doctor said on Saturday. "After questioning relatives, it turned out that none of these people had been abroad before being infected," Dr Ziad Mimish, who heads the ministry's disease prevention unit, told AFP. The outbreak occurred in the oil-rich Red Sea region of Al-Ahsaa, which is near Bahrain and Qatar.

Online pictures of dead birds spur China flu openness

Photos of 10 dead sparrows on a Chinese pavement which went viral on social media and drew a swift official response show how hard covering up a bird flu outbreak would be in the Internet age. China has won international praise for its transparency on the H7N9 strain, which has killed 14 people so far, in sharp contrast to criticism for trying to conceal the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic.
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