Former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda says that African leaders should approach the fight against HIV and Aids with the same vigour as they fought slavery, colonialism and apartheid. The 80-year-old patriarch of Zambia, who led his country for 27 years and lost his own son to the disease, said to win the battle against the epidemic, people should "Abstain from sex or use a condom every time they have sex. Go for counselling and testing and talk openly with your family and friends."
An Australian woman has won A$727,000 (£300,000) damages from two doctors after they failed to tell her that her husband was HIV positive. The court backed the woman's claim that the doctors should not have assumed that her partner would tell her about his positive status. Judge Jerrold Cripps ruled that the two doctors should have warned the woman's fiancé he would be breaking the law if he did not tell her he had HIV.
South Africa's top tourism trade group has launched a new 'Aids insurance' to provide life-saving drugs to travellers who might catch the virus while on holiday. The country's Tourism Services Association says the treatment can begin within the 72-hour window when the drugs may prevent infection from taking hold. The policy will also be available to local tourism staff for as little as 26 pence per month. Meanwhile burial society insurance is booming and now provides cover for more than three million South Africans at a cost of approximately £2 a month.
Delegates were in uproar at an international Aids conference in Malaysia last month after an American academic said Islamic teaching worsens the spread of the disease. Professor Amina Waddud, of the University of Virginia, faced calls of blasphemy and ejection from the meeting after saying, "Islam and Muslims exacerbate the spread of Aids." She said Muslim women were bound by their religion to comply with their husband's desire for sex and could be punished if they did not.
"HAART has the potential to achieve close to 100 per cent virologic success, but as things currently stand, we can tell only about 50 per cent of patients that it will work for them...We really have no idea what's going on."
Dr Richard Elion at the International Association of Physicians in Aids Care (IAPAC) Conference in Chicago.
"It is very simple - antiretroviral therapy is a question of life or death. If you want to have young people surviving, the only chance of that happening is antiretroviral treatment."
Dr Eric Goemaere, who treats people with HIV in the South African township of Khayelitsha, from BBC News on-line.
"Drugs that are under patent are a barrier to access because this leads to higher prices...Drug patents can and should be challenged."
Ellen 't Hoen of humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders.
"The greatest weapon of mass destruction is the Aids virus."
US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"We wish our brothers and sisters in the élite, like journalist Christine Quinta and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, would work with us to save lives and give hope, instead of spitting in our faces."
Xolan Mangcu in the South African newspaper Business Day after Quinta and Tshabalala accused the Treatment Action Campaign leaders of being publicity seekers.
"Aids has taken the fun out of casual sex on the continent of Africa."
Novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux in The Guardian.
