South Africa has more people living with HIV, an estimated 6.6 million, than any country in the world. About half are now receiving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, which has greatly stressed the country's health care system. Now, South Africa plans to encourage all infected people to learn their status and start treatment as part of the drive to end its epidemic. The cornerstone of the campaign is the fact that HIV-infected people who take ARVs and fully suppress their virus rarely transmit to others.

In the race to develop an Ebola vaccine, a small cancer therapy company, NewLink Genetics, has been in the shadows of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a big pharma company with lots of experience and far deeper resources. But at a high-level meeting held by the World Health Organization on 23 October, it became clear that NewLink, which is based in Ames, Iowa, by next spring may have more vaccine on hand than GSK, which is based in the United Kingdom. NewLink's projections come with a major caveat: It all depends on dose.

An elite group of 22 influenza scientists, public health officials, and journal editors from 11 countries recommended last week that the details of how a highly pathogenic bird flu virus was rendered capable of being transmitted easily among mammals be published in full. The recommendation, agreed to at a meeting at the World Health Organization in Geneva, flies in the face of advice from an influential U.S. committee that key details of the experiments be confined only to those who have a need to know.

HIV/AIDS researchers reacted to the news that a large clinical trial of an AIDS vaccine worked

When World Health Organization (WHO) chief Margaret Chan declared last week that for the first time in more than 40 years the world is facing an influenza pandemic, she simply stated what everybody already knew.

On 27 April, 6 days after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first reported an unusual swine flu outbreak in humans, international agencies were still struggling to determine how serious a threat the virus posed.

The World Health Organization has published a provocative model that explores the possibility of "eliminating" the HIV epidemic by annually testing everyone on a voluntary basis and treating all infected people, regardless of their clinical status.