AFP - Pairing family planning services with HIV/AIDS treatment can help curb Africa's population growth rate which records a yearly increase of 2.5 percent, health experts said Monday.

AFP - Iran has recorded at least 3,409 deaths from AIDS, while another 2,097 people have been diagnosed as having the disease, according to health ministry figures reported by the ILNA news agency on Thursday.

AFP - Scottish singer Annie Lennox was presented with the 2009 "Woman of Peace" award on Wednesday at a summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Berlin for her work raising awareness of HIV/AIDS.

AFP - Human Rights Watch on Friday criticised Uganda's HIV/AIDS bill, some of whose clauses call for mandatory testing of pregnant women, sex offenders and victims, and disclosure of HIV status.

AP - French scientists mixed gene therapy and bone marrow transplants in two boys to seemingly halt a brain disease that can kill by adolescence. The surprise ingredient: They disabled the HIV virus so it couldn't cause AIDS, and then used it to carry in the healthy new gene.

AFP - Waning international donor support for the fight against AIDS is a threat to a decade of progress in HIV treatment, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned on Thursday.

AP - A medical aid group says funding for AIDS is threatened, and that could set back "dramatic" progress in decreasing HIV illness and death.

AFP - UN chief Ban Ki-moon hailed US President Barack Obama's removal of a decades-old travel ban on HIV-positive visitors, and urged other countries to do the same.

AP - President Barack Obama said Friday the U.S. will overturn a 22-year-old travel and immigration ban against people with HIV early next year.

AFP - The United States is poised to lift a decades-old ban on HIV-positive visitors from abroad that was based on fear and ignorance of the facts, President Barack Obama said Friday.

AFP - Zodwa Mahlabane meticulously takes out her tablets from small yellow bags and puts them on a white tray.

AFP - Kenya will conduct a study among homosexuals and use the findings to help control the spread of HIV/AIDS in the east African country, where homosexuality is illegal.

AFP - Russia came under fire from international AIDS campaigners on Wednesday for refusing to provide drug users with drug substitution therapy to stem a spreading HIV epidemic.