For most folks, the 4th of July is all about putting on your favorite pair of jean shorts, getting drunk, setting off fireworks and getting laid. For me the 4th is all about the pranks. This time of ...

On Monday July 7, Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) is launching 'Fastest', a new one hour HIV testing service aimed at men who have sex with men in East Sussex. 'Fastest' will run on the first Monday of every month between 17.30 and 19.30 at Hastings Voluntary Action in Priory Street, Hastings.

In the five years after their diagnosis, people living with HIV in developed countries and receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy are no more likely to die than HIV-negative people, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Reuters reports (Kahn, Reuters, 7/1).

Several newspapers recently responded to the decision last week by some Senate Republicans to block consideration of legislation that would reauthorize the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Summaries appear below.

To compete in the Miss Virginia pageant, you have to win a local title first. The new Miss Virginia entered this year's competition as the reigning Miss Arlington. Miss Arlington is run by a very coo...

This week we build on our June 10 post about virtual worlds and focus on the well-known site, Second Life . To better understand how Second Life can help share HIV information and provide support to those who are HIV-positive,...

The DC Department of Health HIV/AIDS Administration long troubled Condom Distribution Program has hit yet another roadblock. They ran out of condoms.

A local HIV/AIDS organization that was told they could pick up thousands of condoms this week was told this morning that the HIV/AIDS Administration is cleaned out and will not have any condoms to distribute for at least a week.

The shortage raises questions about the overall distribution of condoms. On two separate occasions in 2006 and in 2007, the HIV/AIDS Administration pledged to distribute a million condoms. As a basis of comparison The New York City Health Department distributes anywhere from three to five million condoms each month.

But while the HIV/AIDS administration pledged on two separate occassions to distribute a million condoms it now seems pretty obvious based on the numbers that they never even had a million condoms to distribute.

Every year, Gwenn and I travel to Roanoke to witness the crowning of Commonwealth royalty at the Miss Virginia pageant. Miss Virginia is part of the Miss America system. It's a scholarship program. O...

The Associated Press reports that an increasing number of states are rejecting ill-advised Abstinence-Only-Until Marriage funding; and rightly so. There is no scientific evidence that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs—those that censor information about contraception—are effective in preventing HIV or teen pregnancy.

Numerous youth organizations in the District of Columbia have asked Adrian Fenty to also reject these funds, but to date there has been no change in the District of Columbia policy. (I personally asked Adrian Fenty to reject these funds at a Gertrude Stein Democrats Meeting on May 14th, 2007)

The Associated Press reports:

Some $50 million has been budgeted for this year, and financially strapped states might be expected to want their share. But many have doubts that the program does much, if any good, and they're frustrated by chronic uncertainty that it will even be kept in existence. They also have to chip in state money in order to receive the federal grants.

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat, made his decision to leave based on the congressionally mandated curriculum, which teaches "the social, psychological and health gains of abstaining from sexual activity." Instructors must teach that sexual activity outside of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.

Last week, AIDS.gov hosted a Webinar for bloggers in advance of National HIV Testing Day (on June 27). We reached out to bloggers for this event because so many people today depend on bloggers for their news, information, and opinions....

We've long known that HAA has problems with reporting. I've talked numerous times on this blog about the problems with the x-pres data entry system. Now this, from Kaiser Daily:

More than half of the AIDS-related deaths that occurred in Washington, D.C., from 2000 to 2005 were missed by the city's system for reporting such deaths, according to an analysis by the district's Department of Health and CDC that was published recently in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the Washington Post reports. The underreporting of AIDS-related deaths suggests that the epidemic "may be taking a far greater toll" on the district than health officials had originally thought, according to the Post.

For the analysis, city health officials worked with CDC to review all death certificates from 2000 to 2005 in an effort to identify deaths that appeared to be AIDS-related. They compared that number with the deaths that had been reported and discovered the discrepancy, the Post reports. According to the analysis, of the 2,460 deaths from AIDS-related illnesses that occurred between 2000 and 2005, 1,337 had not been reported because the city's system for tracking them was "inadequate," the Post reports. Officials launched the investigation because of health officials' increasing concern that they were undercounting the number of district residents living with HIV and those dying of AIDS-related causes, in part because they discovered boxes of unexamined paper records. Shannon Hader, senior deputy of the health department's HIV/AIDS Administration, said the analysis "tells us our surveillance system wasn't complete enough," adding, "We're clearly underreporting."

According to the Post, at least 12,500 district residents have developed AIDS -- one of the highest rates in the country -- and officials estimate that between 3% and 5% of people living in the city are HIV-positive. Hader said that in order to curb the spread of HIV in the district and ensure that HIV-positive people receive appropriate care, the department needs an "accurate count." In addition, the amount of federal HIV/AIDS funding the district receives is based on such estimates, Hader said, adding, "We want everything they owe us."

In response to the findings, Hader said the district has initiated several efforts to improve its reporting system, including a mass mailing in January to about 4,000 physicians and laboratories to try to increase the number of reported diagnoses. Officials also have begun routinely reviewing death records and have launched a campaign to try to identify more people for treatment.

"What we need to do is get more people who don't know they have HIV diagnosed and into care and treatment," Hader said, adding, "Every time you go into a health care provider, they should be offering to test you for HIV. We want to drive down the number of people living with HIV and [who] don't know about it" (Stein, Washington Post, 6/14).

The analysis is available online.

Dr. Kevin Fenton, Director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention , with a PPSA participant To help get the word out about National HIV Testing Day (June 27), the CDC and the University of...