With over 1,100 children being infected with HIV daily, United Nations organizations have appealed to countries to bolster efforts to prevent mother-to-child transmissions (PMTCT) of the virus.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN World Health Organization (WHO), along with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, jointly called on authorities to step up protection for mothers and children at the end of a three-day global meeting on HIV/AIDS in Washington on Wednesday

Continued democratic reforms, human rights and economic opportunities will take center stage when President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush visit Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia on an official tour of Africa. The president last visited the continent in 2003, and will return to review U.S.-assisted economic development projects and programs to control and prevention of malaria and HIV/AIDS.

The president will meet with the leaders of the five countries during the one-week tour next month "to discuss how the United States can continue to partner with African countries to support continued democratic reform, respect for human rights, free trade, open investment regimes and economic opportunity across the continent," the White House said Friday

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently said yes to Johnson and Johnson subsidiary Tibotec Pharmaceuticals' anti-retroviral drug etravirine, suggested as an extra therapy for patients who have failed to improve using other treatment regimens. Etravirine (Intelence) is related to a new class of anti-HIV drugs called non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTI).

Results of two double-blind, placebo-controlled, clinical trials found that a blend of darunavir (Prezista) and etravirine (Intelence) helped more patients than a single darunavir (Prezista) therapy

People infected with the HIV virus who have no symptoms before they progress to AIDS are likely to infect more people than those who are at the advanced stage of the disease.

HIV-infected people with a lower amount of the virus in their blood have the potential to infect more people than those with a high viral load, say Dutch and British scientists who analyzed data from untreated groups of people infected with HIV in Holland, Uganda and Zambia

Traumatic life events such as physical or sexual abuse can hasten progress of HIV and AIDS and related death, according to a study published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

It is the first known study during the period of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) to link psychological factors with faster mortality in the disease