A South African court on Friday banned unauthorised clinical trials of vitamin therapies for AIDS by a German physician, saying it could pose a health risk.

Physician Matthias Rath and American doctor David Rasnick, a former adviser to President Thabo Mbeki, were accused by the lobby group Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and the South African Medical Association (SAMA) of conducting illegal AIDS drug trials among poor communities

The ease of committing health care fraud has caused false medical claims to top $60 billion annually.

Con artists find it easy to commit fraud because Medicare's system automatically pays the bulk of the bills it received if the claim has a supplier number issued by the federal government. The situation is compounded by the focus of software and audit systems on overbilling and unusual medical procedures instead of fraudulent claims

The close of 2007 witnessed almost 3 million people in developing nations receiving anti-retroviral (ART) treatment, but nearly twice that number still require life-saving medicines, a United Nations study said.

Almost one-third of the estimated 9.7 million people in need of ART received it by the end of 2007, leaving nearly 7 million without access, The study report, entitled "Towards Universal Access: Scaling Up Priority HIV/AIDS Interventions in the Health Sector," added

A Maryland pharmaceutical firm is testing a lupus drug, LymphoStat-B, to treat multiple sclerosis. The medication stops a protein found in high levels in MS lesions, which contribute to the production of cells that go against the body and instead attack healthy tissue.

Human Genome Sciences has partnered with GlaxosmithKline in testing LymphoStat-B to find a cure for MS, one of four autoimmune ailments that the two firms want to find a remedy

Some AIDS expert have recently said that condoms and testing for HIV are not the solution to eliminating the disease in Africa and are just a waste of money, while others say that doing those things has helped but there is a need to do more.

An estimated 22.5 million people in Africa had HIV at the end of 2007. Health experts say about 1.7 million new people became sick with HIV last year while the disease killed 1.6 million people during the same period