For the first time, Britain has allowed an oral antibiotic used to treat chlamydia to be sold without prescription, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said on Wednesday.

People over 16 will be able to buy the azithromycin pill Clamelle, manufactured by Icelandic drugmaker Actavis, after testing positive for the infection. The drug will also be made available over-the-counter (OTC) for their sexual partners. The new regulation will come into effect later this year

- A new report released by the Center for Disease Control says that the rate of annual new H.I.V. infections in the United States are 40 percent higher than previously thought.

The study concludes that the infection rate is 56,300 per year as opposed to the 40,000 a year that was thought to have been the average rate for the last several years. The new findings, experts say, are not necessarily due to more infections, but are a result of improved tests and a more accurate and new statistical methods

Virginia Department of Health officials are continuing to investigate an E. coli outbreak at a popular Boy Scouts camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains that has affected 17 people so far.

The officials began receiving reports of sick children Sunday, when boys from about 70 troops and some adults returned home after a week at the Goshen Scout Reservation near Lexington, VA. Most of the scouts are from northern Virginia, and one of the confirmed cases involves a Maryland adult

Women ages 19 through 64 should be routinely tested for HIV. That's the new recommendation released Thursday by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

In a formal committee opinion published in the August issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the college said obstetrician-gynecologists play an important role in promoting HIV screening for their patients under the recommendations by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

President George Bush on Wednesday approved $48 billion for fighting AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis around the world for next five years.

The amount authorized for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the successful U.S. global AIDS program, is $18 billion more than what Bush had requested. The measure will triple funding for these three diseases