For the first time, researchers say, a vaccine against malaria has shown that it can save children from infection or death.

World health officials announced the development of a new vaccine against rotavirus, a disease that causes diarrhea and is responsible for the deaths of more than 600,000 children annually.

In the war against malaria, public health officials have drained swamps, sprayed mosquito-killing insecticides, and doled out medication in an attempt to reduce the disease's toll.
Now, researchers are looking for ways to enlist the buzzing mosquito itself in the fight. They are experimenting to see if the creature's genes can be changed or controlled in ways that destroy the malaria parasites it carries before it can pass them on to people.

Researchers say an important step along this path has been taken by a team of scientists in Europe. They've discovered three mosquito genes that appear to govern how the insect's immune system responds - or fails to respond - to the parasite's presence.

The sturdy little public clinic in this poor, sickly village was locked up one recent afternoon, but that is nothing remarkable. Rampant absenteeism among government doctors and nurses is an open secret across India and much of the developing world, and they virtually never get in trouble for not showing up.

"Sometimes the nurse is here, sometime she's not," said Nagji Lal Pandore, a skinny old man in a saffron turban. "Sometimes she has medicines, sometimes she doesn't. Why take a chance?"

Three years after the United Nations declared a worldwide offensive against AIDS and 14 months after President Bush promised $15 billion for AIDS treatment in poor countries, shortages of money and battles over patents have kept antiretroviral drugs from reaching more than 90 percent of the poor people who need them.

Progress in distributing the drugs, which have sharply cut the death rate in the United States and other Western countries, has been excruciatingly slow despite steep drops in their prices.

Caribbean governments should make HIV treatments more available to those with the infection, health officials said Sunday at the end of a regional AIDS conference.

Thousands of people are living in the region without access to antiretroviral treatment, said Carissa Etienne of the Pan American Health Organization.

Aiming to strengthen the global response to AIDS, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) today announced new guidelines on voluntary HIV testing and counselling.

Both partners in the endeavour stressed the value of action on the issue, citing studies from Côte d'Ivoire and India showing that when voluntary testing is integrated into sexual and reproductive health services, the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS is cut, awareness is raised and more people are likely to seek appropriate care.