North America HIV News

More than 14 thousand people living in Dallas County are living with HIV and many of them don’t even know it.

The county health department is tackling the public health threat head on, with an aggressive ad campaign that is raising some eyebrows.

A new set of billboards, purposely placed along heavily trafficked sections of Oak Cliff and south Dallas, show an African-American black gay couple side by side with the message “Update Your Status.”

In advance of National HIV Testing Day, AIDS.gov recently had a conversation with Dr. Ronald Valdiserri, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health, Infectious Diseases, and Director, HHS Office of HIV/AIDS and Infectious Disease Policy. We talked about the importance of HIV testing, particularly as it relates to meeting the goals of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, and as an opportunity to screen for viral hepatitis as well. CDC estimates that of the 1.1 million people living with HIV in the United States, nearly 1 in 5 of them don’t know they are infected.

A West Village man is suing his former employer for wrongful termination claiming that he was fired because he is HIV positive.

Jeffrey Villacampa, the former finance manager at Bayside Volkswagen, said he went to talk to his boss about using gay slurs in the office.

During the conversation, his boss told Villacampa that he has no contact with his brother because he is HIV positive.

Villacampa said he then told his boss that he is HIV positive and that there’s nothing to worry about.

Padding around his Malibu home in bare feet, a deeply tanned Greg Louganis looks relaxed, rested and remarkably healthy. Gazing out over his backyard pool, with its Olympic-ring logo and a platform perfect for practicing reverse somersaults, the four-time gold medalist gestures to his four dogs and says something surprising: "They use it more than I do." Diving, he says, feels "like a totally separate life."

More than 20 years after learning he was HIV positive—a diagnosis widely seen as a death sentence at the time—Louganis, who turned 50 on Jan. 29, is thriving.

The Senate passed a bill Monday night that would establish safeguards and standards of quality for research of organ transplants for people infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) introduced the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act, S. 330, which would allow research on possible health risks for people with HIV receiving organs transplants from donors who also have HIV.

This month somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa the one millionth baby will be born without HIV to a mother who suffers from the disease, thanks in large part to a decade-old US aid program.

It is yet another remarkable step in the long fight against HIV and AIDS, as the United States and its global partners work towards what they call an AIDS-free generation, which just a decade ago would have been unimaginable.

Mother-to-baby transmission has long been a source of concern among governments and organizations working to control the spread of HIV.

Early reports identified him only as “the Berlin patient.” But Timothy Ray Brown, the first person cured of HIV, was born and raised in Seattle.

Now, Brown is returning to his hometown to help boost efforts at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and elsewhere to extend the cure to others.

“I don’t want to be the only person in the world cured of HIV,” Brown said in an interview. “I want there to be a lot more like me.”

The Adult Production Health & Safety Services (APHSS.org), the industry-backed group whose mission is “…to ensure a safe and healthy work environment of performers and adult film professionals,” today revealed that another adult film performer tested positive for HIV. However, according to a news post on the website XBIZ.com, “The performer, according to APHSS.org, worked exclusively on condom-only productions,” and therefore it was unlikely than any further transmission of the virus to other performers occurred.