CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu State AIDS Controls Society (TANSACS) will roll out a fleet of vans next week to reach HIV counselling and testing facilities to remote villages across the State.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is to scrap immigration laws that restrict people with HIV/AIDS traveling to the country, a health ministry official and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said on Thursday.

The World Health Organization soon will launch a campaign in South and Southeast Asia aimed at making nutrition programs a central part of HIV/AIDS treatment in the region, Randa Saadeh, a scientist in WHO's Nutrition for Health and Development Department, said recently, Inter Press Service reports. Saadeh was speaking at the end of a weeklong meeting in Bangkok aimed at increasing support for the campaign and ensuring that governments in the region have measures to implement program in place by 2009.

The World Bank plans to hire two independent consultants to investigate concerns about the reliability of some HIV testing kits in India, Graeme Wheeler, the bank's managing director, and Kees Kostermans, a medical expert who oversees the bank's South Asia public health operations, said last week, the Washington Post reports (Johnson, Washington Post, 10/13).

India's National AIDS Control Organization and UNAIDS on Friday launched a five-year campaign that aims to reduce the risk and impact of HIV/AIDS in the country's northeastern states, ANI/DailyIndia.com reports. Panabaka Lakshmi, minister of state in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said the government wants to increase its efforts in the Northeast because of the region's high HIV prevalence.

Eleven years ago, doctors told Kailash Bhagat that he was infected with the HIV virus. He was working as a cook in Bangkok.

When he returned to his native village of Sitamarhi in India's eastern Bihar state and told his family and friends about his condition, they immediately shunned and abandoned him.

Highlights

Issue 4 of the Wake Up Pune newsletter 'Postive Connections' is now available.
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Network of Maharashtra People with HIV (NMP+) lanches new website - nmpplus.net. NMP+ is an organisation formed by people with HIV to improve conditions for positive people in Maharashtra.

Wake Up Pune in the news! National coverage in Indian Express...
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Get a condom ringtone on your mobile phone! This has to be heard to be believed - spread awareness with this fantastic musical ringtone.
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Read Wake Up Pune volunteer Karen McReady's reports from the International AIDS Conference, Mexico.
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'HIV POSITIVE' T-shirt Campaign - new initiative from Wake Up Pune
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HIV Bootcamps - free interactive HIV training sessions for young Puneites
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Wake Up Pune given award by UNAIDS
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'HIV Knowledge & Awareness Quiz' conducted on World AIDS Day
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