Matthew McConaughey Reduced to Skin & Bones

  Looking even more emaciated and gaunt than before, a frail Matthew McConaughey was barely recognizable as he — with the help of his mother Kay — left a church in Austin this weekend. The normally buff and shirtless 42-year-old is wasting away to play Ron Woodruff in the movie “The Dallas Buyer’s Club,” the true story […]

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What You Need to Know About Staph

You’ve heard or read the headlines: that methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is deadlier than AIDS; that the killer bug is alarmingly more widespread than anyone thought; that it’s in your kids’ locker rooms and at your gym. Stories abound of young high-school athletes becoming infected with MRSA and dying within weeks, and you’re starting to worry about whether that nick or scrape you just got could be your last

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In Fight Against AIDS, Kenya Confronts Gay Taboo

Confronted by growing evidence that sex between men is a significant driver of new HIV infections, the Kenyan government has shed a long-time refusal to acknowledge the existence of homosexuality and will launch a survey of gay attitudes and behaviors in its three biggest cities next year. The project is considered a landmark because the government and the vast majority of Kenyan people have long refused to address homosexuality in the fight against AIDS

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With HIV/AIDS Deaths on Rise, China Struggles to Improve Outreach

It’s hard to fight an epidemic when no one wants to talk about the cause. In China, a country whose last decade has been defined by economic growth and social opening, silence still enshrouds many aspects of the nations’ sex life, and not, health experts say, without consequences

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AIDS patients struggle in isolated Cambodian town

Van Thy says the government evicted her from her home in the Cambodian capital and trucked her and others out to a town an hour away where she now lives in a hot green metal shed with no running water and dim prospects. Before the move, she had a job as a dishwasher, but now the 36-year-old woman is unemployed, penniless and her health has taken a turn for the worse

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Malawi halts nursing brain drain

Like most African countries, Malawi has suffered from a severe shortage of nurses and key health workers. In the past, workers in the tiny southeast African nation of just 13 million inhabitants have been lured abroad by the promise of higher wages and better working conditions. But, the country best-known as the homeland of Madonna’s adopted children now has another claim to fame: It has succeeding in halting — at least for now — its crippling brain drain of nurses.

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India: Testing shows 2,000 percent rise in child HIV cases

Expanded testing across India in the past three years shows a 2,000 percent jump in the number of HIV cases among children, the country’s health minister announced Wednesday. In November 2006, health authorities counted 2,253 children in India with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, Ghulam Nabi Azad told parliament. The number went up to a “cumulative total” of 52,973 in May this year, he said

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