The advent of effective medications for treating HIV dramatically improved the outlook for both adults and children infected with HIV who had access to treatment, but the optimal timing for starting treatment remains controversial, particularly in children.

Providing HIV combination antiretroviral drug therapy is key to saving the lives of African children infected with the disease.

Care provided by nurses and other clinicians in primary health care settings in sub-Saharan Africa can result in good outcomes for children with HIV infection. But the death rate is high during the first 90 days of therapy, pointing to a need for early intervention, according to a study in the October 24/31 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on poverty and human development.

Hundreds of thousands of babies around the world are born each year with HIV--more than half a million in 2006 alone. Caring for these children is complicated by the fact that their immune systems are not fully developed in the first year of life, which makes them especially susceptible to rapid HIV disease progression and death.

Bulgaria may write off the $54 million debt Libya owes it, Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev said Wednesday. He said the move must not be seen as the Bulgarian government's response to Libya's decision to release five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, now a Bulgarian national.

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor arrived in Sofia today following their release by Tripoli. The medics, convicted by Libya of deliberately infecting children with HIV, were pardoned by Bulgaria’s President Georgi Parvanov upon arrival.

Libya's decision to release five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, now a Bulgarian national, will help improve relations between the European Union and Libya, an EU commissioner said Tuesday.

The future of Kosovo tops the list of issues being discussed today in Brussels at a meeting of European Union foreign ministers. Arriving at the talks, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt urged EU unity over the issue, which he said is key to the bloc's credibility.

Bulgaria sent an official request to Libya today to extradite six foreign medical workers jailed for infecting hundreds of children with HIV.

The European Union has welcomed Libya's decision to lift death sentences against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor convicted of infecting children with HIV, following a large compensation payout to the victims' families from an international fund.

HIV-infected children may require repeat measles vaccination for protection, according to new research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other institutions. The researchers found that only half of the HIV-infected children who survived without antiretroviral therapy maintained protective antibody levels 27 months after receiving measles vaccine.