The state recorded 127 HIV diagnoses last year, a 12 percent increase over the 113 in 2006, and exceeding the previous record of 117 when reporting started in 1998. “I think it’s a true increase,” said Randy Mayer, HIV/AIDS/hepatitis program manager for IDPH.

Factors behind the upward trend include apathy, more risky behavior, and use of the Internet to find sex partners, said Mayer. Some of those notified of their infection only knew their sex partner by their Web site profile, he said.

Men comprised 83 percent of new HIV diagnoses last year. Most new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in Iowa continue to be among non-Hispanic whites, who accounted for 70 percent of HIV diagnoses (89 cases) and 65 percent of AIDS diagnoses (43 cases) last year. However, African Americans were disproportionately affected: Blacks make up just 2.5 percent of the state’s population but accounted for 20 percent of diagnoses in 2007. Cases among men age 45 and older have more than doubled since 2003, which Mayer partly attributed to delayed testing.

In 2007, IDPH worked with local partners to test more than 8,000 Iowans for HIV. The department is also working with county agencies to promote HIV prevention among high-risk groups.

In 1998, Congress implemented a ban prohibiting the city from using local tax revenues to provide drug addicts with clean needles, an approach taken by jurisdictions across the country as a way to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne diseases. The ban was lifted last summer.

Over half of the money will go to PreventionWorks!, which operated the city’s only needle exchange during the ban, frequently with tenuous private donations. The group plans to expand its outreach to include more disease screening from its mobile van.

The other nonprofits awarded funding - Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive, Bread for the City, and Family Medical and Counseling Service - each bring “three very different” approaches to the District’s initiative, said Shannon Hader, director of the city’s HIV/AIDS Administration. Each will build on the work it does with IV drug users, she said.

The grants are expected to double next year and be continued through 2010.

Pakistan has around 500,000 chronic heroin and IV drug users (IDUs), says UNODC. In Lahore, 65 percent of addicts inject drugs, according to UNAIDS.

The World Health Organization says the HIV transmission rate among IDUs in Pakistan is 10 percent. However, a study conducted by Roshan Rasta, a national group that addresses HIV/AIDS and drug use, found HIV infections among a cohort of 100 IDUs in Punjab rose from two to 50 over the last two years. And in a UNAIDS survey of IDUs in Punjab, 64 percent said they did not use sterile syringes.

Once HIV takes hold among IDUs, many Pakistani physicians believe it will spread rapidly through the general population. “Once it comes, it will spread like wildfire,” said Aamir Mirza, a psychiatrist who treats heroin addicts at Gangaram Hospital in Lahore.

The government is struggling to control Pakistan’s rising drug problem. Public funding of affordable and effective rehabilitation programs is lacking. An additional challenge: Pakistan’s government has banned methadone as a treatment for recovering opiate addicts.

Long Island received $6.1 million in Ryan White money in 2006. But after Congress renewed the Ryan White Act in 2007, Nassau and Suffolk counties were reclassified from an “eligible metropolitan area” to a category that qualified for less money.

The counties maintain that an amendment to Ryan White passed by Congress in 1996 protected the future funding of all regions that met the definition of “eligible metropolitan areas” that year, including Long Island. While Long Island has not recorded enough new HIV/AIDS cases in the last five years to meet the definition of “eligible metropolitan area,” federal appeals court Judge John M. Walker Jr. ruled the grandfathered clause allows Nassau and Suffolk to retain their level of funding.

Robert Nardoza, a spokesperson for the US attorney’s office representing the US Department of Health and Human Services, declined to comment on the ruling. Jennifer Kim, a spokesperson for Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, said, “We’re very pleased with the outcome and we’ll know in the near future how much aid we’ll be getting.”

Joining the counties in the suit were several agencies that receive Ryan White funds through Nassau and Suffolk, including Long Island Minority AIDS Coalition; Federation Employment and Guidance Service, a nonprofit that addresses health and human services; and Thursday’s Child, an HIV/AIDS support and advocacy group.

From November 2001 to May 2003, a random sample of Gao women ages 18 to 45 was enrolled in the study. Participants were interviewed six and 12 months after completing the recruitment procedure. A commercial polymerase chain reaction and the InPouch TV Culture Kit were used to test vaginal and/or urine specimens for chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis.

In total, 2,180 women were followed up. Of these, 64 had an incident STI: 1.8 percent in the first six months, and 1.4 percent in the second six months. Incident STI was found to be associated with low socioeconomic status, marital status, and with concurrent bacterial vaginosis. The highest incidence was noted among women who were married and exposed to sexual violence (10.9), were concerned about their husbands’ affairs (10.5 percent), or were separated, divorced or widowed (11.0 percent).

Among the women, the researchers found those who were socially disadvantaged to be at increased risk of STI. Participants rarely reported having had sex outside marriage; rather, the women, especially those who were victims of sexual violence, were at risk of becoming infected within the marriage. “This highlights the vulnerabilities of socially disadvantaged married women in India, and the need for health care professionals to screen STI patients for violence, and provide the necessary support,” the researchers concluded. “The results also stress the importance of effectively diagnosing and treating married men with STI and promoting safer sex within marriage.”

Two clinics have opened in Haiphong, a northern port city dealing with high levels of heroin use and HIV infection. These will treat users with the substitute drug from now through December. Next month Ho Chi Minh City - Vietnam’s biggest city and the location with the highest HIV rates - will also open clinics.

UN experts say heroin, chiefly from nearby Myanmar and Laos, is the most popular illegal drug in Vietnam. Opium cultivation, long a fact of life in Vietnam, greatly expanded under French colonial rule, and heroin exports grew further during the Vietnam War. Anti-drug efforts launched after the war resulted in the near-eradication of the poppy crop but did little to alter the country’s status as a major shipping route for heroin.

“Heroin continues to be the preferred drug among younger drug abusers,” particularly in the cities, according to the UN Office for Drugs and Crime Control. Heroin injection is thought to be the cause of 60 percent of HIV cases in Vietnam, which are now believed to number almost 300,000. While intravenous drug users, prostitutes and men who have sex with men make up the majority of cases, experts worry that the virus is quickly spreading into Vietnam’s general population.