WASHINGTON, 22-27 July 2012 - We are hosting a meeting, presenting many talks and posters and tweeting on the XIX International AIDS 2012 Conference.

The Southern African HIV Clinicians Society will be hosting its first Conference: Striving for Clinical Excellence, 25-28 November 2012 at the Cape Town ICC.

In this second issue of our newsletter we have included interesting news, blogs, reports, tweets, publications and training information produced by our network. We hope you enjoy it and find it informative. We welcome any feedback about content or format.

We participated, presented and tweeted about the 3rd South African TB conference, 12-15 June 2012, ICC, Durban. We had covered all the sessions that present TB drug resistance results. Please find below our tweets from our participation in our national TB conference.

In this exciting new section of bioafrica.net art we feature creative projects that celebrate, investigate and/or communicate biomedical science. Here, we share blogs, news articles, tweets, audio and audiovisual media to increase public awareness of innovative collaborations between art and science.

The newsletter idea is that anyone with 15 minutes to spare can learn about our work and its application in everyday life.

BioAfrica & SATuRN Supports this Open Letter!

Open letter to the Medicines Control Council and Ministry of Health on urgent need for compassionate use of bedaquiline for XDR-TB and pre-XDRTB in South Africa.

by Mark Mascolini - Analysis of South Africans with newly diagnosed, untreated HIV infection indicates low levels of transmitted antiretroviral-resistant HIV across the country through 2010 and no evidence of transmitted drug-resistant HIV in rural KwaZulu Natal

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA, 24-26 FEB 2012 - A small, highly specialized multidisciplinary team of doctors and statisticians from South Africa, Botswana, the USA and the UK will meet in Durban this weekend with the express purpose of pooling their resources, knowledge and expertise in an attempt to improve understanding the problem of HIV drug resistance in southern Africa.

One of our main aims for this development is for users and collaborators to become more involved in the website. It has added over 100 new webpages to bioafrica.net, including blogs, open access publications, media coverage, clinical cases tutorials and twitter. It has also increased the number of people collaborating in the development of our website!

JOHANNESBURG - The prevalance of HIV-positive people who have developed a resistance to life-prolonging antiretroviral treatment (ART) is a cause for concern for South Africa, scientists warn.

GABARONE - For the first time, Botswana is hosting the Africa HIV/TB Drug Resistance and Clinical Management workshop. The two-day workshop started yesterday at the University of Botswana (UB). Scientists, public health officials and physicians from across the world are attending the event to discuss the growing problem of HIV and TB drug resistance in Southern Africa.

JOHANNESBURG - A group of renowned HIV and TB scientists, public health officials and physicians will meet at the University of Botswana in Gaborone, this coming Monday and Tuesday (7th & 8th of November) to discuss the growing problem of HIV and TB drug resistance in southern Africa.

Indeed, drug resistance is emerging in children on ART in South Africa.

PRETORIA - We would like to draw attention to an HIV-1 drug resistance database, a scientific resource for regional and global HIV research that will enhance surveillance programmes in southern Africa.The database was established by investigators from the Southern African Treatment and Resistance Network (SATuRN), in collaboration with researchers from the United States & Europe. SAT- uRN will provide national de- partments of health with high quality, up-to-date information to guide delivery of antiretroviral ther- apy, helping to ensure the long -term success of antiretroviral treatment programmes.

Jiving with Science is a new public engagement initiative of the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies. Africa Centre is an international HIV research facility with a partnership HIV testing, treatment and care programme run jointly with the KZN Department of Health. The Mtubatuba-based centre is where the HIV epidemic is one of the most severe in the world, with nearly one in two adults aged 35-40 being infected.

Jiving with Science is a new public engagement initiative of the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies. The Africa Centre, a joint project of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and the Medical Research Council of Southern Africa, is an international HIV research facility with a partnership HIV testing, treatment and care programme run jointly with the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health.

Jiving with Science is a new public engagement initiative of the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies. The Africa Centre, a joint project of the UKZN and the Medical Research Council of Southern Africa, is an international HIV research facility with a partnership HIV testing, treatment and care programme run jointly with the KZN Department of Health. It is based in rural, northern KwaZulu-Natal where the HIV epidemic is one of the most severe in the world with nearly one in two adults aged 35-40 being infected.

RICHARDS BAY - A team from Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies explained the origins of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) for scholars of the Aiglon Society at Grantleigh College last Tuesday. The challenge to incorporate high-level bioinformatics and molecular evolutionary analysis into a high-school format of genetic variation and HIV life cycle was facilitated by senior researcher, Dr Tulio de Oliveira.

by Rachel Nugent, Emma Back, and Alexandra Beith - In an increasingly interconnected world, drug resistance does not stop at a patient's bedside, it threatens global health. It has slowed gains against the fatal ravages of childhood dysentery and pneumonia, drastically increased the costs of fighting tuberculosis and malaria, and imperiled efforts to effectively treat people living with HIV/AIDS. Tens of millions of lives are at stake; quality of life for scores of millions more is under threat.

CAPE TOWN - Believe that anti-retroviral treatment (ART) medication works and get yourself tested. People who are infected with the virus are able to live longer, healthier lives, provided they use their medication and seek treatment early enough. This was the key message Dr. Tulio de Oliveira, a bio-informatics researcher from SATuRN wanted to be convey to the general public.

This week sees yet another crisis point in the Libyan case of six foreign health professionals sentenced to death on charges of injecting hundreds of children with HIV. Declan Butler traces the efforts of scientists to help establish the truth.

CAPE TOWN - A world-class molecular biologist whose research on HIV and anti-retrovirals (ARVs) could dramatically improve the treatment of HIV/Aids in South Africa. Doctor Tulio de Oliveira, an expert in bioinformatics at Oxford University, will join the SA National Bioinformatics Institute at UWC.

New and compelling scientific evidence has emerged in support of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of deliberately spreading HIV to 426 Libyan children in 1998.

A new molecular study provides the strongest scientific evidence yet that six foreign medics held in Libya are innocent of charges that they deliberately infected more than 400 children with HIV. Accumulated mutations in the virus genomes reveal that the outbreak began well before the medics arrived in the country. The Libyan supreme court is set to decide on 19 December whether to execute the medics. It is unclear whether the new study will influence its verdict.

A Libyan court has sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death for knowingly infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.

Alex Duval Smith The Observer, Sunday 17 December 2006 13.12 GMT - The death in Libya six weeks ago of nine-year-old Marwa Annouiji from Aids was much more than just another developing world statistic. In her short, life, dominated by illness, the frail child was a pawn in a high-level game of international relations. Marwa, from al-Bayda on the Mediterranean coast, was the 52nd Libyan child to die as a result, Libya claims, of a deliberate operation by foreign medical workers to pump HIV-infected blood into 426 girls and boys at the al-Fatah Hospital in Benghazi.

LONDON, Dec. 6 (Reuters) - Scientists have produced new evidence that casts doubt on charges against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused by Libya of deliberately infecting 426 children with the virus that causes AIDS in 1998.

OXFORD - New molecular evidence from Oxford Zoology Department casts significant doubt on charges against six medical workers who are facing execution in Libya. The medical workers are charged with deliberately contaminating more than 400 children with HIV in 1998.However, new evidence published online in Nature from the Evolutionary Biology Group at Oxford, in collaboration with several European universities, shows that the subtype of HIV involved began infecting patients well before the medical workers arrived in Libya.

International experts in DNA forensics say that a paper published online by Nature this week provides a firm alibi for the six medical workers facing the death penalty in Libya. The workers have been charged with deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV in 1998.