The [him] moderator regrets that he will be e-incommunicado for the next while so daily postings will be suspended. Watch for more postings in future.

Most commentaries about the WHO-driven changes in testing policy suggest that it is a fait accompli and HIV professionals should now practice harm reduction about routine testing. Testing will be discussed at a WHO biregional meeting in Cambodia late this month or early next.

There is just a whisper about brothels in Mong La in this Mizzima article. But lots of other interesting issues.

အင္ဒိုနီးရွားအစိုးရသည္ အိတ္ခ်္အိုင္ဗြီ/ေအအိုင္ဒီအက္စ္ တိုက္ဖ်က္ေရးအတြက္ လက္ရွိသံုးေငြထက္ လာမည့္ (၃) ႏွစ္တြင္(၇၅) ရာႏႈန္း တိုးျမႇင့္သြားမည္ဟု လူမႈဖူလံုေရး၀န္ႀကီးက ေျပာသည္။ AP / ၂၀ ဇူလိုင္ ၂၀၀၇

Myanmar sexually transmitted infection treatment guidelines have long ago dropped the useless ciprofloxacin. Except for a few MSF doctors and the National AIDS Programme AIDS teams, most organisations in Myanmar stopped using it two years ago. Cure U kits distributed by PSI use the highly effective oral third generation cephalosporin cefixime.

The answer to the quiz in the first paragraph of this article is, er, seven. To know the significance one would need to know why the Mizoram Samaritans were testing Burmese blood. Was this VCT? If so the results are epidemiologically useless.

This is disappointing. Which UNAIDS office provided support to the ADB in their decision?

Is Ko Tin Ko being imprisoned at Waibagi or treated as a patient?

… One of the MSF recommendations calls for routine testing for all TB patients. Not a routine offer of testing. Routine testing. The word 'consent' does not appear in the MSF document at all. He wonders whether MSF forgot consent or MSF thinks consent is no longer necessary for HIV testing of TB patients. …

The attached scanned page is from a journal called Weekly Eleven. It is in interview with Than Myint Aung who established a safe house for HIV Positive children called Happy Haven Humanitarian Project (HHHP). A brief profile and information from an HHHP pamphlet was graciously donated to [him] by a colleague. … The [him] moderator doesn't want rain on the parade but he and other child rights advocates think that isolating children orphaned by AIDS and children living with HIV and children affected by HIV does more harm than good. These children with HIV should be treated just like other children with chronic diseases. AIDS orphans should be treated like other orphans.

Check out the 3DF website. http://www.3dfund.org/ It is still a little dull and tetchy. Attached are the documents you can download from the site this week: look for the Board minutes!

The [him] moderator knows that he must give the new DG of the World Health Organization a chance to prove herself as she is new to the post. But why this sudden concern about the number of health workers in villages in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar? …… Vietnam trains too many doctors and almost all villages have one or two. Myanmar trains enough physicians for the country and there is not a massive exodus of doctors out of the country. Only two have left the Ministry of Health for other countries in ten years! …… Comments?