The Miami Veterans' Hospital on Tuesday received 2,662 telephone calls from patients who were worried they may have been infected with the hepatitis virus and HIV from unclean equipment after undergoing colonoscopy there.

A total 351 veterans also visited Veterans Affairs (VA) clinics in Miami and Fort Lauderdale for consultation a day after the agency informed them via letter on Monday that colonoscopy equipment used on patients since 2004 were only rinsed and not disinfected by hospital staff as required. .

As the love lives of the elderly are extended due to drugs like Viagra, more old people worldwide are contracting HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, according to a report from the World Health Organization.

The report said the risk factors of people in the over-50 age group have been unexplored until recently, but preliminary data suggests HIV prevalence and incidence in this demographic is higher than expected.

A German man with HIV and leukemia is free of HIV symptoms and there is no sign of the virus in his blood stream after he received a stem cell transplant from a person carrying a gene mutation resistant to HIV, the disease that causes AIDS.

The man received the transplant two years ago and his doctors report in the New England Journal of Medicine that he has been HIV-free despite taking no antiretroviral drugs since the procedure.

A website has been helping people with sexually-transmitted diseases conveniently and anonymously notify by e-mail sexual partners whom they may have inadvertently infected.

InSpot has been used by some 30,000 people since it was launched in San Francisco in 2004 making it an innovative and effective communication channel among sex partners, according to a report published in the October issue of PLoS Medicine.

In an effort to highlight the ease in which drugs are available on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside streets, radio station DJs played a prank, sending someone out to buy find and buy heroin, all while wearing a beaver costume--and it didn't take the DJ long to find it.

On June 4, CFOX-FM sent a DJ that goes by the on-air name, Captain Scotty, to a street that is notorious for drug deals. Dressed as a beaver and carrying a sign that said he was looking to buy heroin, the DJ was reportedly able to purchase the drugs in a matter of minutes.