Dr. Rick Warren of the Global PEACE Coalition will honor President George W. Bush for his unprecedented level of contribution to the fight against HIV/AIDS as U.S. president during the Saddleback Civil Forum on Global Health Summit on Monday, World AIDS Day.

“No U.S. president or political leader has done more for global health than this Administration, which has raised the bar on America’s role and responsibility for providing critical humanitarian assistance around the world,” said Warren, founding pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California.

“Over the past eight years, the President and Mrs. Bush have traveled the globe as they and their staffs have worked tirelessly to bring awareness and solutions to pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, and we are privileged to honor their efforts on World AIDS Day,” he said. more >>

If churches are to play an effective role in the fight against HIV and AIDS, they need to first tackle their own taboos, says Christian HIV and AIDS charity ACET.

Speaking ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, ACET Chief Executive Peter Fabian challenged churches to confront their own inhibitions surrounding the pandemic.

“In many countries church members are the leading activists in the care of those infected by HIV and the education and training programs essential to prevent the further spread of the disease,” he said. more >>

All over the world news agencies are reporting the startling revelation that at Normandy High School in suburban St. Louis-the neighborhood I live in-students are now being tested for HIV after an infected person told health officials as many as fifty teenagers might have been exposed to the virus that causes AIDS. While public officials are calling for more education, the root of the problem is profoundly moral and cultural.

School administrators have not released any details describing how the virus may have spread in the school. But we are all aware of the usual suspects: drug use and sexual activity. This is yet another item on a list of problems plaguing a district already known to be among the worst academically performing districts in Missouri and in jeopardy of losing its accreditation.

If the virus entered the high school because of sexual activity, this story will be one fundamentally about adolescent sexual morality. According to the most recent date from the Centers for Disease Control, nearly 48 percent of high school students report having sex. Even worse, some 15 percent of high school students report having four or more partners. more >>

PATTAYA, Thailand – Growing up in a poor, polygamous family in Kenya, Patricia Sawo hated poverty and was desperate to escape it.

As an adult, she managed to break free from poverty only to be flung back into it when she was infected with HIV, which initially made the now evangelical pastor a social outcast.

“One of the things I started to hate at age nine was poverty,” shared Sawo, who is the HIV Ambassador for U.K.-based Tearfund as well as pastor of Deliverance Church in Kitali, Kenya, at the World Evangelical Alliance General Assembly on Tuesday. more >>

PATTAYA, Thailand - When HIV sufferers turn to the evangelical church, they are looking to reconcile with God but instead find “closed doors and angry faces,” says one Christian HIV sufferer.

Gracia Violeta Ross Quiroga, a UNAIDS representative from Bolivia, was speaking at a fringe meeting of the World Evangelical Alliance General Assembly in Thailand on Saturday.

She told evangelicals there that demonstrating God’s grace and mercy were as much part of an effective evangelical response to HIV and AIDS as practical action. more >>

WASHINGTON (AP)- Experts at an early August international AIDS conference in Mexico City were full of praise for the United States for having reversed a 15-year-old law banning HIV-positive people from entering the country.

But nearly two months after President Bush signed that act into law, his administration has yet to take the steps needed to put the new law into practice, and lawmakers and advocacy groups are wondering what is going on.

"We write to encourage you to act quickly to remove HIV from the list of communicable diseases of public health significance and end the HIV travel and immigration ban," Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Gordon Smith, R-Ore., main backers of the measure in the Senate, wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt last month. more >>