Mozambique on Saturday launched a Brazilian funded pharmaceutical plant that will make anti-retroviral drugs to battle the HIV/AIDS scourge in the southern African country.

The factory -- built with $23 million in aid from Brazil and $4.5 million from that country's mining giant Vale -- will initially package drugs from Brazil but start producing the pills by the end of the year.

An international group of scientists on Sunday called for all adults who test positive for HIV to be treated with antiretroviral drugs right away rather than waiting for their immune systems to weaken.

The recommendations by the International Antiviral Society are the first by a global group to make such a call, and were released at the 19th International AIDS Conference in Washington, the world's largest meeting on HIV/AIDS.

The European Medicines Agency is recommending the first-ever approval of a gene therapy treatment in the EU, in a significant move for a type of treatment that has so far failed to deliver on its promise to cure diseases.

In a statement on Friday, the EMA said Glybera, made by Dutch company uniQure, should be approved across Europe for the treatment of an extremely rare disorder that leaves people unable to digest fat. The treatment consists of a gene that makes a protein to break down fat.

A traveling U.S. hospital technician accused of infecting 30 people with hepatitis C with tainted needles told investigators he "lied to a lot of people" but denied taking or selling drugs.

David Kwiatkowski was arrested Thursday at a Massachusetts hospital where he was receiving treatment. Once he is well enough to be released, he will be transferred to New Hampshire to face federal drug charges, said U.S. Attorney John Kacavas.

A German court ruling that branded circumcision as grievous bodily harm has created waves in Switzerland where a second hospital announced on Friday a possible halt to the procedure.

The announcement, by St Gall hospital in the country's northeast, follows a decision Thursday by the Zurich children's hospital to temporarily suspend the operation, media reported.

Somalia has made strides toward food security one year since its famine but the situation remains critical, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said Friday.

"Today Somalia is on the path to recovery but the situation remains critical and continued aid is vital in order to preserve food security," the Rome-based organization said.

Descendants of a British mutiny who have lived for generations in the Pacific have among the lowest rates of myopia in the world, according to an Australian study.

The study examined eye problems among the descendants of the Bounty sailors and their Polynesian wives who settled on Pitcairn Island after the mutiny in 1789 and who then moved to Norfolk Island off Australia's east coast.

Some 25,000 people, including celebrities, scientists and HIV sufferers are expected in the U.S. capital Sunday to call for a jumpstart in the global response to the three-decade AIDS epidemic.

Held every two years, the International AIDS Conference returns to the United States for the first time since 1990, after being kept away by laws that barred people with HIV from traveling to the country.

Faced with the highest HIV-AIDS rates in the United States, community health activists in the nation's capital have come up with a novel way for people to save their own lives while killing time.

The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office in Anacostia, southeast Washington, is the first in the country to offer HIV tests to drivers who are waiting their turn for a new license or vehicle tag.

In Turkey, the land of kebabs and sweet lokum, expanding waistlines are the target of a new anti-obesity campaign by the government to help one million Turks slim down over the next year.

The numbers are staggering: a little over one out of every three people is obese, according to health ministry figures. Even more when it comes to women.