if not all, of these people had been co-infected with HIV

In September, the WHO issued an emergency warning to health care professionals to be on the lookout for a new strain of tuberculosis, against which most existing drugs were ineffective. The WHO had been aware of XDR-TB (extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis) for several years, and it had been recorded in Asia, Eastern Europe and the United States. The alarm was raised when doctors reported 53 new patients in South Africa, 52 of whom died within 25 days. It was thought that most, if not all, of these people had been co-infected with HIV. Experts were concerned that they might be seeing the beginning of a devastating new epidemic.

The Lancet's RED edition, August 2006

“There is no point in investing hugely in [AIDS treatment] programmes if patients are going to die a few weeks later from extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis… This is raising the spectre of something that we have been worried about for a decade – the possibility of virtually untreatable TB.”Dr Paul Nunn of the WHO¹¹⁶

In the USA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new guidelines recommending routine HIV testing for all adults and adolescents attending healthcare services. Routine testing had already proved highly successful in identifying HIV among pregnant women; the CDC hoped that more general use of this approach would help to cut the rate of new infections, and would result in more people receiving treatment before becoming very ill.¹¹⁷

Product RED was launched in the USA in October, by which time Apple and Motorola were also supporting the brand.¹¹⁸

Kevin De Cock, director of the World Health Organisation's HIV/AIDS department, expressed growing concern about HIV in Papua New Guinea. Adult HIV prevalence in this Pacific nation was estimated to be 1.8% - a level not usually seen outside Africa. The country's health minister said that some isolated pockets could have rates as high as 30%.

“Papua New Guinea probably is somewhat in a class of its own in this region.”Dr. Kevin De Cock¹¹⁹

In December, South Africa’s deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge decided to speak out against her own government, admitting there had been “denial at the very highest level” over the country’s AIDS crisis. She also acknowledged that leaders had created confusion about treatment by appearing to promote nutrition as a viable alternative. Activists greeted these statements as a “defining moment” in the country’s response to HIV and AIDS.^{120 121}

The most important scientific announcement of the year was made in December, when the US National Institutes of Health revealed the results of two African trials of male circumcision as an HIV prevention method. The studies were halted early for ethical reasons because they had already provided clear evidence that the intervention reduced HIV transmission by around 50%. The WHO and other organisations suggested they would soon begin promoting male circumcision in areas with severe HIV epidemics. However, they also stressed that there were many difficulties associated with this intervention, including acceptability, demands on resources, and infections resulting from unsafe operations. Furthermore, it was clear that the benefit would be lost if circumcised men became over-confident, and began to engage in more risky sexual behaviour.¹²²

At their second trial within two years, five Bulgarian medics and a Palestinian doctor were again found guilty of deliberately infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV, and were again sentenced to death. This verdict was condemned by the USA, the European Union and the UN human rights office. Leading experts in HIV and genetic testing had declared that the healthcare workers were almost certainly innocent, and that poor hygiene had led to the children becoming infected.