From Haiti, a surprise: good news about AIDS

By JONATHAN M. KATZ ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER In this May 11, 2009 photo, Dormeuz Valdes a patient with HIV/AIDS, lies in a bed while receiving treatment at a hospital in Petit Riviere, Haiti. Haitian infection rates dropped from 6.2 percent to 3.1 percent among expectant mothers in the last 15 years. Researchers recently switched to a new methodology that tests all adults, which puts Haiti's official rate at 2.2 percent, according to UNAIDS. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) BLANCHARD, Haiti -- When Micheline Leon was diagnosed with HIV, her parents told her they would fit her for a coffin. Fifteen years later, she walks around her two-room concrete house on Haiti's central plateau, watching her four children play under the plantain trees. She looks healthy, her belly amply filling a gray, secondhand T-shirt. Her three sons and one... [read full story]                    

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