Monday health linkage

Just days before the opening of the Shanghai World Expo, China has lifted a decades-old HIV & AIDS travel ban after realising that such restrictions have a very limited effect in preventing and controlling the spread of the disease.
North Korea is often discussed in geopolitical terms, but last week attention was focused on the country's public health system. During a three-day visit, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, noted that North Korea's elaborate health infrastructure has allowed for some notable achievements in public health, however, the country still faces numerous challenges.
The world's key preventative resource against malaria, the insecticide-treated bed net, encounters some cultural hurdles in parts of Africa. The bed nets are not designed with the cultural preferences and beliefs of the rural African villager in mind, and therefore end up being used for other purposes – like catching fish – or not at all.
South Africa accumulated more HIV-positive citizens than any other country under former President Mbeki. Now, President Jacob Zuma is making a big effort to turn things around by launching a campaign to test 15 million of the country's 49 million people for HIV by June 2011.
Keep an eye on the spread of numerous diseases with HealthMap, which gives you an overview of the latest disease alerts from around the world – sourced directly from a wide range of news, media, community and scientific sources.