Positive Connection is a South African online dating services with a difference: It is aimed at HIV sufferers.

The service was set up by a salesman living in Johannesburg after a couple of his friends complained it was impossible for them to date because of their HIV status, The Economist reports (subscription required).

The website is a positive move in a country where around 5.5 million people live with AIDS - one of the highest rates in the world. The site also serves an educational purpose as it carries articles and research information about the virus, lists support groups, treatments centres and online resources.

The website has just gained its first advertiser, AllLife, a company that offers life insurance to people with the virus. This milestone comes three years after the site's launch, suggesting that stigma surrounding AIDS is still alive and well. It seems few companies wish to associate themselves with HIV/AIDS.

The website has not only attracted South Africans, but also Americans, Nigerians, British and others, and the site's database is already struggling with the traffic it's getting. In some cases, visitors have to wait for another user to log off in order to be able to use the service.

What have MoonBead necklaces and condoms have in common? They are both used to prevent unwanted pregnancies, except that the necklace is now being promoted in Uganda above condoms in the latest U.S.-funded initiative, according to Britain's Daily Telegraph.

The necklace has 32 beads in different colours. A red bead marks the first day of a woman's period, brown beads show the days she is least likely to conceive and 12 lightly coloured beads indicate days of the highest fertility.

The necklace has been marketed in the U.S. since 2003, but it's aimed at a different audience: childless women who need to know when they're most likely to conceive.

Uganda is a country with one of the world's highest rates of population growth, where on average a mother has seven children. How this birth-control scheme, which shuns the promotion of condoms, will affect the country's HIV rate remains to be seen.

Thailand doesn't have a problem with HIV-prevention programmes. It is, after all, an international leader in the field. This success, however, has created another problem: HIV-infected people whose lives are prolonged by medication are being rejected by their families or neighbours, New York Times reports.

The country's main AIDS hospice at a Buddhist temple where families bring their sick relatives to die is becoming overcrowded as more people with AIDS survive for longer. "This will be a big burden on society in the future,'' says Alongkot Dikkapanyo, the temple's abbot.

Thailand is not alone, says Purnima Mane, a UNAIDS official. In Africa, families find it hard to take their sick family members back just because they look healthy after receiving treatment. In Brazil, survivors cope in a different way by forming self-help networks.

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