A US aid program aimed at helping foreign countries battle the AIDS epidemic saved 740,000 lives from 2004-2008, according to a US study published Tuesday.

The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, was started by former president George W. Bush in 2003 with a five-year, $15 billion investment in global AIDS in 15 countries.

The analysis by scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine in California examined health and survival information for 1.5 million adults in 27 African countries.

Largely preventable or treatable infections with viruses, bacteria and parasites cause about two million new cancer cases and 1.5 million cancer deaths each year, said a study published yesterday.

This amounted to about one in six of the 12.7 million new cancer cases reported in 2008, said the report in The Lancet Oncology journal.

Ella Foundation has won a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations Grant, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

This Grant will help Ella Foundation pursue efforts to checkmate the polio virus during and after the eradication of polio. The aim is to have a live polio vaccine, which could carry the benefits of an oral polio vaccine.

Chest specialists Association office bearers said that Tuberculosis (TB) among infectious diseases is the second most common cause of death in the world.

It takes almost 2 million lives every year.

Delivering their speeches at a seminar on prevention of TB, Dr Abdul Shakoor, Tehmina Rafique, Zafar Ali syed, Muhammad Azam Mushtaq, and others said that a TB patient infects further 10-15 people every year.

Nine million new cases of the disease are occurring annually while more than 95 per cent of these cases are in the developing countries.