India’s “health ministry sat on a $187 million international grant offered to the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) for some 18 months, causing drug shortages that left about one million HIV-positive Indians treated under the program without drugs and testing kits for at least five of those months,” Live Mint reports. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which provided the grant, “has written a 20-page note charging the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) and the ministry with endangering the lives of HIV patients across the country through the inaction,” according to the news service, which reviewed a copy of the note. In the memo, “the Global Fund said it would not allow civil society to be subjected to service interruptions ‘traceable to government decision-making,'” Live Mint writes. The news service ran its story without a “promised” statement from NACO, and the Global Fund “did not respond to questions Mint sent to the agency on November 18,” Live Mint notes. The news service summarizes the Global Fund note and includes comments from two activists and an unnamed official (Krishnan, 11/25).