For the past six years, Stephanie Nolen has traced AIDS across Africa, and 28 is the result: an unprecedented, uniquely human portrait of the continent in crisis. Through riveting, anecdotal stories, she brings to life men, women, and children involved in every AIDS arena, making them familiar to us in a way nobody else has.

Researchers have challenged African governments to implement policies and study recommendations on the fight against HIV/Aids. The more than 500 experts attending a seminar on HIV/Aids in Kisumu, Kenya, criticised governments for weak health structures. Participants said poverty remains a hindrance in the war against the disease and urged leaders to implement findings of various studies. The concerns were raised during a plenary session on Innovations in Access to HIV/Aids Prevention Services.

In sub-Saharan Africa, young women are at high risk of HIV infection, with a prevalence of 21 per cent among 21 year-olds recently reported from South Africa. Now, the same team of US and South African scientists report that this prevalence occurs in young women with few lifetime partners, suggesting a much higher rate of male-to-female transmission than previously reported. The researchers report their findings in the 23 April edition of AIDS.

Researchers have found that a single counselling intervention that includes an exploration of the risk of alcohol use in sexual contexts may have an impact on HIV prevention by reducing sexual risk behaviours. The study is published in the 15 April edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. Considerable evidence exists that alcohol use contributes to the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV.

Sudanese authorities are holding up to 100,000 tonnes of sorghum meant for Darfur, alleging that it is genetically modified, the U.N. food agency said on Wednesday. The sorghum, which comes from the United States, is being held up at Port Sudan, a World Food Program spokeswoman in Rome said, adding that laboratory tests had shown it was not genetically modified.

HIV-positive youth in Uganda are not receiving the support and education they need to avoid risky sexual behaviours that could lead to the infection of others, a new study has found. The adolescent sexuality study, released last week, was conducted by Uganda's Makerere University, in conjunction with the Paediatric Infectious Diseases Clinic (PIDC) at Mulago Hospital in the capital, Kampala, the country's largest referral facility.

For almost 13 years Maimouna only knew that her parents died of a “blood disease” when she was young. But three months ago she learned that disease was HIV/AIDS - and she is infected too. “I can’t tell my friends. Only my grandmother knows,” the tall, thin girl said after one of her regular check-ups at the Gabriel Toure Hospital in the Malian capital, Bamako.

Malaria is reclaiming the world's attention after years of playing second fiddle to HIV. Experts are now convinced that the disease plays a greater role in the AIDS pandemic than was previously thought. "The disease has for too long been considered a separate health concern to HIV... it is high time that malaria was shown the same global dedication as HIV/AIDS," Malama Muleba, executive director of the Zambia Malaria Foundation (ZMF), told IRIN/PlusNews.

A rising incidence of rape in Swaziland, coupled with the world's highest level of HIV-infection, is fuelling a national debate on what punishment should be meted out to rapists, especially if the victims of sex crimes become infected with the disease. "Giving a little girl HIV is like giving her a death sentence," Nonhlanhla Dlamini, director of the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA), told IRIN.

East African countries on Wednesday marked Africa Malaria Day by announcing a review of control strategies, ranging from the use of more effective drugs to indoor spraying with DDT. In Tanzania, the government launched an anti-malaria combination drug, artemether-lumefantrine, at a ceremony in Bukoba in the country's northwestern region of Kagera.

The ethical practice of medical and public-health professionals is increasingly tested by situations of war and conflict. The result – from Rwanda to Abu Ghraib to Libya – can be the violation of medical neutrality. OpenDemocracy's Michel Thieren considers what can be done to uphold professional and humane standards in "dark times".

While South Africa is planning on increasing bio-fuels production some experts warn the move may hurt subsistence farmers and cause more hunger in impoverished areas of the country. Proponents in the United States and Brazil say bio-fuels such as maize-based ethanol is a clean energy alternative that comes from resources that are renewable.

With two-thirds of the world's HIV/AIDS victims living in sub-Saharan Africa, sickness and death is too often a part of doing business in the region. But now micro-finance institutions have found ways to reduce financial risk while attacking new infections.

The first global consultation on HIV and internally displaced people started Tuesday in Geneva bringing together some 45 experts from governments, United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations and the academic world, to discuss ways of addressing the effects of HIV on internally displaced populations.

Fifteen national, continental and international civil society organisations hailed the AU Conference of African Health Ministers meeting in Johannesburg South Africa for adopting the Africa Health Strategy: 2007-2015 (AFRICA_HEALTH_STRATEGY_FINAL.pdf). Meeting on the margins of the Conference, the CSO groups commended the ministers for their commitment to a vision of a “prosperous Africa free of its heavy burden of disease, disability and premature death” and to the goal of ensuring “access to essential health care for all Africans, especially the poorest and most marginalized”. They welcomed the recognition of health as a human right, and the need to advance women’s rights and equality, as women not only bear the greatest disease burden but are also primary care givers. The organisations welcomed the recognition that civil society organisations have been given in continental debates and as key players in delivery of health at all levels. ‘We look forward to actions that will turn these fine statements into reality’, they said.

In an unprecedented move, the commissioner for Social Affairs of the African Union, Adv. Bience Gawanas announced in plenary that the AU commission had received a petition from 1000 strong civil society march on the precincts of the conference led by the Treatment for Action Campaign (TAC) and addressed by partners from Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique. The petition called on African governments to move fast to implement the Abuja Declaration on HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. Commissioner Gawanas urged the ministers to take into consideration the civil society concerns on the implementation.

In their closing statement on the Conference, the organisations however expressed their regret that the Strategy was silent on the urgent need for rolling out Anti-Retroviral Therapies (ARTs) to all who need them. It is estimated that less than 4% of Africans who need ARTs receive them and most of these are due to the effort of donors rather than governments. An African health strategy, they said, must include at least the:
• Urgent roll out of ARTs to all who need them;
• Right of survivors of sexual violence to Post Exposure Prophylaxis (This was proposed by the Minister of Health from Burundi for inclusion in the strategy document, but it is not clear if this will be in the final text); and
• Right of all pregnant women who are HIV positive to prevention of Mother To Child Transmission (PMTCT) therapies (PMTCT is mentioned in the strategy as part of the instruments needed, but not confirmed as a right).

The organisations committed to cooperate with African governments and the African Union to ensure the realization of the right of health for all Africans.

For the final CSO communique please visit

The fifteen civil society organisations are: AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA), AIDS Law Project (ALP), Mozambican Treatment Access Movement (MATRAM), International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW), network of Zimbabwean Positive Women (NZPW), Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), Southern Africa Treatment Access Movement (SATAMO), Swaziland Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (SWANEPWA), Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), Treatment Advocacy and Literacy Campaign (TALC), Zimbabwe Activists against HIV/AIDS ( ZAHA), and Zimbabwe National Network of People living with HIV/AIDS (ZNNP)

Despite a multi-faceted awareness campaign involving the media focusing on AIDS, the campaign appears to have fallen on deaf ears as HIV prevalence ratio among pregnant women in Namibia has increased slightly, a new report has revealed. The 2006 National Sentinel Survey among pregnant women reveals that the overal HIV prevalence from the 2006 survey was 19.9 percent representing an increase of 0.02 percent compared to 2004, which recorded a prevalence rate of 19.7 percent.

Ethiopia has launched a national strategy on adolescent and reproductive health that aims to tackle the problems of early marriages and pregnancies, female circumcision, abduction and rape, and poor access to healthcare for 10- to 24-year-olds. Recently launched by the health ministry in collaboration with United Nations agencies, the Adolescent and Youth Reproductive Health Strategy (AYRH) will be implemented over eight years.

According to a new law passed by Uganda's parliament on 18 April, an HIV-positive person who wilfully infects a minor through sexual intercourse will face the death penalty. According to the new Penal Code Amendment Bill, an individual who is aware of their HIV-positive status and has sex with a child under the age of 14, with or without their consent, is guilty of "aggravated defilement" and, on conviction in the High Court, "liable to suffer death".

The Lesotho government has launched a four-year plan to reduce new HIV infections among children by 50 percent and ensure that all HIV-infected children have access to life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) treatment. Mother-to-child transmission is the leading cause of HIV infection in children.

Fifteen national, continental and international civil society organisations hailed the AU Conference of African Health Ministers meeting in Johannesburg South Africa for adopting the Africa Health Strategy: 2007-2015. Meeting on the margins of the Conference, the CSO groups commended the ministers for their commitment to a vision of a “prosperous Africa free of its heavy burden of disease, disability and premature death” and to the goal of ensuring “access to essential health care for all Africans, especially the poorest and most marginalized”.