The poorest residents of the Chadian capital N’djamena are struggling to cope as a strike that has closed hospitals across the city enters a second month, and union and government leaders say they are still not ready to compromise. At 10 a.m. one Saturday morning in front of the emergency ward of the general hospital, not far from the N’djamena town hall, 50-year-old Saleh, a filthy bandage wrapped around his shoulder, stood slumped against a wall, groaning.

Male circumcision could significantly reduce the burden of HIV in Africa, a study suggests. It concluded that the operation could avert about six million HIV infections and three million deaths in sub-Saharan Africa over the next 20 years. "However, people who are circumcised can still be infected with HIV and any awareness campaign would have to be extremely careful not to suggest that it protects against HIV or is an alternative to using condoms."

This course, organised by The Southern African Media Training Trust (NSJ), is meant for journalists in the South African Development Community (SADC) region. The aim of the course is to equip journalists with the ability to understand, analyse and report professionally on issues relating to antiretroviral roll-out.

Health officials in Tanzania's semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar have begun spraying thousands of households with a non-toxic insecticide in an effort to control the breeding of mosquitoes that transmit malaria, Africa's top killer. The Zanzibar minister of health and social welfare, Sultani Mohamed Mugheiry, said the support of the entire community was necessary to ensure Zanzibar would be free of malaria by 2008.

Keeping people healthy is a complicated task. It’s no surprise that in poorer communities and less developed countries — where resources for healthcare may be lacking — death and disease rates are usually higher and quality of life significantly lower. But as healthcare interventions have become more effective many have argued that the poor should no longer have to suffer the burdens of disease and other health conditions to the extent that they still do.

Evidence is accumulating that the incidence and prevalence of HIV/AIDS in some African countries - notably Kenya and Zimbabwe - is declining. Why? What do these reversals say about the best way forward for prevention on a large scale?

Aids-ravaged Zimbabwe is hoping to double the number of people on antiretrovirals (ARV) in order to reach 70 000 sufferers by the end of 2006, top official, Raymond Yekeye, has said. He said the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria was to bankroll the programme. Zimbabwe last year failed to reach its target to provide ARVs to 100 000 people.

The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), an advocacy and grant making organisation operating in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, invites application from suitably qualified individuals for a vacancy in Johannesburg. OSISA is recruiting a Law and Policy Researcher: HIV/AIDS.

Cameroon could lose all of its 3,000 practising doctors within three years if the government does not act quickly to stem a brain drain in the health sector, the national doctors' association has said. "Between now and 2009 if nothing is done to stop this mass exodus our hospitals will be empty and the government may be forced to undertake a massive recruitment of young doctors".

The Assistant Commissioner National Diseases Control in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Alex Apio, has told journalists that the number of discordant couples had increased from 4.8 percent last year to 5 percent, making it even more important that couples should use condoms. Doctors have been researching on circumstances why married couples have different HIV/Aids sero-status.

The supply of free antiretroviral drugs is fast dwindling, raising fears that the people using them might find themselves with no treatment after August, Daily Monitor has learnt. Aids activists say unless something is done urgently, numerous lives will be endangered.

National AIDS Council (NAC) director of programmes, Dr Alex Simwanza, has bemoaned the low testing rates for HIV in the country. "Currently, statistics show that despite our high sustained prevalence levels of HIV infection which is 16 percent, only 1.5 million of our population have been tested, which is too low," he said.

Adults and children lie on a concrete floor between steely skeletons of beds that once had mattresses in the Isangi public hospital. The collapse of their health system horrifies Congolese. "It's disgusting. The medical team helps out in emergencies," Dr Jean-Robert Tshimanga, the hospital director, said "but if they [patients] have no money what can we do?

Food security in Burundi is under threat due to fears that an incurable banana disease, which has already been reported in several neighbouring countries, could sweep across the nation, an official of an agricultural research institute has said.

A surge in cases of watery diarrhoea has raised concerns of an impending cholera outbreak in the crumbling capital Bissau. The Health Ministry has ordered the closure of all traditional wells in the capital and urged the suspension of traditional ceremonies in an effort to prevent large gatherings that might facilitate the spread of disease.

As seasonal rains begin to fall across West Africa, health officials in Togo fear outbreaks of malaria and cholera as people wade in filthy water up to their chests to go about their daily lives. Sources at Lome’s main Tokoin hospital say about 10 people a day have sought treatment for cholera since 20 June.

A coalition of civil society organisations have written to the president of the AU and the AU Comission to express concern about the need to tackle the HIV and AIDS pandemic on the continent. They state that they are "anxious that the forthcoming Seventh Ordinary Summit reinforces the integrity of the AU, and confirms the strong leadership on HIV and AIDS demonstrated by African leaders at the Abuja Summit both in 2001 and again in 2006."

The focus of the Regional Workshop on HIV and AIDS and Children’s Property Rights and Livelihoods in Southern and East Africa, was on children’s property rights. The report covers presentations by children, key issues and inspiring initiatives by CBOs, messages from the UN to children, experiences from Zimbabwe, very moving testimonies by children, and key recommendations, reports Oxfam.

UN have launched a nation-wide campaign to vaccinate women against tetanus, a simple measure which aid agencies estimate could help slash infant deaths by up to 70 percent. In some communities in West Africa child deaths are so common that it is normal for families to put off naming a child for a week to three months after it is born.

The traditional knowledge of pastoralists has enabled them to survive difficult and often changing environments throughout history. Despite this potential, indigenous knowledge is often unrecognised by development initiatives and risks being lost, leading to household food insecurity amongst these groups.