As the death toll from flooding in Mozambique over the past few days has climbed to 22, officials are now faced with the threat of waterborne diseases like cholera. "About 200 cases of cholera have been reported across the country," a spokesman for Mozambique's National Institute for Disaster Management (INGC), Rogerio Manguele, told IRIN on Monday.

GlobalHealthFacts.org: This new Web site, operated by the Kaiser Family Foundation, provides regularly updated data on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other emerging health issues at the country and regional levels. GlobalHealthFacts.org also includes information on the number of women living with HIV/AIDS and the number of midwives in a country.

A 30-year-old law in Namibia banning male-to-male sex is preventing condom distribution in the country's prisons and hindering HIV prevention efforts, according to HIV/AIDS advocates, South Africa's Mail & Guardian reports. According to government officials, condom distribution would promote sex between men, which is outlawed under the 1977 Criminal Procedures Act.

At least 52 cases of cholera have been reported in parts of the Tanzanian commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, over the last month, a city official said on Tuesday (January 10). "We are worried over more new cases although we have warned the people to adhere to rules of hygiene, including boiling drinking water, use of toilets and washing hands with soap," Gaston Makwembe, the Dar es Salaam City Information Officer, said.

The International Development Research Centre invites proposals from teams interested in developing and establishing a multi-stakeholder information and monitoring system in two states in Nigeria: Bauchi and Cross River. This call for proposals is part of the planning phase for a proposed multi-year CA$ 15 million IDRC-CIDA collaborative initiative to support an evidence-based primary health system in Nigeria, the Nigerian Evidence-based Health Systems Initiative (NEHSI).

The Funding Road Map contains summary information about funding sources for global health projects, including eligibility criteria, application procedures and contact information. Over 50 funding opportunities are listed, plus more!

Health-e’s new resources page include the following sections: Reports, which includes a selection of developmental and health-related reports, papers and publications; HIV/AIDS and the Media, includes topical discussion papers on the role of the media and guidelines for journalists reporting on the epidemic; A range of statistics and indicators from various sources is found in the Statistics section; Upcoming Events and Conferences will be of interest to those working in the health sector and a list of contact numbers can be found under Contacts.

Reports indicate that the Kenyan Government has reduced the cost of anti-retroviral drugs. A Cabinet meeting chaired by President Kibaki has approved the move to lower the cost of ARVs from KSh500 to KSh100 (just over a dollar) a month. By the end of last year about 60,000 Kenyans, out of a target of 95,000, had been put on free ARVs treatment in public hospitals, but the Cabinet said there were plans to increase the number.

Painting a rosy picture of Uganda's Aids story at the expense of the bare realities only does a disservice to the country's fight against HIV/Aids, says this ananlysis in The Monitor newspaper. Admittedly, considerable progress has been made in the fight against Aids. Nonetheless, the progress should not dismiss the reservations about Uganda's so called success story in the fight against Aids.

Nigeria will double the number of government centers where AIDS patients can get free drugs in the next three months as part of a major drive to widen access to treatment, the government anti-AIDS agency said on Friday (January 6). Nigeria started distributing anti-retroviral drugs for free this month from 33 government health facilities, scrapping a 1,000 naira ($8) fee that patients previously had to pay for subsidized drugs. “We plan to add an additional 33 centers in the first quarter,” Babatunde Osotimehin, chairman of the National Action Committee on AIDS (NACA), said in an interview with Reuters, as reported by the New York Times.

Organisers are pleased to invite all health policy makers, indigenous peoples, health institutions and workers, scientists, orthodox medical practitioners, traditional health practitioners, botanists, foundations, pharmaceutical and bio-technological companies, legal practitioners, law schools, law students and law societies, environmentalists, HIV-caregivers, people living with HIV/AIDS, and the citizens of the world to a global summit on HIV/AIDS, traditional medicine and indigenous knowledge at the Accra International Conference Centre, Republic of Ghana, on March 14-18, 2006.

Malaria claims three million lives a year, mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa. Policies for controlling the disease have, over the past decade, shifted from drug and vaccine research to focusing on insecticide-treated mosquito bednets. In this article, Jon Snow, one of Britain's most prominent journalists, reports on a recent visit to Africa, where he encountered the network of businesses — from a Tanzanian factory to multinational pharmaceutical and oil companies — mass producing long-lasting nets and creating a viable market for them in Africa, as reported by SciDev.

A new way of preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases is supported by research published in Nature today (5 January). It involves microbicides, which are gels and creams that a woman applies to her vagina before sex. They kill bacteria and viruses and stop them being transmitted between partners. Over 60 microbicides are being tested, but none has yet made it to the market. They act in different ways, for example by forming a gelatinous physical barrier, like a condom, or by changing the vagina's acidity, as reported by SciDev.

What have been the responses to the HIV and AIDS crisis by Ministries of Education worldwide? This Eldis report analyses responses to the HIV and AIDS crisis, both by Ministries of Education and civil society groups working on education, in 18 countries across Asia, Latin America and Africa. It attempts to answer the following three questions: What progress have Ministries of Education made in responding to the epidemic? How have civil society organisations working on education responded to the epidemic? How can the educational response to HIV and AIDS be strengthened and galvanised?

Effective and well-designed land reform policies can provide sustained contributions to economic growth, reduced social unrest and poverty. This study analyses land reform policies in Angola and South Africa with a view to assess its impact on food security. Both countries have introduced extensive land reform policies following histories of colonialism, occupation and oppression which displaced many people.

Like many Senegalese, Ibou Seck stopped taking his tuberculosis treatment before the course was up, prolonging his illness, risking death, and ultimately reducing the effectiveness of the drugs for other patients. “I didn’t have any support from my family so I stopped my treatment early. I was left alone, isolated in a back room near the chicken house while everyone in the district gossiped about my illness,” explained 36-year-old Seck, who works as a mechanic in the capital, Dakar.

Guinea-Bissau’s government has declared that the worst of the cholera epidemic, which ravaged the country in the second half of this year, is over - for now. “The cholera threat in our country is passing but we have to remain vigilant if we want to avoid a resurgence in Guinea-Bissau,” said Public Health Minister Antonia Mendes Teixeira, at the country’s biggest hospital on Tuesday.

London's Guardian on Tuesday examined the effects of HIV/AIDS on teachers in South Africa and how teachers' unions and other organizations in the country are leading a movement to implement education and prevention programs in schools to fight the epidemic. Four South African teachers' unions joined U.S. and South African partners in October to launch a two-year pilot project that aims to combine peer education, HIV testing and antiretroviral treatment for teachers in three provinces in the country.

Nigeria in 2006 will begin a program that aims to provide antiretroviral drugs at no cost to about 250,000 HIV-positive residents, the country's National Action Committee on HIV/AIDS announced last month, Reuters reports. Only about 40,000 of the 3.5 million HIV-positive people in the country currently receive subsidized antiretroviral treatment.

A loophole in the UK National Health Service's policy banning recruitment of health care workers from developing countries has led to the hiring of thousands of nurses and midwives from such countries and is damaging the global fight against HIV/AIDS and other diseases, Andrew George, a member of Parliament from the minority Liberal Democrat party, said on Monday, London's Guardian reports. George said nurses and midwives are being brought from developing countries to work in the United Kingdom through a loophole in the ban that allows them to work for a short time at a private facility before being hired by the government.