With a population of more than 8 million, Chad has around 3,600 health workers: 50 percent of these are unskilled, and 35 percent are nurses and midwives. Chad also faces geographical imbalances in the distribution of health professionals, with approximately half working in the capital N'Djamena. Massive shortages of qualified health workers are recognised by the Chad authorities to be a primary bottleneck for the development of the health sector. Policies have been implemented which prioritise human resource development. However, more coherent policies are needed, particularly to improve motivation and retention.

South Africa is to take steps to bring home some of the thousands of its health professionals currently working in western countries, officials say. Some 25,000 South African health professionals are estimated to be working abroad, harming the local health system.

British aid agency Oxfam said on Wednesday that donors should act now to help more than a million people facing food shortages in Mali. Mali's neighbour Niger grabbed headlines in the past month after drought and locusts ravaged last October's harvest, leaving an estimated 3.6 million people short of food and threatening the lives of tens of thousands of children.

The Namibian government is drafting its first national policy on HIV/AIDS and hopes to complete it by World AIDS Day on 1 December. At the behest of the government a draft policy was compiled by the AIDS law unit of the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC), an NGO, and discussed last week at a series of workshops with stakeholders from the legal, social and community sectors.

HelpAge International has launched a one year programme to increase the visibility of and improving support to older women carers of people living with HIV/AIDS, orphans and vulnerable children. HelpAge International's global aim is to ensure that global responses to HIV/AIDS include older people, by documenting good practice and drawing a guide for partners and other implementing agencies.

In response to changing continuing education needs of agricultural institutions and their personnel in Eastern Africa, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Alemaya University (Ethiopia) are setting up a Center for Agricultural Research Management and Policy Learning for Eastern Africa (CARMPoLEA). This regional center will serve as a home of a capacity building initiative to improve the management, organization and leadership of agricultural research and policy making and ultimately support the Agricultural Innovation System (AIS). To launch the center, we are organizing a series of workshops which are aimed at responding to regional knowledge and skill needs in the areas of agricultural research management and policy.

With an HIV prevalence of over 12 percent, Mozambique is one of many African countries grappling with the challenge of supplying treatment to citizens who risk succumbing to AIDS-related diseases. A proposal to build the country's first-ever factory for manufacturing generic anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) may provide some hope in this respect, however. Brazil is assisting Mozambique with the initiative.

Alarmingly high HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in Ugandan fishing communities are threatening the lucrative fishing industry, which brought some US 105 million into the country in 2004, a new government survey has found. Chronic illness and death destroys livelihood and incomes, undermines the skills base in the fishing workforce, and reduces productivity. This is a threat to sustainable fisheries, poverty elimination and economic growth, the report said. It added that the productivity of the fisheries sector, which makes up 12 percent of Uganda's Gross Domestic Product and nearly 20 percent of its total exports, could witness a decline with the impact of HIV/AIDS.

Angola stepped up its fight against polio on Sunday, with mothers out in force to take advantage of a nationwide immunization drive after the first appearance of the disease in the African country in four years. The three-day, $3.74 million campaign, which ends on Sunday, was run by the Health Ministry, the United Nations Childrens Fund UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) and is aimed at stopping polio before it spreads.

"This report sets out to establish whether it would be feasible for global health organisations - primarily the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (Global Fund), which is a leading financing agency in the field - to raise additional funds through debt conversions in selected countries. The feasibility study was restricted to those nations not currently assessed as Heavily Indebted Poor Countries, or HIPCs. Because HIPCs are already eligible for 100% debt relief on their bilateral debts, debt conversion may not be the first option for mobilising additional resources."

Alternative reports on global health, presented at the second People's Health Assembly in Ecuador recently, question the free-market, neoliberal economic model and view it as the cause of many of the health problems facing humanity today. These include the indiscriminate use of toxic products in agriculture, pollution caused by the oil industry, the consumption of transgenic crops, the destruction of the urban environment by pollution, and the commercialisation of health services. The reports by the Global Health Watch and the Observatorio Latinoamericano de Salud see a healthy life as a fundamental human right, the enjoyment of which depends on economic, political and social factors.

At the World Health Assembly in May 2003, the People's Health Movement, together with GEGA and Medact discussed the need for civil society to produce its own alternative World Health Report. It was felt that the WHO reports were inadequate; that there was no report that monitored the performance of global health institutions; and, that the dominant neo-liberal discourse in public health policy also needed to be challenged by a more people-centred approach that highlights social justice. The idea of an alternative World Health Report since developed into an initiative called the 'Global Health Watch' the first of which was launched on July 20, 2005.

For those Kenyans who have contracted HIV, getting access to anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) is seldom an easy matter. In the case of children, however, the situation is even more problematic. According to Health Minister Charity Ngilu, only 1,200 of the 44,000 people receiving free ARVs in Kenya are children - far below the 10 percent of HIV-positive children who are thought to be in need of treatment.

President Olusegun Obasanjo has been urged to publish the names of past leaders and serving politicians who looted the nation's treasury and stashed such funds in bank accounts overseas. A non-governmental organisation, Niger Delta Peace Coalition, made this demand over the weekend, while reacting to media reports that the Paris Club has handed over to the federal Government a list of people believed to have been involved in money laundering.

Scidev.net have just launched a range of new in-depth materials on the latest scientific and technological advances to combat HIV/AIDS in developing countries. Articles include perspectives from the South, with an overview of HIV research in Brazil and microbicides research in South Africa forming two of the new opinion pieces.

HIV-positive vendors in East Africa's largest market, which is located in Kampala, Uganda, will be able to access antiretroviral drugs at no cost through a new HIV/AIDS treatment clinic, the Monitor/AllAfrica.com reports. The Uganda Cares-St. Balikuddembe Market Clinic, is the result of a new partnership among the Kampala City Council, the United Market Vendors Association, Development Initiatives International, Marie Stopes Uganda and AHF Global Immunity, an international program of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

On a maize-covered hill in Swaziland's central belt, 75-year-old Josphephia Sihlongonyane surveyed the coming harvest with her neighbour, Dorkas Dlamini. The ears were fat and drying on the stalk in the April sun. It would be a fine yield, the two women agreed. 'Don't worry,' Dlamini assured the older woman, a stooped and wrinkled grandmother caring for two AIDS orphans and seven other relatives. 'I will be here when it is time to harvest.' Dlamini's concern for Sihlongonyane is more than simply normal neighbourly compassion; it's part of a concerted effort in Swaziland to renew a sense of community responsibility for social problems, especially the rising number of orphans, in the era of AIDS. The latest edition of e-africa, produced by the South African Institute of International Affairs, examines community solutions for Africa's Aids orphans.

The increasing proportion of older people in the world is often seen as a success for humankind, the result of improving health conditions. However, the situation is more complex. Elderly populations are creating new challenges, particularly in rural areas of developing countries. These can threaten efforts to promote development in rural areas, and as such they urgently need to be addressed through appropriate policies.

An estimated 200 000 South Africans living with HIV and AIDS are in urgent need of anti-AIDS drugs, but supply is not keeping up with demand. And, despite good nutrition being an essential pre-requisite for starting anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment, only a fraction of HIV and AIDS patients are receiving the supplements and food parcels. This is the finding of a monitoring report compiled by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and Aids Law Project, 18 months after the government approved the national HIV and AIDS treatment plan.

Alpha Conde, the main political rival of ailing Guinean President Lansana Conte, returned to Conakry this weekend after two years abroad, and received a rapturous welcome from thousands of people, angry about rising food prices and poor living conditions in the West African nation.