In a town hall meeting room in the Ivorian capital earlier this month, women assembled on one side and men on the other, joined together in a prayer to Allah "to remove AIDS from humanity". The crowd of around 100 Muslim men and women had turned out at the Treichville town hall in Cote d'Ivoire's economic capital Abidjan for one of a series of conferences aimed at discussing Islam's position on HIV/AIDS.

From farm to plate, the modern food system relies heavily on cheap oil. Threats to our oil supply are also threats to our food supply. As food undergoes more processing and travels farther, the food system consumes ever more energy each year. The U.S. food system uses over 10 quadrillion Btu (10,551 quadrillion Joules) of energy each year, as much as France's total annual energy consumption. Growing food accounts for only one fifth of this. The other four fifths is used to move, process, package, sell, and store food after it leaves the farm. Some 28 percent of energy used in agriculture goes to fertilizer manufacturing, 7 percent goes to irrigation, and 34 percent is consumed as diesel and gasoline by farm vehicles used to plant, till, and harvest crops.

Older people in Tanzania say medical staff in health centres often treat them disrespectfully by talking to them in a mocking tone. The findings are revealed at the end of the three year Older Citizen's Monitoring project, set up to monitor older people's access to health services. Groups in Arusha and Dodoma have successfully lobbied local government to ensure free health care for all older people. The project was launched in 2002 in two areas in the country, Arusha and Dodoma. It's aim is to increase older people's participation in gathering information, forming supporting networks, developing confidence and approaches in talking to governments, and challenging authorities about their rights, including access to basic services.

The Fifty-eighth World Health Assembly (WHA) is set to consider several critical health issues next week. The WHA, comprised of the World Health Organization's (WHO) 192 Member States, is the supreme decision-making body for WHO and its main function is to determine the policies of the Organization. This year's meeting takes place from 16-25 May. The Assembly will review the proposed programme budget for 2006-2007, and consider more than a dozen draft resolutions on issues including cancer prevention and control, health action in crises, tuberculosis, malaria, pandemic influenza preparedness and response, global immunization and social health insurance. The Fifty-eighth World Health Assembly (WHA) is set to consider several critical health issues next week. The WHA, comprised of the World Health Organization's (WHO) 192 Member States, is the supreme decision-making body for WHO and its main function is to determine the policies of the Organization. This year's meeting takes place from 16-25 May. The Assembly will review the proposed programme budget for 2006-2007, and consider more than a dozen draft resolutions on issues including cancer prevention and control, health action in crises, tuberculosis, malaria, pandemic influenza preparedness and response, global immunization and social health insurance.

Nigeria's first national blood transfusion centre to combat the spread of HIV/Aids has been opened by President Olusegun Obasanjo. Currently Nigeria has one of the highest numbers of people living with HIV of any country in the world. The centre, set up by US organisation Safe Blood for Africa, aims to reduce new infections by providing uncontaminated blood to hospitals.

As the death toll from the Marburg virus in Angola creeps up to the 300 mark, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has expressed concern at the current situation and is warning that the outbreak is not yet over. Uige-based WHO spokesperson Aphaluck Bhatiasevi told IRIN on Monday that some recently-identified cases of the killer disease had not been linked to earlier cases, raising fears that the epidemic was not yet under control since it first appeared in October 2004.

At least 5,000 people in southern Sudan have fled food shortages and attacks by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and sought refuge in northwestern Uganda since January, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said. "[Some] said they were running away from LRA attacks, while the majority have fled their camp of Nimule in southern Sudan to Arua in Uganda due to food shortages, as relief supplies to the camp stopped some time back," spokeswoman Roberta Russo said.

Zambia has begun building a modern molecular biology laboratory to detect genetically modified (GM) organisms entering the country. The National Institute for Scientific and Industrial Research (NISIR) began the project last month. It is expected to finish by December. The Norwegian government has donated US$330,000 for buying equipment and training scientists.

A new row in South Africa is pitting an influential AIDS lobby group who are pushing President Thabo Mbeki's government to provide more free anti-retroviral (ARVs), against a vitamins salesman who says ARVs are poison. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which resorted to legal action to force the government to roll out ARVs nearly two years ago, has returned to court to try to win an order against German-born Matthias Rath, who claims that vitamins can reverse the course of HIV/AIDS.

Pact Inc., with funding from the U.S. Government through the USAID Regional HIV/AIDS Office (RHAP) in South Africa, is pleased to announce the availability of funds to strengthen the civil sector response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Lesotho. Pact Inc. will make funds available for HIV/AIDS projects in Lesotho and to assist with providing capacity-building to the civil sector and participating organizations.

Tanzania will in 2006 officially adopt a new combination therapy for the treatment of malaria to replace SP or sulphadoxine/pyrimethamine, a standard first line drug, which is now ineffective against the disease. "Studies conducted in malaria endemic countries by the [UN] World Health Organization [WHO] have established that the drug is no longer effective," Hussein Mwinyi, the assistant minister for health, said on Wednesday at a news conference in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's commercial capital.

Those who fall behind in the winner take all markets of global competition not only suffer from poverty and poor health, but also lose access to health care and other essential health-producing services. Reversing these trends will require decisive and coordinated action on the part of high-income countries in areas we often do not connect with: debt cancellation, increased development assistance, fair trade policies and global tax reforms.

A cholera outbreak which has killed at least 42 people and infected almost 1,400 since the beginning of the year in western Cameroon despite government measures to contain the disease, is finally receding, health officials told IRIN on Monday.

Lack of financial resources, staff, and commitment from key countries, including South Africa, may hamper the World Health Organisation's goal to provide life-long antiretroviral therapy to 3 million people with HIV/AIDS in developing countries by the end of 2005. An Editorial in this week's issue of the The Lancet states that though progress has been made with 720 000 people in developing countries receiving antiretroviral treatment and three times the target number of outlets providing anti-retrovirals, the financial resources allocated to 3 by 5 are below what are needed (US$ 163 million vs 174 million), and the number of WHO staff deployed to the initiative is well below what it should be (112 vs 400).

A study of a pilot project using mobile phones for healthcare in Africa has found that technology works, but implementation, management and human factors are real hurdles. Bridges.org conducted an in-depth investigation of a pilot project by the Cape Town Health Directorate that tested innovative uses of mobile phone technology to improve the treatment of Tuberculosis (TB) in its clinics. The treatment of TB in Cape Town offers a good setting to explore whether and how mobile phones can be used in healthcare.

African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the European Union face a 'hidden' threat to their ability to access affordable medicines for diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Judging from recent EU attempts in the context of other bilateral trade discussions, and from the language in the intellectual property provisions in the Cotonou Agreement, the ACP countries could end up saddled with the EU's laws on 'data exclusivity'. 'Data exclusivity' refers to a peculiar type of 'intellectual property protection' by which EU member countries, like their US cousin, grant exclusive marketing rights to pharmaceutical companies even in relation to medicines that are not under patent protection, and sometimes even when there has been no new invention. The effect is to further disable generic competitors.

Several African countries performed poorly in a study of 110 nations worldwide that details health and educational opportunities for mothers and children, the NGO Save the Children said in a new report released on Tuesday. In its report: "State of the World's Mothers 2005", the NGO ranked Burkina Faso and Mali as the worst countries for women and children, while Ethiopia, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo were not far behind.

Globally, 40 million people live with HIV/AIDS; 5 million people were infected with HIV in 2001. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 6 to halt and reverse the spread of the disease is critical to other aspects of human development. However, this goal must consider how the disease develops in different regional and national contexts.

According to research conducted by the African Centre for Biosafety, South Africa's commercial growing of genetically modified (GM) maize, soya and cotton has been grossly exaggerated by the biotechnology industry for propaganda purposes. The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), an industry supported organisation, consistently tries to inflate the figures of GM plantings around the world to support the argument that GM crops are here to stay.

New drug-resistant strains of malaria could thwart global efforts to halve malaria deaths by 2010 unless major players in the fight against the disease speed up the rollout of vital new drugs, health experts say. Ninety percent of all malaria deaths are in Africa, where experts say the emergence of drug-resistant strains help maintain a staggering death rate, particularly among children. An African child dies from malaria every 30 seconds.