Zambia's minister of health, Brian Chituwo, recently boasted that 6,000 out of a targeted 10,000 people living with AIDS, have accessed the government's cheap anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs since a roll-out began last August. What he does not mention is that even though women make up the majority of people living with AIDS in this southern African country, they constitute less than 10%of those accessing ARV drugs.

When the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) met in Cairo, 1994, human rights and choice were put on the agenda and at the centre of policies on population and development. Goals were agreed to improve reproductive health for everyone, meet young people’s needs, and empower women - because it was their right. Reaching the Cairo goals would save lives, build families, fight poverty, and hasten population stabilization. Ten years later, the degree of progress made is variable.

A resounding silence surrounds an event to take place at the end of this month that, in theory at least, has great significance for the health of the people of Africa. Dr Ebrahim Samba is to step down after serving his maximum two terms of office as Director of WHO's Africa Region (WHO/AFRO). Such disinterest in a new UN health leader in the continent with the world's most pressing disease burden seems at first glance astonishing. However, a little familiarity with WHO and its African Office makes the lack of debate more understandable.

Ghana lags behind most of Africa when it comes to using insecticide-treated malaria nets and the government needs to go on an offensive to promote them, the head of the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said last Thursday. Just three percent of the Ghanaian population string up the treated nets over their beds, whereas the average in most African countries is between 25 and 40 percent.

Torrential rains and inadequate supplies of safe drinking water have led to a cholera epidemic in Guinea which has so far killed 23 people, Health Minister Amara Seisay said. He told state television last Thursday night that 183 cases of the highly infectious disease had been reported throughout the country, of which 93 came from the district around Kindia, a provincial town 120 km east of the capital Conakry.

AIFO/Italy and People's Health Movement Africa invite articles in English, French, Portuguese and Italian from activists, non-governmental organisations and grass-roots organisations based in Africa related to experiences of innovative approaches linked to promotion of any aspect of better health for different community groups. Articles selected by an international jury will be part of a book to be released and distributed at the Second People's Health Assembly (PHA-II) in Ecuador in 2005 and will also be made available on the AIFO website. Three best articles will receive a cash prize of 500 Euros each. Last date for sending entries is 15 October 2004. It is possible that some selected partners from this initiative will be sponsored by AIFO to participate in the PHA-II. A decision regarding this will be taken before the end of 2004. In addition, authors of the three prize winning entries may also be invited to an award ceremony in Italy. For more details write to: [email protected]

Rwanda will use international aid to offer free generic drugs by year's end to 90,000 people infected with HIV and AIDS, a 20-fold increase in the number of people receiving treatment, an official said last Thursday. The program would treat some 100,000 people by 2007 and would be funded by $85 million in aid from the U.S. government, the World Bank and the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Last Friday the donor community heaped praise on the Ministry of Health and Social Services for expanding to several hospitals its anti-retroviral therapy (ART) to HIV/AIDS patients and the prevention of mother to child transmission programme (PMTCT). As a result of the launch, the rollout programme of anti-retroviral therapy will cover six additional state hospitals at Engela, Outapi, Grootfontein, Otjiwarongo, Gobabis and Omaruru, one hospital managed by Lutheran Medical Services at Onandjokwe in the Oshikoto Region and three health facilities run by the Catholic Health Services at Oshikuku in the Omusati Region, Andara and at Nyangana in the Kavango Region.

Rushed in as a last minute substitute speaker for the Minister of Health, the head of the national health department's HIV/AIDS cluster, Dr Rose Mulumba, has told students that prohibitive costs were the reason for the long delay in providing antiretroviral treatment in the public health sector. When Dr Rose Mulumba first confronted the figures on her computer screen that showed her how much it would cost to treat South Africans requiring antiretrovirals she had to get up, “clear my head” and recalculate the numbers.

Even without attending an Aids lesson in a classroom, receiving at least a primary school education can halve young people's risk of contracting HIV. A recent report published by Global Campaign for Education (GCE) titled Learning How to Survive says as long as millions of children are still excluded from school, these vital Aids prevention programmes are unlikely to work as fast and as well as we need them to.

This paper compares the views about abstinence and condom use expressed by young people in Zimbabwe in focus-group discussions with the views underlying national policies and religious and traditional beliefs. Young people’s decisions to adopt one or the other of these risk-reduction strategies may not necessarily indicate genuine individual choices, but rather their deference to adults’ interests as they understand those interests. Evidence from the focus-group discussions indicates that adolescents are aware of this conflict between choice of strategy and sometimes conceal their condom use in order not to disappoint adults.

The Department of Health and Welfare in Limpopo invites funding proposals from NPOs to support their work in the fight against HIV/Aids and Tuberculosis.

A weeklong door-to-door anti-polio drive in the Central African Republic ended on Saturday. The nation-wide campaign follows the outbreak of two cases of a deadly form of "wild polio" in June 2004 in the northern prefecture of Mambere Kadei. Health workers vaccinated approximately 3,000 children, the director of preventive medicine in the ministry of health Dr Abel Namssenmo told IRIN on Monday.

Condom promotion to the general population - not only high-risk groups - is necessary and effective in curbing the spread of HIV/AIDS, especially in countries with high HIV prevalence, according to an Issue Brief released by Population Services International (PSI), a nonprofit organization implementing HIV/AIDS prevention programs in more than 60 countries.

The World Food Programme has announced that it fed almost 830,000 Zambians last month. This comes despite the fact that Zambia had a successful harvest and is expected to export an estimated 120,000mt of maize. The western region of the country is at particular risk as a result of the crops lost by farmers when the Zambezi River flooded at the beginning of the year

In this issue
-IMF, WB wrongly take credit for poverty drop
-Differences remain on TRIPS/Health issue
-Workers in Kenya's EPZ under threat

South Africa's plan to boost the black majority's stake in agriculture is too ambitious and contains proposals not agreed by industry players, the country's largest farming union said this week. The plan says half the country's prime agricultural land should be in black hands within 10 years - 30% owned and another 20% leased out. Analysts say so far less than 4% of land has been transferred to blacks since the end of apartheid in 1994.

Female-headed households continue to bear the brunt of poverty and ongoing food shortages in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, according to recent surveys. The Consortium for Southern Africa's Food Emergency (C-SAFE) and the World Food Programme (WFP) released their latest Community and Household Surveillance (CHS) reports, based on information gathered in October 2003 and March 2004, analysing the livelihood and food security status of households and vulnerable groups in the three southern African countries.

Health officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo said last Thursday 58 people, suspected to have caught the plague, had died so far this year in the northeastern district of Ituri. They were among the 1,042 suspected plague cases recorded since January, according to a joint Ministry of Health and World Health Organization mission sent to the area from 18 to 26 July.

Uganda's director general of health services has directed the country's National Drug Authority to suspend antiretroviral drugs sales on the open market following reports that some doctors have been selling counterfeit drugs to patients, Xinhua News Agency reports. Peter Mugyenyi, director of the country's Joint Clinical Research Centre, last Thursday at a parliamentary committee meeting on HIV/AIDS said that some people have been selling the counterfeit drugs in containers resembling those used to sell authentic antiretrovirals, Uganda's New Vision reports.