Salih Mahmoud Osman, human rights defender and member of Sudan Organisation Against Torture (SOAT) lawyer's network in Darfur Region has started a hunger strike on 30 June 2004 at his detention in Dabak prison. Osman was arrested at his home in Wad-Madani, capital of the Central Region in Sudan, on Sunday 1 February 2004. Since his detention he has not been charged with any offence, says SOAT.

Health authorities have introduced a new treatment for trypanosomiasis, also known as sleeping sickness, in the eastern province of Haut Mbomou in the Central African Republic (CAR), an official told IRIN on Saturday. Dr Carlos Recio, the coordinator of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the CAR, said the new drug had been introduced after a significant percentage of patients developed resistance to Melarsoprol, the drug that had previously been used.

A Nigerian student said on Friday he had been booted out of a Lagos journalism school after he told the director he was infected with the virus that causes AIDS and would need to miss classes one day a month to get treatment. Fredrick Adegboye, 45, said he planned to take the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ) to court if he was not readmitted by the end of next week.

Remote health posts providing basic primary health care in Angola's Bie province are saving lives among many of the country's rural poor. Run by the Angolan Ministry of Health with the support of the international medical NGO, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the posts are having a particularly positive impact on the health and wellbeing of children in Angola's central highlands province.

This Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) paper looks at how patents adversely affect access to affordable medicines. Although effective medicine is available to treat many global diseases, one-third of the world's population lacks access to these basic, but expensive, drugs as a result of patent rights. While the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is meant to ensure that patent protection does not limit access to medicines, the ability of national governments to implement TRIPS in a way that ensures access to medicine is highly problematic.

Generic combination HIV/AIDS drugs formulated into a single pill are "at least as [effective] as highly active antiretroviral therapy in industrialised countries", according to research published in this week's issue of The Lancet. Christian Laurent, of the French Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and his colleagues took advantage of a pilot project on access to antiretroviral drugs in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, to test the efficacy, safety and quality of one of the most commonly used fixed-dose combination (FDC) therapies used in Africa.

Political prevarication and weak management has hampered the implementation of the Operational Plan for Comprehensive HIV and AIDS Care, Management and Treatment for South Africa a new report has found. The preliminary report, released at the Treatment Action Campaign’s Health Summit at the weekend, is the first in a series that will monitor the implementation of the Operational Plan. The report, researched and produced by the AIDS Law Project and the TAC, deals with the first seven months since the Department of Health’s announcement of the Operational plan in November 2003.

UNICEF

The Senior Project Officer will be responsible for the development, design, implementation and management of the programme for HIV/AIDS within UNICEF's Country Programme.

Twenty-three countries in sub-Saharan Africa are facing food emergencies for the summer season, according to FAO's latest Africa Report, issued on 6 July. Despite an overall decline in the region's food aid requirements, poor rains, internal conflicts, HIV/AIDS and a locust invasion have exposed millions of people to serious food insecurity and the need for emergency food assistance, the UN agency warned. Sub-Saharan Africa's food aid requirement for 2004 is estimated at 2.9 million tonnes, compared to around 4 million tonnes last year.

The World Health Organisation announced it was sending a team of experts to Rogo, in northern Nigeria's Kano state, to investigate a suspected outbreak of new polio cases. Kano state officials halted polio immunizations in the region last year amid fears the vaccine could lead to female sterilization. Local Islamic leaders had also alleged Western countries were using the vaccination campaign to spread HIV and cancer in Nigeria to reduce the Muslim-dominant population.

The global AIDS epidemic continued to pick up pace last year as a record 5 million people became infected with HIV, more than in any other single year, according to a biannual report released by the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). The 2004 UNAIDS Report of The Global AIDS Epidemic found that the number of people living with HIV/AIDS has risen in every region in the world to reach 38 million. The report also found that while global spending on AIDS has risen 15-fold since 1996 - from $300 million to nearly $5 billion last year - it remains inadequate, since the world will need to spend $12 billion annually by 2005 and $20 billion annually by 2007 to fight AIDS effectively in developing countries.

The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research is calling for Proposals (in collaboration with The International Development Research Centre (IDRC), to strengthen health systems, promote civic engagement, and make research matter. The aim of this exercise is to support the integration of political, economic, social and policy analysis into research on public health and health care systems and policies in Eastern and Southern Africa. Only proposals focusing on this region will be considered. The research should provide solid grounds for making informed and needs-based decisions on the equitable financing and functioning of health systems.

Four people have died and 540 others have been hospitalised following an outbreak of typhoid fever in northwestern Rwanda, Desire Ndushabandi, the health ministry's secretary-general, told IRIN last Thursday. "We have embarked on an intensive campaign to sensitise the population on the need to improve their sanitation," he said.

Nearly $6 billion is needed to reach the World Health Organization's goal of providing three million people with antiretroviral drugs by 2005, according to estimates published in a special July 3 edition of the Lancet devoted to HIV/AIDS, Reuters reports. The 3 by 5 Initiative also calls for training 100,000 health care workers, refocusing 10,000 clinics in developing countries to treat HIV/AIDS and using common antiretroviral drug combinations to treat HIV-positive people.

Many programmes celebrate family and community-based care for orphans and vulnerable children, but few recognise that the human face of these families and communities is usually that of an older woman. About 13 million children have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS, the vast majority in sub-Saharan Africa. New analysis of data from UNICEF and USAID-supported surveys in sub-Saharan Africa shows that nine out of ten orphans are cared for by the extended family and that about 30 per cent of all households in sub-Saharan Africa are headed by an older person.

"I will call him Paul though that is not his real name. Paul is a young man. He spoke with difficulty because both upper and lower jaw had been smashed by his assailants. Clearly imprinted on his back was the mark left by a belt, and his right hand was visibly damaged. His feet were lacerated such that he could only walk with great difficulty. And the reason for this appalling brutality? Paul was known as an MDC supporter in the Lupane area where he lives." 26 June was the United Nations Day in support of the victims of torture, and the occasion was marked by two major events drawing attention to the plight of torture victims in Zimbabwe, reports www.sokwanele.com.

A number of staff members have been suspended at Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital over allegations of theft, corruption and negligence. The hospital's chief executive, Dr Emma Bondarenko, who took over the reins in November after the redeployment of the institution's management, on Wednesday said that a number of staff members - comprising nurses, clerks and security personnel - have been suspended for various alleged transgressions, including graft.

The findings of the United Nations Secretary General’s Task Force on Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa show that gender inequality fuels HIV infection because many women and girls cannot negotiate safer sex or turn down unwanted sex. The findings also demonstrate that HIV/AIDS deepens and exacerbates women’s poverty and inequality because it requires them to do more domestic labour as they care for the sick, the dying and the orphaned.

Harare Central Hospital is refusing to allow 28 mothers with newly born babies to leave the institution until millions of dollars are paid for in maternity fees. The hospital says it recovers 87% of the fees through detaining mothers and babies but almost nothing under an older instalment plan. Some of the women in one of the post-natal wards said that they were ordered to stay in the maternity wing by hospital officials after they had said they had no money. At its height the action taken by the hospital in order to recover its fees can only be described as the 'criminalisaton of poverty in Zimbabwe'. The message from the Hospital Authorities was a clear one, if you are poor don't bother coming here, our services are reserved for those who can afford to buy them.

Kenya is to develop a national strategy for both promoting and regulating the use of traditional medicine, and providing alternative forms of treatment to the country's poor. The new arrangement will boost research into the use of both traditional knowledge and modern medicines to curb major diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria.