Service delivery at city council hospitals and polyclinics has been disrupted by a nurses strike in Zimbabwe's capital Harare. The nurses went on strike on Monday over a salary dispute with the city council, demanding a second 100 percent salary hike after receiving a similar increase in January. Chairman of the Harare Municipal Workers' Union, Cosmas Bungu, said the 100 percent salary increase awarded to council workers in January this year was not enough to keep pace with the rising cost of living. Inflation has hovered around 600 percent in recent months.

The northern Nigerian state of Kano says it has obtained a "safe" polio vaccine from Indonesia. But Kano government spokesman Sule Yau Sule told BBC News Online the vaccine would be tested further before it is given to children. Kano opted out of an immunisation campaign last year, when some Islamic leaders said it was part of a western plot to render Muslim women infertile.

The Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) has approved guidelines on handling aid relating to genetically modified foods (GMs) following recommendations by its advisory committee on biotechnology and biosafety formed last year. According to the guidelines on biotechnology and bio-safety obtained by Zana at the on-going SADC summit on agriculture and food security, member countries recommended that the sourcing of food aid should be within the region. The region should develop and adopt a harmonised transit information and management system for genetically modified aid designed to facilitate trans boundary movement in a safe and expeditious manner.

Few poisons have ridden such a roller coaster through environmental history as DDT. Once hailed as a miracle pesticide, DDT is outlawed as one of a "Dirty Dozen" chemicals as of Monday, even as it stays in use as a controversial spray against malaria-spreading mosquitoes. The man who discovered its power to kill insects won a Nobel Prize in 1948, while shock at its damage to wildlife awoke a global environmental movement in the 1960s. Into the 21st century, countries including South Africa and Ethiopia still swear by DDT to combat malaria, which kills a million people a year.

HIV/AIDS is having a devastating effect on food security in Africa with families reducing their food intake as the first strategy to cope with the increased financial burden of caring for a sick and dying family member. Dr Emmanuel Ariga of Kenya’s Tropical Institute of Community Health and Development told delegates at the 2nd African Conference on Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS Research that the disease was also robbing people of the energy and initiative for food production. Based on United Nations' estimates, the disease has killed seven million African farmers, hindering food production throughout the continent.

The spokesman for the president of Botswana, Dr Jeff Ramsay, has threatened legal action against a number of organisations over comments attributed to him regarding Botswana's relations with Zimbabwe. In an article entitled "Tetchy cross-border relations with Botswana", Ramsay was reported as saying: ""Botswana has noted with growing concern openly hostile reports against the government and the people of Botswana, which can only be interpreted as a deliberate and systematic attempt to fuel hatred and xenophobia between our people." The comments were actually made by Bostwana's foreign affairs spokesman, Cliff Maribe.

Health ministers from several African countries last Thursday while in Rome called on wealthy countries to provide more assistance to deliver "high quality" drug treatment for individuals living with HIV/AIDS and called on pharmaceutical companies to lower antiretroviral drug prices "to the point of being compatible with the weak resources of our countries," Agence France-Presse reports. At a two-day conference sponsored by the Community of Sant'Egidio health ministers from the Central African Republic, Congo, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Sudan, Tanzania and Togo released a statement saying that treatment for HIV/AIDS should be considered a "human right," according to Agence France-Presse.

Rights group Amnesty International on Friday expressed grave concern at the Zimbabwe government's cancellation of a food assessment mission aimed at establishing possible need for relief aid. "The government has told international donors that it will not need food aid this year. On 7 May the government stopped a UN Crop and Food Supply Assessment Mission from evaluating the current harvest. This was followed by statements in the state-controlled Herald newspaper, attributed to the Minister for Agriculture, claiming that Zimbabwe has produced more grain than it needs this year," Amnesty said.

Internews has opened a Media Resource Centre in Nairobi, stocked with more than 2000 HIV/AIDS publications, to provide Kenyan journalists with desperately needed resources to produce stories about HIV/AIDS. The Media Resource Centre has five computers with high-speed internet access available for research, and radio digital editing programs for producing stories on HIV/AIDS. An electronic database system makes the publications easily searchable and accessible. All services are available to journalists free of charge.

The HIV prevalence rate has slightly dropped in Nigeria. The release of the 2003 sentinel survey indicated that the prevalence rate has decreased slightly from 5.8 per cent in 2001. Previous surveys have shown that HIV prevalence has been increasing consistently from 1.8 per cent in 1991, to 5.8 per cent in 2001. Researchers, aware that HIV awareness was higher than in previous years but that this had not been translated into behaviour change, anticipated that the 2002 prevalence rate would follow the trend.

The United States and other wealthy countries could bring the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa "under control" by working together, partnering with African nations and contributing more resources and effort, Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute and special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said. Sachs said that although HIV/AIDS has been "allowed to run rampant in the poorest countries without almost any attention ... from us until very, very recently," the United States was "starting to act" with the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which seeks to provide treatment to two million HIV-positive people living in 14 African and Caribbean countries.

The government of Burkina Faso said last Thursday that 25 suspected cases of yellow fever had been reported in the southeastern city of Bobo-Dioulasso and the nearby town of Gaoua, which is close to the border with Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana and four of them had been confirmed. A Ministry of Health official told IRIN by telephone from the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou that 16 blood samples had been collected from the suspected victims of the mosquito-borne disease. Laboratory tests carried out by the Pasteur Institute in Dakar Senegal had so far confirmed four cases of yellow fever among them.

Handicapped by a lack of donations, the U.N.-backed Roll Back Malaria campaign will likely fall far short of its goal of halving the number of malaria deaths worldwide by 2010, Agence France-Presse reports. The number of malaria deaths has not dropped since 1998, when the campaign was launched by health activists, governments and international agencies including UNICEF, the World Health Organisation, the U.N. Development Program and the World Bank. More than 1 million people die annually, nine-tenths of them in Africa, and most are children under 5.

Malawi soon will begin a five-year, $196 million nationwide program to provide antiretroviral drugs to HIV-positive people at no cost, Xinhuanet reports. The program is to be funded by a grant from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Malawi's Health Minister Yusuf Mwawa said that 50 sites throughout the country will participate in the program, including hospitals run by the Malawi Defence Force and Malawi Police Service - two agencies "seriously hit" by the HIV/AIDS epidemic - according to Xinhuanet.

More than 700,000 South African children aged 14 years and younger are HIV-positive, according to figures reported last week. A survey by the Human Sciences Research Council found that the Aids epidemic was as widespread among the country's young as in the population at large. An estimated 5.7 million of South Africa's 45 million people are infected with the virus, giving it the largest HIV-positive population in the world. The survey found that 5.4% of two to 14-year-olds were HIV-positive, compared with 5.3% of the total population. Among two to nine-year-olds the infection rate was 6.7%.

Those campaigning against Third World Debt have long argued that crippling levels of debt have been a severe block to the development of African countries, causing widespread poverty and hardship. Six years ago, over 70,000 Jubilee 2000 supporters formed a human chain in Birmingham to call for the cancellation of the debts of some of the world's poorest nations. To mark this occasion, World Debt Day on May 16 is intended to call attention to the ongoing debt crisis, provide a global rallying point for all those who continue to care about the suffering being caused by debt and encourage campaigners by providing an opportunity for action and advocacy. Pambazuka News emailed a list of questions to Demba Moussa Dembele, Director of the Forum for African Alternatives in Senegal, to gauge where Africa stands in the debt stakes.

PAMBAZUKA : Why should people care about World Debt Day?

DEMBELE: The day commemorates one of the largest gatherings ever held to call world attention to the impact of the Debt Crisis. It was on May 16, 1998, during the G7 Summit in Birmingham, (GB) that the call on Western and Japanese leaders to cancel poor countries' debt went out. That day was a turning point in the Jubilee 2000 Campaign and helped put the debt issue on centre stage.

PAMBAZUKA : Briefly, what is the impact of the current levels of debt on the development of African countries?

DEMBELE :

* Sub-Saharan Africa's debt accounts for 71% of its GDP;
* The debt represents more than 180% of exports;
* Debt service absorbs 12-13% of exports receipts on average;
* Accumulated arrears (debt service that could not be paid) represents more than 30% of current debt levels;
* Since 1988, Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) is getting very little in terms of new loans. A greater part of some of the loans we hear about is used to service old debts;
* Unsustainable debt deters foreign direct investments.

PAMBAZUKA : If the negative effects of unsustainable debt are so well documented, why are the debt-collecting institutions and countries so reluctant to intervene in an area of such obvious importance?

DEMBELE :

* The debt bondage is the new face of colonialism or even slavery;
* Debt is used as an instrument of domination: it is at the heart of the unequal power relations between the North and the South. It is also an instrument used to plunder and exploit indebted countries' resources;
* Debt is an instrument of resource transfer from the South to the North. In 2002, according to the UN, net transfers from the South to the North were estimated at $200 billion. During the four previous years, net transfers from the South amounted $120 billion a year;
* The IMF & the World Bank use debt as a tool to impose their disastrous policies. Without that tool they would have a very limited or no influence in Africa or elsewhere.

PAMBAZUKA : Many people point to the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) as evidence that something is being done to resolve the debt crisis. Others argue that the HIPC is a sham and has not led to significantly improved levels of debt relief. In your opinion, what progress has been made and what more needs to be done?

DEMBELE :

* So far 11 countries, including 9 in SSA, have achieved the completion point. But almost all of these countries did not have "sustainable" debt levels as the World Bank predicted in its Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA);
* The amount of debt "cancelled" for these countries is minimal compared to their overall debt. It is less than 20%;
* At this pace, it would take a quarter century to see all eligible countries achieve the completion point;
* The only solution to the debt crisis is total debt cancellation. Nothing less.

PAMBAZUKA : Many have claimed that much of the debt owed by African countries (for example, the apartheid debt owed by South Africa) is illegitimate and that in actual fact, Western countries owe Africa for centuries of exploitation. Is this view gaining ground?

DEMBELE: Since the World Conference on Racism in Durban (South Africa) in 2001, the issue of reparations has been accepted by world public opinion. Of course, some European countries and the United States have shunned the Conference for fear of being exposed. However, the idea is gaining ground every day. In Africa, more and more voices -intellectuals, policy makers, activists, etc.- use every opportunity to remind the world, especially the West, that it is Africa that is owed an immeasurable debt. In addition, the work of Jubilee South - the international debt network - and other national or regional networks has helped promote the idea of reparations in various forms.

PAMBAZUKA : What's stopping African countries from simply defaulting on their debt and channelling the resources into health and education?

DEMBELE :

* Many African leaders are beholden to the West. They are afraid of standing up to them;
* In addition, these leaders are afraid of challenging the World Bank and the IMF. Some of them are even afraid of supporting the call for debt cancellation. I remember a former Tanzanian Finance Minister saying in Washington, DC, that his country does not support the idea of multilateral debt cancellation because this would "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs".
* Collective debt repudiation is a political decision. At this juncture, it is not easy to see a unified political position that would support debt repudiation. But civil society organisations are working on it. We think that by exposing the hypocrisy and bad faith of bilateral and multilateral creditors and showing the disastrous impact of debt on Africa's human development indicators it will be possible some day to convince an enlightened leadership to move toward that decision.

PAMBAZUKA : Recently there has been talk of debt swaps. What are debt swaps and are they an effective method of alleviating the debt crisis?

DEMBELE: Debt swaps are a mechanism by which part of a country's debt is sold by one or several of its creditors (private creditors) to another entity that invests the proceed in the same country. For instance, a commercial bank that seeks to get rid of its loan to a country like Senegal, will sell that loan - generally at a deep discount to an investor, a corporation, -which entity will use the face value of the debt to invest in a publicly-owned company in Senegal. There are several kinds of swaps, such as debt-equity swaps, whereby, a corporation that bought part of Senegal's debt uses it to buy shares in an existing State-owned company. This mechanism has been extensively used in Latin America and in a few cases in Sub-Saharan Africa. Another type of swap is debt-for nature swap, a case in which an environmental group buys a country's debt and uses the proceeds for environmental protection.

Since swaps involve only private debt, it cannot be an effective mechanism for debt alleviation given the fact that almost 90 percent of poor African countries' debt is public. And swaps are a mechanism for transferring public assets to foreign hands. For this reason, it is not a good solution for those countries that have a substantial commercial debt, like Nigeria.

PAMBAZUKA: If the current levels of debt and debt repayment burdens continue, what is the prognosis for African countries over the next ten years?

DEMBELE: Right now, many African countries are not servicing their debt. Or they do so by incurring new debts. Therefore, if the current levels of debt burden continue, over the next ten years:

* Many African countries may be totally stripped of their sovereignty;
* The levels of poverty will worsen and millions of lives will be at risk;
* There will be a total collapse of the State and other public institutions;
* The Millennium Development Goals will not be achieved.

PAMBAZUKA: Who do people need to target if they are concerned about the debt issue
and want to make an impact? Who are the stakeholders?

DEMBELE: The targets are:

* G 8 leaders (major bilateral creditors and masters of the IFIs);
* IMF and the World Bank (multilateral debt has overtaken bilateral debt in many cases);
* The Western credit agencies (that guarantee private debts);
* The Parliaments of Western countries;
* The United Nations system (to take a clear stand on debt cancellation);
* The African governments (to form a united front and eventually move toward debt repudiation).

* Please send comments to [email protected]

* Our thanks to Demba Moussa Dembele for answering these questions in between a busy schedule that included a 36-hour holdover at Jomo Kenyatta Airport.

* NOTE FOR EDITORS: Please note that this editorial was commissioned from the author for Pambazuka News. While we are pleased that several print publications have used our editorials, we ask editors to note that if they use this article, they do so on the understanding that they are expected to provide the following credit: "This article first appeared in Pambazuka News, an electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa, www.pambazuka.org". Editors are also encouraged to make a donation.

A major donor from the United Kingdom, the Department for International Development (DFID), has confirmed that it will channel its funding for HIV/Aids programmes only through the government, ThisDay reports. That’s after committing R500m to South Africa and R3bn to Africa. This endorses a call at an April 2004 meeting, when the United Nations together with the United States, the World Bank and the Global Fund to fight Aids, TB and Malaria agreed that governments should be the sole administer of HIV/Aids donor funding.

Over 100 Ethiopian health workers have undergone training in the treatment and management of severely malnourished children, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported on Tuesday. The health workers will in turn be deployed to various hospitals to train others, UNICEF added. The trained health workers included 41 nurses, 12 doctors and 54 medical officers. They were trained at the Addis Ababa, Gondar and Jimma universities, UNICEF said in a statement.

Central African Republic (CAR) health officials have begun door-to-door polio immunisation campaigns in the northern provinces of Bamingui-Bangoran and Vakaga, state-owned Radio Centrafrique reported on Monday. An assistant to the director of regional services in the Ministry of Health, Dr Jean-Pierre Mandabingo, said the campaigns mainly target children aged up to five years.

Fifty-seven people died of malaria in Zimbabwe last week, bringing the toll to 500 since the start of the rainy season this year, government medical officials said on Tuesday. Medical experts have attributed the rising number of deaths to the heavy rain in most parts of the country, coupled with a lack of funds and chemicals to carry out routine spraying.