Ethiopia has the ninth highest tuberculosis (TB) burden in the world. Given the country's limited resources, decision-makers need to optimise case detection without overloading the health system. Patients currently have to produce three sputum specimens for testing. Are the second and third sputum tests really necessary?

Africa, the world's poorest continent, has to usher in good governance and tackle Aids on a war footing if it is to catch up with the rest of the world, Bostwana President Festus Mogae said on Sunday while inaugurating a global conference of civil society activists. "Ensuring good governance and democracy is widely accepted as one of the key prerequisites to sustainable development and security and, as such, constitutes a core part of Africa's promise," Mogae told a gathering of international delegates attending the five-day summit. The conference is organised by Civicus, a global alliance of groups dedicated to citizens' participation based in some 125 countries.

The cholera death toll in Mozambique has risen to 90 since December, a senior health official told IRIN on Wednesday. The country had recorded 15,833 cases from 20 December up to Wednesday, in the provinces of Maputo, Gaza, Sofala, Zambezia, Nampula, Inhambane and Tete, said Gofe Chavele of the Ministry of Health. At 9,841 cases, the capital, Maputo, had the highest concentration of infections.

Malawi joined other countries Wednesday in commemorating World TB Day - this to draw attention to a disease that claimed two million lives last year, according to the World Health Organisation. However, the efforts of Malawian officials to curb tuberculosis are being dogged by the theft of TB drugs from state hospitals. Felix Salaniponi, Programme Manager for the country's National TB Control Programme, says the stolen drugs are often used to treat ailments other than TB: “These include non-specific coughs, bloody diarrhoea, sexually transmitted infections and some HIV/AIDS-related conditions.”

South Africa's long-delayed national rollout of AIDS drugs will begin in April when the government makes funds available to all nine provinces, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday. The country's biggest AIDS pressure group, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), had threatened to take the government to court before the April 14 elections unless it began the rollout.

Aids experts warned on Tuesday that Africa should stop using a drug which has been hailed as one of the continent's best tools in fighting the HIV pandemic. They said the drug, nevirapine, which reduces the number of mothers transmitting the HIV virus to new-born babies, risks doing more harm than good. Single doses of nevirapine should make way for a much costlier but less risky alternative, said Sant'Egidio, an Italian non-governmental organisation. The single dose might be cheap and easy to administer, but nevirapine left too many babies born with HIV, did not extend the lives of mothers, and was responsible for growing resistance to other anti-Aids drugs, it was claimed.

The number of tuberculosis patients diagnosed and treated under DOTS, the internationally recommended strategy for TB control, is now rising much faster than at any time since DOTS expansion began in 1995, according to a new report by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Indeed, the past two years have witnessed accelerated growth in the implementation of DOTS programmes worldwide. The 2004 Global Tuberculosis Control report confirms that DOTS programmes are now treating three million TB patients every year, an increase of more than one million patients compared to just two years ago.

How can countries support increasing numbers of vulnerable households? What can be done to reverse the trend towards increasing destitution? This report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation looks at three case studies (in northern Namibia, southern Zambia and around Lake Victoria in Uganda) which explored the relationships among HIV/AIDS, gender, agricultural production, food security and rural livelihoods. The case studies demonstrate that the HIV/AIDS pandemic has serious implications for rural agricultural production and household food security, gender concerns and the policy environment.

The USAID HIV/AIDS E-Newsletter provides monthly updates on USAID's Office of HIV/AIDS and partner activities to prevent and mitigate HIV/AIDS across the developing world. Topics include: briefings on recent and upcoming global events, conferences, workshops, and forums; announcements of newly released publications and online resources; and links to HIV/AIDS-related documents, resources, and USAID partners' Web sites. The newsletter reflects activities exclusively to USAID and its implementing partners.

HIV/AIDS is affecting Africa’s young people and children hardest, yet they will determine the future course of the epidemic, UNICEF Regional Director Rima Salah said at the opening on Monday of a pan-African youth forum focusing on HIV/AIDS prevention and education. Hosted by the Government of Senegal, the week-long Forum aims to mobilise young, national-level activists in fighting HIV/AIDS across Africa. Forum participants include youth representatives from the seven largest youth movements across Africa, collectively called the “Big 7”. The movements are present in all 51 African countries, and reach at least 20 million young people.

A Mozambican trade unionist has raised concerns that his country is lagging behind in coming up with a roll out plan on access to Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) and the lack of involvement of his country’s civil society in the Pan African Treatment Access Movement (PATAM). Pedro Jose Mondlane, who represented the Mozambican Labour Organisation at the recently ended PATAM conference, said that while Mozambican government and civil society are focusing on the issues of stigma and discrimination, it is also important that they engage with the central issues of treatment access and literacy.

The practice of hunting and eating bushmeat in Central Africa is infecting people with a new virus. While it has not caused illness, it has spread - and scientists are watching carefully. A primate virus is thought to have triggered today's HIV pandemic.

Kaiser Daily Update 19 March 2004 reported that an Accelerating Access Initiative (AAI) release stated the number of HIV/AIDS patients in Africa who are receiving antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) provided by companies participating in the AAI has doubled over the last six months of 2003. The AAI was established in May 2000 to improve access to HIV/AIDS treatment and care in developing countries. It is a partnership of five U.N. organizations and six pharmaceutical companies.

A senior U.N. official criticized Swaziland's monarchy Saturday for failing to rein in HIV/AIDS, which now infects 38.6 percent of Swaziland's population, making the southern African nation's prevalence rate the highest in the world, Agence France-Presse reports. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, closed his three-day visit to Swaziland by slamming the kingdom's leadership for being "too slow to recognize the threat of HIV/AIDS on people's lives" and saying it would have to act with "lightning speed" if it wanted to reduce the prevalence rate.

One step forward, three steps backwards: that's how various AIDS activists, parents and teachers in Zambia are describing government's decision to ban the distribution of condoms in schools on the grounds that it promotes promiscuity. Walter Tapfumaneyi, HIV/AIDS Regional Programme Coordinator for PANOS - a non-governmental organisation - says the condoms simply afforded protection to those children who did choose to have sex.

Zackie Achmat, the leader of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), spoke at the Centre for Civil Society’s first Harold Wolpe Memorial lecture for 2004. Achmat is famous for his passionate advocacy for wider access to HIV treatment in South Africa and globally. Strategic use of South Africa’s Constitutional provision for the right to access to health care has always been key to TAC’s campaigns. As South Africa moves towards celebrating ten years of a constitutional democracy, it was apt that such a high-profile civil society leader discussed the use of the constitution as a tactic to engage with the government on development issues. In this review, the authors summarise Achmat’s talk, the interesting critiques from the floor and offer their own critical analysis of the lecture and discussion which followed it.

The United Nations and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have voiced fears that their plan to provide anti-retroviral drugs to some three million Africans with HIV/AIDS by 2005 is under threat. Although a lack of funds appears to be the basic problem, some countries involved with the project are also raising objections to the planned use of cheaper versions of medicines rather than those manufactured by well-known pharmaceutical companies.

To date, there are less than 2,500 people on the national ARV programme country-wide - and nearly all of them are in the Western Cape. The National Department of Health has admitted that it will miss its target for the end of March. TAC believes the primary reason for the failure to meet this target is the Minister of Health's lack of political will. Her justification for delaying treatment is that the tender process for antiretroviral medicines is not complete and therefore these medicines will only be available in the public health system by the end of June. But there are mechanisms in South African law allowing for emergency procurement without tender that the minister could use to secure an interim supply of ARVs. The TAC demands that the Minister does so.

Driving through Lusikisiki one is struck by the green rolling hills, the healthy looking cattle grazing in village pastures and the endless fields of maize. For those in the know, the extraordinary biodiversity of the area – with its over 1700 indigenous plants – is as impressive as the rolling hills and the maize fields. This high rainfall and fertile part of the picturesque Wild Coast is very different from so many other communal areas in South Africa that regularly experience drought. But the statistics show that not all is well in Pondoland. The district, like so many parts of South Africa, has an extremely high HIV infection rate of 24% - high for rural areas in the Eastern Cape. It also has an under-resourced provincial health department.

This paper from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) looks at the process and impact of globalisation on agriculture. It attempts to set these issues in an historical context, to highlight the main issues that need to be addressed, and to list important questions that need to be asked of policy makers throughout the agricultural industry. The authors argue that East and Central African countries have not appreciated the scale and implications of the changes brought about by globalisation and that, without urgent action on their part, they may seriously weaken their economies in the years ahead.