Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says it is concerned about the health of Abdallah Zouari, a journalist from the suspended Islamist weekly "Al-Fajr" who has been carrying on a hunger strike since 27 January 2004 to protest the worsening of his prison conditions. On their last visit, his family, who had not been allowed to see him for two weeks, found him to be in a seriously weakened physical and mental state.

Members of a Nigerian committee tasked with verifying the safety of oral polio vaccine amid suspicion that it causes HIV/AIDS and infertility have deemed the product safe, the Nigerian daily Vanguard reports. Committee members were dispatched early last month to South Africa and India to monitor analyses of the vaccine and to Indonesia to meet with scientists at a vaccine production company. The team found trace amounts of estradiol, a hormone suspected of causing infertility, but said the amounts were minute, "much less than what is found in recycled drinking water in several developed countries."

The leaders of two African countries severely hit by HIV/AIDS have agreed to cooperate in combating the pandemic. Botswana President Festus Mogae said the two countries would share experiences in fighting the virus. Botswana has one of the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the world - over 35 percent among its 1.6 million people. According to UNAIDS, the epidemic continues to gain ground and, while some successes have been made in a decade-long response, the country has been unable to keep pace. In Ethiopia, according to UNAIDS, the epidemic has progressed to become the 16th-highest prevalence rate globally.

Community Media for Development and GOAL Mozambique collaborated to develop a radio programme with a group of Street Youth in Maputo, Mozambique. The group recorded songs, skits, and messages about HIV/AIDS, sexual abuse, and children's rights in Portuguese and Shangana. The recordings were then produced into a series suitable for broadcast or educational use, and are being distributed freely to community radio stations across Mozambique. An accompanying Portuguese language activity book was also developed to be used in educational/literacy programmes. The audio may be downloaded from the Internet. For information, contact info@cmfd.

Chameleons are small, slow-moving lizards, which are supposed to have an ability to change their colour. But one day, a girl chameleon is born, the youngest in a family of thirty-eight chameleons, the only chameleon who cannot change her colour. Her fellow chameleons are worried for her because she is unable to disguise herself. But when the chameleons are threatened by first a snake, and then a bird-of-prey, this chameleon demonstrates that she has special powers and can use her eyes to deflect them. The messages of the story, which is beautifully illustrated, are that it is sometimes the ones who look as if they do not belong who can save those who think they do; and that gifts are sometimes bestowed upon those who might not look the way we think they ought; or as if they might not deserve them.

The dramatic increase in social inequalities within and among countries in the last twenty years has had a most negative impact on the health and quality of life of large sectors of the world's populations. In The Political Economy of Social Inequalities, scholars from a variety of disciplines and countries analyze the political and economic causes of these inequalities, their consequences for health, and some proposed solutions.

Some northern states opposed to the immunisation of children against polio are committing an unforgivable offence against the innocent kids and humanity, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has declared. At the forefront of the opposition to the use of polio vaccine are Bauchi, Niger, Kano and Zamfara states. The Nigerian Supreme Council for Sharia NSCS (NSCS) set the stage for the controversy last year when it alleged that the exercise was a western plot to make women in the North infertile.

No one is sure just how many people have died due to HIV/AIDS in this town of 15,000 but to the people who live here, the deaths are adding up. The rising death rate here as well as across sub-Saharan Africa, where 29 million people are living with the disease, were enough evidence for 36-year-old Nduka Ozor, a Lagos-based business man and coordinator of the community’s Youth Forum, that people needed to get the facts about the disease.

According to Agence France-Presse (AFP) on February 26 2004, the First Conference for the Advancement of Sexual Health and Rights in Africa opened in Johannesburg. The range of discussion topics includes issues such as: abortion laws, and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights.

As U.S. policymakers continue to debate "appropriate" funding levels to fight AIDS in Africa, and just days after the release of the Bush Administration's Global HIV/AIDS Strategy, Africa Action & TransAfrica Forum have released a document entitled "10 Reasons Why the U.S. should commit at least $15 billion to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa NOW." The document calls for a reversal of the current U.S. policy approach, urging an immediate front-end investment to combat HIV/AIDS rather than the incremental scaling up of funding in future years.

More than 500 cases of cholera have been reported over the past seven weeks in Douala, the largest city in Cameroon, and at least 13 people have died of the disease, according to government statistics. However, health workers told IRIN that the real cholera infection rate in the heavily polluted port city of 2.5 million people could be much higher than official figures suggest.

The government of Burkina Faso has urged traditional healers in West Africa to collaborate with scientific researchers in the fight against HIV/AIDS by using herbal treatments to address AIDS-related illnesses such as tuberculosis and diarrhoea. Jean Gabriel Wango, the secretary general of the Ministry of Health, made the appeal at the opening of a week-long international exhibition of traditional medicines in the capital Ouagadougou on Monday.

Angola risks being ravaged by deadly sleeping sickness as hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people return home in peacetime, spreading the parasite that causes the disease, Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned. The global medical-relief organisation said the scourge -- officially known as Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT) – was in danger of making a lethal comeback after being almost eradicated before Angola’s devastating 27-year civil war, which ended almost two years ago.

A three-member team of nurses from Medicos Sin Fronteras (MSF-Spain) arrived on Wednesday in the northwestern town of Batangafo, in the Central African Republic (CAR), to verify a meningitis outbreak reported on 1 February, the MSF country representative told IRIN. "The team has a mobile laboratory to carry out Pastorex [meningitis] tests on the ground and will leave anti-meningitis drugs in the Batangafo health centre," Dr Carlos Recio said.

A nurses' strike has shut down most of Swaziland's health care system, drawing attention to financial and technical shortcomings, and the problems besetting the nursing profession. "While we continue our strike action, doctors and orderlies will have to take care of patients," said the president of the Swaziland Nurses Association, Masitsela Mhlanga, at a press conference last Thursday. Nurses are striking over the government's inability to pay salaries on time, back pay and salary increases.

Health Minister Urbain Olanguena Awono has opened an administrative and judicial inquiry into a news story that appeared in the private newspaper "Le Messager". The minister was angered by the paper's publication of an article in its 18 February edition (issue 1624), which reported on the administration of a vaccine of poor quality to individuals affected by the cholera epidemic that has struck Douala, Cameroon's second largest city (240 kilometres south of Yaounde), in the last seven weeks.

Malawi is building measures into all facets of public policy against HIV/AIDS in an effort to stem the spread of the virus and improve treatment and care for the 14 per cent of its population living with the disease. A national policy President Bakili Muluzi launched earlier this month in Blantyre would require legislative changes to promote prevention and better protect those living with HIV/AIDS, including invalidating infection as grounds for job dismissal and offering tax incentives for employers who provide comprehensive HIV/AIDS programmes.

Cheaper drugs, certificates of need, social health insurance? Has government made sudden and major shifts in health policy? From the African National Congress’ perspective it is perhaps timely in a year that we celebrate the 10th anniversary of democracy and with a general election only a few months away, that three critical pieces of health legislation are about to be signed into law or are being drafted for future legislation. The three pieces include Regulations relating to a Transparent Pricing System for Medicines and Scheduled Substances (Medicines and Related Substances Act of 1997), Social Health Insurance (Medical Schemes Act of 1998) and the Certificate of Need (National Health Bill – still to be signed into law by the President).

HIV/AIDS is a development problem, not just a health problem, and change is required in attitudes and consciousness of what HIV/AIDS is doing at different levels and the pathways through which it moves through societies, argues this paper that discusses the impact of HIV/AIDS on development efforts, particularly in Africa, and presents a new approach to guide agriculture and food policies. It argues that one major set of responses is required from the agriculture sector, as the need to secure and provision food for populations affected by HIV/AIDS is rapidly increasing as the impact waves hit.

Mothers in some parts of rural Mali are being given free mosquito nets impregnated with insecticide if they take their children for full series of vaccinations against preventable diseases such as measles and polio. Health workers told IRIN that this programme had significantly reduced infant mortality and malnutrition in a region where child deaths amongst the highest in the world.