They sat patiently. Thousands of delegates who poured in for the inaugural plenary on “Land, Water and Food Sovereignty” on Jan 17, waited for the star cast to emerge on the stage. In the next four days, food security emerged as one of the hot topics of the WSF. Food activist Devinder Sharma writes: "I was amazed to see that in each and every of the 14 sessions that I chaired or spoke at, the halls were overflowing. At the same time, what was more significant was that the audience was not the same that moved from one session to another. Even if I had continued delivering the same speech session after session, I would have found enough takers for my analysis. It is heartening to find the social movements and the civil society realizing the importance of the growing threat to food sovereignty as the main cause to rally around."

A United Kingdom government code of practice restricting National Health Service recruitment of nurses from developing countries may not be succeeding in its aim of reversing a potentially dangerous “brain drain”, according to a recent report. Taking the example of South Africa, the OECD found that, after a fall in nurses leaving for the UK from 1,460 in 1999 to 1,086 in 2000, numbers shot up by 45% in 2001 to reach 2,114 – two and a half times as many as in 1998.

The Minister of Health, Prof Eyitayo Lambo, has stated that the result of the baseline assessment study of Nigeria's pharmaceutical sector indicated that there was inadequate supply of key drugs at public health facilities, a situation which he said demanded radical health reforms. The minister said the results of the study indicated inadequate record keeping, especially at the primary health care level, irrational prescription of drugs, and higher utilisation of private sector facility than the public sector.

Authorities in northern Nigeria’s Kano State said on Sunday the suspension of polio immunisation in the state would remain in force until their fears about the vaccines used were adequately addressed. Reacting to a declaration signed on Thursday by Nigeria’s Minister of Health Eyitayo Lambo, pledging to immunise all Nigerian children against polio, Kano State spokesman Sule Yau Sule said vaccination could only resume in the state when authorities were convinced that the vaccines were safe. Kano State was among three northern states that halted polio immunisation in October following allegations by Islamic leaders that the vaccine to be administered to thousands of children was contaminated with HIV and anti-fertility agents.

A survey, whose results were made public on Wednesday, shows that 8,000 clandestine abortions are carried out every year in the capital alone, Ouagadougou, on teenage girls between 15 and 19 years old. "These abortions represent a real danger for the women's health because 60 percent of them end up with very serious complications," said Baya Banza, the director of the Unit for the Teaching and Research in Demography (UERD) and coordinator of the survey.

This position will have overall responsibility for the planning, coordination, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of CARE-Angola's health portfolio, which includes polio eradication, maternal-child health, scabies control, and health post rehabilitation projects. Knowledge of Portuguese or French language required.

The World Health Organisation has announced a plan to expand collaboration between national tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS programs to curb the growing pandemic of TB/HIV co-infection, focusing mainly on Africa, where 70 percent of the world's 14 million co-infected people live. "TB/HIV is a deadly combination and needs to be tackled with an approach treating the whole person," said WHO Director General Lee Jong-wook. "With effective treatment, TB can be cured, HIV managed, and the health of millions of people preserved."

Proper nutrition is a powerful good: people who are well-fed are generally healthy. Healthy women can lead more fulfilling lives; healthy children learn more in school and out. Good nutrition benefits families, their communities and the world as a whole. Malnutrition is, by the same logic, devastating. It plays a part in more than half of all child deaths worldwide. It perpetuates poverty. Malnutrition blunts the intellect and saps the productivity of everyone it touches, says a new report released by Unicef for the World Economic Forum.

For many young women in Nairobi's crowded Kibera slum, life is fraught with danger in addition to the hardship they share with other residents of one of Africa's poorest neighbourhoods. They live in constant fear of violence, rape, sexual abuse, HIV/AIDS, unequal access to education, and excessive domestic responsibilities.

Nigeria has endorsed the new mass immunisation campaigns that aim to vaccinate 250 million children against polio announced after an emergency meeting at the World Health Organisation. Nigeria's Health Minister was the first to sign the declaration followed by Afghanistan, India, Egypt, Niger and Pakistan - the remaining polio endemic countries.

Recent articles by South African author and journalist Rian Malan arguing that AIDS statistics are grossly exaggerated (http://www.lewrockwell.com/spectator/spec192.html) have caused a stormy debate about the seriousness of HIV/AIDS in Africa. In this article, available in full by clicking on the link below, Nathan Geffen from the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) responds to Malan. "Unfortunately, there is overwhelming evidence that mortality due to HIV in South Africa is immense; it is probably the largest single cause of premature death in South Africa. Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Tanzania, - some of the countries referred to by Malan - are also experiencing very large HIV epidemics. The number of AIDS cases in South Africa is demonstrably growing but the situation is not hopeless: we can alleviate the epidemic by substantially increasing prevention and treatment efforts as government has recently committed to doing," says Geffen.

A government programme in Nigeria to provide anti-retrovirals, the drugs which help people infected with HIV/Aids, has run out of supplies. At least 12,000 people have been receiving the drugs from clinics at about a tenth of market value for more than a year.

This paper identifies several avenues through which cross-infections take place in the Northeast African context. It suggests that supranational (or regional) organisations, such as the Inter-Governmental Agency for Development or the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, gear themselves to address such issues that require the involvement of more than one country. It provides a list of issues with which such regional organisations could start.

2004 is shaping up as the year of prison reform in Swaziland, and AIDS is the catalyst. "It would be wrong to suggest that prisons are inhumane in Swaziland, but there is much room for improvement to make them safe from HIV infection, inmate abuse and other ills that are more or less endemic to African prisons," said an officer with the Correctional Services, which administers the kingdom's prison system. This person spoke on condition of anonymity.

Africa Telehealth Group, in close collaboration with MED-e-TEL, will be holding a satellite symposium concurrently with the MED-e-TEL 2004 International Trade Fair (as part of a major African telehealth conference planned for Yaounde, Cameroun, June 12-16, 2004). The theme of the satellite symposium, as captured in its title, is: "The African Diaspora, Telehealth and Telemedicine: A Symposium for Joint Action". While focusing on Africans in the Diaspora, the symposium would, nonetheless, seek to pool the energies of both continental Africans and those Africans born or living outside the African continent who have knowledge, expertise, or a passion to contribute to the effective development of e-health in Africa. As well, organisations/businesses from or outside Africa seeking to exhibit their products or services during the symposium/trade fair are invited to formally express their interest. For more information contact Raymond Micah of the Africa Telehealth Group at [email protected]

UNAIDS last Tuesday urged caution in interpreting a recent study that implied that Kenya's HIV prevalence rate has decreased or is overestimated, Agence France-Presse reports. Researchers administering the Kenyan survey interviewed 8,561 Kenyan men and women to collect health information. In addition, 70% of the participants agreed to have blood samples taken for HIV testing. Researchers found that 6.7% of Kenyans are HIV-positive, compared with a previous estimate of 9.4% by the country's Ministry of Health. UNAIDS in a statement said that the study should not be interpreted as a sign that the severity of Kenya's epidemic has been overestimated. Although the statement said that UNAIDS "welcome(s)" household studies, it questioned the dramatic differences in prevalence rates between men and women.

A major landmark in the nation's response to HIV/AIDS was recorded in Nigeria as it launched a comprehensive baseline survey that depicts reproductive health and HIV indices in the country. Tagged "2003 National HIV/AIDS & Reproductive Health Survey" (NARHS), the survey was conducted by the Federal Ministry of Health in collaboration with the Society for Family Health (SFH), a non governmental organisation dedicated to the alleviation of suffering and poverty in Nigeria by improving reproductive, maternal and child health) and other development partners.

More than a 1,000 people died of malaria in Zimbabwe during 2003, according to a report published by the UN Relief and Recovery unit in the capital, Harare. Confirming the figure, World Health Organisation (WHO) official Jasper Pasipamire said the high number of deaths was a "cause for concern." Pasipamire said one of the major factors influencing malaria mortality rates in the country was the failure to detect malaria cases at primary health care centres. A total of 682,855 cases, with 1,099 deaths, were recorded by the end of the year and confirmed by Zimbabwean health authorities.

The National Department of Health, through the Chief Directorate: HIV, Aids, Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STIs) and Tuberculosis (TB), has invited national non-profit organisations (NPOs) working in the field of HIV, Aids and TB to apply for funding. NPOs are considered to be national entities if they provide a service in three or more provinces.

The impact of HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa is now well recognised, but the critical question is whether enough funding has been allocated to deal with the epidemic, a report by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) said. In April 2001 in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, African leaders committed themselves to allocating at least 15 percent of government expenditure to the health sector. But except for Zimbabwe and South Africa, none of the other Southern African countries surveyed in the report - Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland - had fulfilled this promise.