The impact of HIV/AIDS on food security in Southern Africa is now well recognised. The critical question is what can be done to halt the slide into poverty by affected households, a report released on Wednesday by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said. "Even in situations where the maize harvest is quite good, as it appears to be this season at the regional level, the fact that we have such high (HIV) infection rates requires more livelihood support interventions than otherwise would be the case. Good [cereal] production may not be enough to sustain people as it would have been 10 years ago," Neil Marsland, one of the authors of the report, told IRIN.

Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA) is an initiative to provide free or low-cost access to major scientific journals in agriculture and related biological, environmental and social sciences to public institutions in developing countries. Launched on 14 October 2003, AGORA provides access to over 400 journals from the world's leading academic publishers.

More than 2 million people - 200,000 of them children - are living with HIV in Ethiopia, according to the government. Some of these people living in Addis Ababa can now expect to receive assistance from community groups such as Idir’s. Idirs are community groups to which people pay subscriptions towards meeting funeral and mourning costs. They have a very long reach among communities and are found in almost all parts of the country. The increasing numbers of people living with AIDS has encouraged them to change their mandate and will focus on caring for those still alive as well as their more traditional roles.

A cholera outbreak in Maputo, capital city of Mozambique, has killed six people since Christmas, and there is concern that the number could increase dramatically. The government is set to have a meeting with international aid agencies and donors to put forward its concerns and possibly appeal for assistance.

Doctors have begun clinical trials of an experimental vaccine for malaria in Burkina Faso and say they are encouraged by the initial results. The vaccine could become generally available within five years if it proves successful. Health Ministry officials said the MSP3 vaccine had been developed by the Pasteur Institute in France and was being tested on a group of 30 healthy people aged between 18 and 40.

Benin and Cameroon, previously certified free of polio virus, have been re-infected by strains from neighbouring Nigeria, prompting the World Health Organisation (WHO) to call an urgent meeting in Geneva on 15 January of health ministers of polio-affected countries. WHO said in a statement on Friday that ministers of health from Nigeria, Cameroon, Benin, Pakistan, India and Egypt would meet with international partners from WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Rotary International and the U.S. Centres for Disease Control. The objective would be “to immediately intensify efforts to stop poliovirus transmission globally by the end of 2004.”

At least nine people have died from an outbreak of acute gastro-enteritis in Moundou, the main town in southern Chad, following the breakdown of its water works which has led people to drink polluted water from wells and the local river, the Ministry of Health said in a statement. The ministry said 90 people had fallen ill with acute diarrhoea and vomiting since the town's main water pumping station broke down in late December.

The Global Health Council is currently accepting nominations for the annual JONATHAN MANN AWARD FOR GLOBAL HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS. This award has been established by Association Francois-Xavier Bagnoud, Doctors of the World and the Global Health Council to be presented annually to a leading practitioner in health and human rights. The substantial cash prize is meant to allow its recipients a measure of freedom to pursue their work in this important area. Nominations are due by Feb. 3, 2004. For information, please visit our website, http://www.globalhealth.org/view_top.php3?id=94 or contact Carrie Peterson at [email protected]

Environmental lobby group, Biowatch, has said that the Department of Agriculture has flouted its own rules by simultaneously awarding Syngenta the go-ahead to carry out field trials of GM maize seed and commercially release the crop. "The simultaneous application … does not meet basic practice procedures for biosafety and undermines the primary purpose of field trials," said Haidee Swanby of Biowatch SA. The dual application also violated the environmental impact assessment provisions of the National Environmental Management Act and was at odds with the objectives of South Africa's Genetically Modified Organisms Act, she said.

The attainment of reproductive health and reproductive rights are fundamental for development, for fighting poverty and for meeting the MDG targets. Conversely, reproductive ill-health undermines development by, inter alia, diminishing the quality of women's lives, weakening and, in extreme cases, killing poor women of prime ages, and placing heavy burdens on families and communities. This publication from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) shows by means of analytical graphics, the fundamental importance of addressing population and reproductive health for achieving the MDGs.

Since its commencement in January 2001, the Nigerian government-funded national ARV programme has cost the federal government an estimated US$6m (six million US dollars). Although the programme set a target of providing ARVs for 10,000 adults and 5000 children, a little over 10,000 clients in 25 centres are currently on treatment, according to information available to Access Alert.

Ethiopia’s health ministry has clashed with the aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) over malaria treatment in the midst of a major epidemic threatening 15 million people. MSF is urging the government to implement a cocktail of drugs which have been given preliminary approval by the World Health Organisation (WHO). But the ministry says that calls by the NGO to change anti-malarial drugs during an epidemic were potentially dangerous.

What is the best way of fighting AIDS? What is the right balance to strike between health education, treatment of the disease and caring for AIDS sufferers? It is essential in developing countries where funds are scarce to find the most cost effective method of combating the disease. The World Health Organisation (WHO), together with Copenhagen University, looked into the most effective methods of tackling the epidemic in Africa.

HIV/AIDS hits schools hard, affecting both teachers and pupils. What is the economic impact in the education sector? Researchers from Imperial College London estimate HIV-related costs to the Ministry of Education (MoE) and donors in Zambia. They argue for extra funds to provide an active care and prevention programme.

Monitoring and Evaluation for Sexual and Reproductive Health examines the underlying principles of monitoring and evaluation for programme managers. Participants explore the steps in establishing effective monitoring and evaluation systems and are guided in how to integrate gender analysis into their monitoring and evaluation plans. The course is designed to strengthen institutional capacity to effectively monitor programme operations and evaluate performance.

The incumbent's primary tasks will be to manage programme-funded grants, including providing technical assistance regarding planning and implementation and monitoring and evaluating achievement of programme outputs.

Almost two years after Zimbabwe's government declared a state of emergency over HIV/AIDS to allow the importation and manufacture of generic anti-AIDS drugs, accessing antiretrovirals (ARVs) remains a pipe dream for almost a million people living with HIV/AIDS in the country. With an estimated HIV prevalence rate of 27 percent, Zimbabwe is one of the countries worst hit by the epidemic.

Zimbabwe's already strained health sector will come under even greater pressure after one of the country's biggest nursing schools failed to open. Harare Central Hospital has an annual intake of 180 nursing students, recruited three times a year in groups of 60. This year the nursing school could not open its doors to new students, due to a crippling shortage of tutors.

A Kenyan judge on Wednesday ordered the Kenyan government and Nyumbani Home - the oldest and largest AIDS orphanage in the country - to develop an agreement that would allow HIV-positive children from the orphanage to be admitted to area primary schools, the AP/Yahoo! News reported. Nyumbani on Wednesday sought a court order against the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the attorney general's office to force state schools to admit HIV-positive children, Nyumbani attorney Ababu Namwamba said.

Preliminary findings from a government survey show that Kenya may have a lower HIV prevalence rate than previously thought - 6.7 percent compared to a 2003 Health Ministry estimate of 9.4 percent.