Doctors at Zimbabwe's government hospitals have gone on an indefinite strike demanding an 8 000 percent pay increase, their union leader Phibion Manyanga said on Friday. Manyanga, who heads the Hospital Doctors Association, told AFP that the strike, which started last Thursday, would go on until their demands were addressed.

Zimbabwean authorities discriminate against perceived political opponents by denying them access to food programs, Human Rights Watch says in a new report. The report documents how food is denied to suspected supporters of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party and to residents of former commercial farms resettled under the country’s “fast-track” land reform program.

Tuberculosis is making a comeback in Mali, partly as a result of HIV/AIDS patients falling prey to the disease, but also because the respiratory disease is considered shameful and patients are reluctant to seek treatment, government officials said.

AIDS experts have raised doubts about a new study suggesting South Africa's HIV/AIDS epidemic peaked in 2002 and was expected to level off as fewer new infections were reported. The study, published in the recent issue of the African Journal of AIDS Research, said that the epidemic in South Africa peaked last year with about 4.69 million people living with HIV/AIDS and had started to level off.

A new polio outbreak spreading from Nigeria to neighbouring countries is putting 15 million children at risk, requiring a massive immunization campaign across five countries in west and central Africa. Beginning today, hundreds of thousands of volunteers and healthworkers in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Togo will aim to reach every child in those countries with polio vaccine in just three days.

Zimbabwe plans to use the banned chemical DDT in its anti-malaria spraying programme. DDT has been shown to cause cancer, infant deaths, to poison animals, and to be very hard to eradicate from groundwater and the food chain. Environmentalists in Zimbabwe say the government has been forced to resort to the chemical because it can't afford better alternatives. But government spokespeople counter that the chemical is still used in South Africa and Swaziland.

Every district in the country will be compelled to offer anti-retroviral drugs to citizens if Cabinet approves the drug rollout plan that is expected to be presented to it in the near future. The operational plan has been substantially reworked since the task team headed by Dr Tony Mbewu presented its proposals to Health Minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and provincial MECs on 30 September.

In a bid to encourage people to begin anti-Aids treatment early, Botswana will introduce routine HIV testing at all public health facilities next year, President Festus Mogae said.

A paper by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) assesses the impact of HIV/AIDS on children in sub-Saharan Africa amongst orphans, children and families, migration, education, and health and nutrition.

The health delivery system in Zimbabwe is declining as medical personnel leave the country in search of better working conditions and more money. The exodus of nurses and doctors and other professionals from Zimbabwe for economic reasons is accelerating, with most of those leaving going to Britain, the country's former colonial master.

Burkina Faso's health minister has said the government hopes to eradicate guinea worm infections in the next five years, having reduced the number of new cases reported each year to less than 200.

Uganda's health officials should heave a sigh of relief following 'successful' measles immunisation campaigns, which targeted 12.7 million children. The campaign, which was conducted Oct. 15-19, ran into some problems. In the western district of Mbarara some pupils reportedly ran out of the classroom and hid in mango trees when the vaccines arrived. In the eastern district of Kayunga, a local councillor was beaten by her husband for taking their 10-year old daughter for immunisation.

Health systems in developing countries have been traditionally geared towards the treatment of infectious disease. How do we transform them to take account of the increasing health burden posed by non-communicable disease (NCD)? This study by the Gondar College of Medical Services in Ethiopia and the Wessex Neurological Centre in Southampton, UK explores how epilepsy could be targeted and treated in rural areas of Ethiopia. It argues that effective treatment is possible using the existing health infrastructure and very few additional resources.

Inflation has hit 456 percent, grain prices soar and food staples become ever more unavailable for the poor majority of Zimbabweans. There are now reports of "an increasing number of negative coping mechanisms such as child labour and prostitution," WFP, the UN food agency, reports.

The US model of media control and policy making - corrupt and dominated by powerful special interests - is being rapidly exported across the world. Some countries are attempting to preserve their own cultural production, and there are moves to try to keep culture out of the control of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The uniqueness of this book lies in its focus on both local and international forces. While critiquing international capital, it also acknowledges the bargains that are struck between the local operators and transnationals.

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is celebrating what it calls a “ground-breaking” decision on Thursday by the Competitions Commission that found two giant pharmaceutical firms culpable of charging excessive prices for anti-retroviral drugs and abusing their dominant positions in the market. The firms, GlaxoSmithKline South Africa and Boehringer Ingelheim, will have to appear before the Competitions Tribunal - the commission's prosecuting arm - to defend their contravention of the Competitions Act.

When the Treatment Action Campaign launched a defiance campaign in March this year, 32-year-old Kebareng Moeketsi was at the forefront of the first protest. Barely a week later Moeketsi, a volunteer HIV counsellor from Alexandra near Johannesburg, died of Aids, leaving behind two children. Accepting the Nelson Mandela Health and Human Rights Award on behalf of the TAC this week, chairman Zackie Achmat said : "During our civil disobedience campaign from March 20 to July 31, more than 100 of our leaders have died."

The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk. The church is making the claims across four continents despite a widespread scientific consensus that condoms are impermeable to HIV.
Related Link:
Anti-condom message shocks
http://iafrica.com/news/sa/277092.htm

It had the title of being one of Africa's most polluted rivers. Now, it seems, the Jukskei River could become one of the continent's deadliest. The river which runs through parts of Johannesburg, Sandton, Alexandra and eventually ends up in the Hartbeespoort Dam, a favoured recreational dam, has proved to have a human faecal count so high it poses a serious health risk.

On the eve of World Food Day, the development community is divided over the best course of action to fight malnutrition and hunger, the leading causes of death and sickness worldwide. On Tuesday, some activists celebrated a 25-million-dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to HarvestPlus, a global research project to breed and disseminate crops for better nutrition. However, many have questioned the motives of the grant.