The 15-year campaign to eradicate polio is suffering its second major setback in two years, with the disease spreading in Nigeria and spilling into several polio-free countries nearby. The report this week of a case in Togo brings to three the number of West African countries where the polio virus has been reintroduced from a hot spot of the disease in northern Nigeria. The other countries are Ghana and Burkina Faso.

One of the areas that Zambia lags behind in is the provision of health services to people in rural areas. There are not enough hospitals, health centres or clinics to cover the population of the country. Even where these facilities are available, persistent problems of shortage of drugs, inadequate manpower and lack of transport continue to dog the institutions.

For the past six weeks, health officials and specialist advisors have been working late into the night to meet a deadline set by Cabinet to come up with a "detailed operational plan on an anti-retroviral treatment programme". While cynics say the urgency is being fed by the 2004 general election, few in the HIV/AIDS field doubt that South Africa has reached the point of no return on the provision of ARV drugs.

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The announcement this week by Shangani Hospital in Matabeleland South that it would no longer admit patients, because it ran out of food a fortnight ago, is further evidence of Zimbabwe's deepening economic and humanitarian crises. The hospital, situated in a former commercial farming area, serves an estimated 12,500 newly resettled families.

Current statistics reveal that an estimated 29 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are living with HIV/AIDS. About 58 percent of those infected are women. Gender experts have often maintained that traditions and cultural stereotypes are a major stumbling block in the fight against the pandemic.

As the 13th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) concluded in Nairobi, Kenya last week, observers were unanimous in noting the stress on the urgent need for leaders - national and international - to deliver on promises. Despite overwhelming consensus on the need for treatment, UNAIDS reported that at the end of 2002 only an estimated 50,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa were receiving life-prolonging antiretroviral treatment, about one percent of 4.1 million in immediate need of such treatment. This posting from Africa Policy E-Journal contains two reports from Nairobi, including the closing speech by Nomfundo Dubula on behalf of the Pan African Treatment Access Movement.

On the basis of participatory field research conducted in different rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, this paper demonstrates that agrobiodiversity and the associated indigenous knowledge are relevant forces to combat food insecurity and the HIV/Aids crisis.

The launch of a nationwide, wireless network to improve Uganda’s ability to treat patients and combat the spread of disease has been announced. The network is built around the country’s well-established cell phone network, inexpensive handheld computers, and innovative wireless servers called "Jacks." The technology allows health care workers to access and share critical information in remote facilities without fixed telephone lines or regular access to electricity.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that millions of people in southern Africa will face massive food shortages as early as next month due to significant funding shortfalls. The shortages will be most acute in Zimbabwe and Mozambique where food needs are greatest. In July, WFP appealed for US$308 million to fund some 540,000 tonnes of food, enough to feed 6.5 million people until June of next year in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Swaziland, Lesotho and Malawi. Despite repeated appeals, WFP has received only 24 percent of what is required, and has unmet needs amounting to US$235 million.

Tanzania has become the first African country to start producing a new type of long-lasting bednet that could help significantly reduce deaths from malaria, the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than a million people a year.

U.S. President George W. Bush's anti-abortion policy has forced family planning clinics in poor countries to close, leaving some communities without any healthcare, according to a report issued Wednesday. Under the policy, known as the Mexico City rule by supporters and the Global Gag rule by opponents, foreign family planning agencies cannot receive U.S. funds if they provide abortion services or lobby to make or keep abortion legal in their own country.
Related Link: Access Denied: The Global Gag Rule- http://64.224.182.238/globalgagrule/impacts.htm

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced the award September 21 of new grants to conquer malaria, a disease that kills more than 1 million people each year and is considered a major impediment to progress in the underdeveloped nations where it most frequently occurs. The $168 million in grants will be devoted to development of new prevention strategies, new drugs and vaccine research.

The deteriorating health situation in areas occupied by eastern Uganda's internally displaced people (IDPs) has reached crisis proportions, with malaria, measles, diarrhoea and pneumonia killing a number of people every day, according to camp residents and local health officials. Most of those dying from preventable diseases are young children. Parents in the camps are burying their young on a daily basis as attacks of malaria rage through the Teso region's densely packed settlements.

"We want drugs! You talk as we die,” were some of the angry voices by AIDS activists who protested Wednesday against failure by their governments to give them anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs). Some rolled on the ground as others shouted and marched through the 13th International Conference on AIDS in Africa (ICASA), stopping at government, pharmaceutical and donor stands. Donning T-shirts declaring their HIV status, the more than 100 activists under Pan-African HIV/AIDS Treatment Access Movement (PATAM), demanded drugs for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Despite a 10-year civil war in Burundi, diseases remained the major causes of disability and mortality in three provinces surveyed by the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Presenting the results of the 2002 survey on Monday in the capital, Bujumbura, the IRC reported that diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, polio and measles accounted for the largest number of disabilities in the provinces of Bujumbura Rural, Makamba and Muyinga.

In the first four years of his presidency, President Obasanjo has made an impressive impact locally, regionally and globally as a deliverer of strong messages, innovative programs and increased funding, says the Global Aids Alliance. “We urge him to continue in this same strong vein, inspiring and educating other nations in best practices for addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis from the top rungs of government. But, Nigeria faces an extremely critical point epidemiologically. The country truly hovers on the edge of a major crisis that is all too familiar to its neighbours to the south. Rapid, decisive action is essential to gain control over the epidemic,” says a new report from the Alliance.

Zimbabwe's health care sector has been badly affected by chronic shortages of essential medical supplies. Last Thursday Bulawayo's major state hospitals announced that they were suspending medical operations for all "non-life threatening" ailments because of a critical shortage of essential drugs.

African religious leaders have admitted that their own institutions were sometimes guilty of spreading the stigma attached to HIV/Aids. Christian and Muslim leaders attending the 13th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa, being held on 21-26 September in Nairobi, Kenya, spoke of damning attitudes to the virus that were spread by their churches and mosques.

This paper seeks to explore some pressing issues related to the consequences of the old age pension in households affected by HIV/Aids in South Africa. The paper examines the policy of the South African government to provide the elderly with a means-tested non- contributory old age pension, intended to be a poverty relief programme for the aged.