School children in Africa can be treated for intestinal worms and schistosomes - the parasites that cause bilharzia - in association with school feeding programmes for as little as 20 US cents per year, an expert from the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday. Bilharzia is transmitted by parasites present in snails that live in still fresh water and is a major problem for communities that live near lakes and dams. The WHO reckons it is directly responsible for the death of 200,000 people per year in Africa alone.

About 750 Kenyans die of Aids daily. And 830 contract the virus daily and need anti-retroviral drugs, Kenya's Principal Public Health Specialist, Dr Wilfred M. Kisungu said on Monday evening at Hotel Africana. Kisungu works at the Kenya Medical Research Institute. He said more than one million children in Kenya have been orphaned by Aids.

The lack of assets in rural households struggling with the impact of HIV/AIDS in Malawi and Zambia is making them extremely vulnerable to shocks such as last year's drought, a recent survey has found. The Malawi and Zambia surveys found that about 80 percent of rural households in the two countries could be "classified as 'asset poor' or 'very poor'".

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Despite the considerable resources invested in health care in southern Sudan over the years, the impact they have made "seems pale in comparison to the continuing needs", says the UN Children's Fund, UNICEF, in a new report. "Access to health care is not good and it is not improving," the author of the report, Dr Michaleen Richer, told IRIN. Without roads and transport to bring people to health services, communications systems between health workers and people living in rural areas, and higher levels of education to allow people to diagnose correctly and prevent illness from occurring, no real impact would be made, she said.

We are looking to recruit a development worker to work with the Southern Africa HIV/AIDS Information and Dissemination Service (SAFAIDS) providing in-house training and mentoring to staff in writing, editing, materials production and communication skills. The postholder will also contribute to develop information strategies. You will have a minimum of 3 years' direct work experience in writing, editing, assessing information needs, repackaging, publishing and targeting materials for a diverse audience. Solid knowledge of gender and HIV/AIDS as development issues and experience in training or mentoring are essential.

A five-day regional health meeting ended on Friday in Johannesburg, South Africa, with African health ministers pledging to give greater attention to women's health and scale up their HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis (TB) programmes. The World Health Organisation (WHO) regional committee session, held last week, urged governments to develop "appropriate policies and legislation to create a supportive environment for scaling up interventions" for the three epidemics, a WHO statement said.

“Men are the cause of many problems in society. We make children, we infect women and then we turn our backs on them. What kind of life is that for a woman?" This was the message of Koffie Plaatjies, the first man to go public with his HIV-Aids status in the Erongo region, when he spoke at the launch of the Take Control video series.

Diagnosed with HIV three years ago, Kabuki is determined not to let her sexual partner know. “He has lived with me for many years but has not bothered to perform the marriage rites. He thinks he is taking me for a ride. Why should I tell him?” she asks. Thirty- five-year-old year old Kabuki, who hails from one of Ghana's HIV endemic areas, says she is afraid her partner will abandon her as has been the case of many other women who were brave enough to reveal their status.

Malaria accounts for between 30 and 45 percent of all illnesses reported at health centres for displaced people in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, a health worker leading the fight against the disease said last Thursday. "The majority of the cases are children below five years of age and pregnant mothers. There are also many cases of premature births due to malaria," Caroline Lynch of the American John Hopkins University malaria programme, the MENTOR Initiative, told IRIN.

Half of Africa's population, mostly the poor and disadvantaged, do not have access to existing essential medicines and many more are denied new medicines for treating common diseases like malaria and HIV, says a report released last Monday. "Only 50 000 of the 4.5-million people who need antiretroviral therapy have access to treatment despite significant reductions in cost," states the annual report for 2002 of the regional director of the World Health Organisation.

An outbreak of cholera in Zamfara State in northwest Nigeria has killed dozens of people with scores admitted in hospitals, officials said on Friday. The first cases were reported more than a week ago in the remote villages of Makera, Sanna, Salo and Marinai in Talata-Mafara local council area. Alhassan Abubakar, an official of the General Hospital, Talata-Mafara said at least 40 people had so far died with about 54 people receiving treatment in the hospital.

The U.S. government has cut off funds to an AIDS programme for refugees in Africa - six weeks after President George Bush toured the continent promising to fight AIDS and launching a US$15 billion initiative. The U.S. objects to one of the aid agencies involved, Marie Stopes International, which runs family planning programmes in China. Organisations that work on reproductive health and AIDS argue that the decision betrays the Bush administration's wider hostility to abortion. Its commitment to a rightwing Christian agenda has led to its promotion of abstinence rather than condoms as a strategy against HIV/AIDS.

Shortages of essential medicines and medical equipment, a staffing crisis and inadequate infrastructure are undermining the quality of hospital care across sub-Saharan Africa. This could jeopardise plans to provide anti-AIDS drugs to people living with the HI virus, delegates attending the World Health Organisation (WHO) regional committee meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, heard this week.

Namibia's food security situation is causing growing concern as news reports point to a higher than expected cereal deficit in the Caprivi region, the World Food Programme (WFP) told IRIN on Wednesday. Some 400,000 people across the country may need food aid distributions this year, due to crop failures caused by persistent drought.

Malaria and water borne diseases are compounding the famine in Ethiopia and sparking misdiagnosis of food crisis areas, the UN has warned. Poor health and water facilities are also “undermining” the food aid response aimed at combating the unprecedented crisis that has hit the country.

The number of new cholera cases reported in the Liberian capital Monrovia peaked at more than 1,200 a week in mid-August, but has since started to decline, Omar Khatib, the World Health Organisation (WHO) representative in the country said on Monday. "Between 11-17 August, 1,203 new cholera cases were reported. Since then, the situation has stabilized. But there is still an epidemic," he told IRIN.

Asha Mwanachawa, a young wife and mother in Kwale, Kenya, wanted desperately to talk to her husband about purchasing an insecticide-treated net (ITN) to protect their growing family from the dangers of malaria. Asha had learned about ITNs from an educational session at her clinic while pregnant with her first child. But her pleas to her husband to purchase one went unanswered. But when a water sports festival in her village was held, her husband was enticed by the fishing contest and prizes. In the course of information sessions given during the festival, he learned about malaria and the benefits of ITNs. This is one example of how social marketing can be used to popularize healthy behaviour in poor countries.

This World Bank paper reports on a study which addresses the challenges of child stunting in Ethiopia. At present, the report notes that stunting in Ethiopia has persisted at around 60 percent since the early 1980s and is among the highest in the world. The study integrates three different national surveys from Ethiopia conducted over the period 1995-96.

'Avoid Aids, come inside' says the sign outside the sex shop near the Durban beachfront. Just 100 meters away 500 Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) activists, from 110 branches across South Africa, were meeting at the second TAC National Congress to plan how to carry on their fight for the roll out of a comprehensive treatment plan for the 5 million people living with HIV-AIDS. With the highest national HIV prevalence in the world, AIDS is estimated to have caused 40% of all adult deaths in 2001, as many as 1,000 people a day according to UNAIDS (a figure not challenged by the ANC government). Addressing the Congress on the final day, the historic nature of this campaign was underscored by the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS, Stephen Lewis, who compared TAC with some of the greatest social movements of the twentieth century and the "anti-globalisation" movement of the twenty-first.