Earthlife Africa is offering a new service in monitoring GMO permit applications in South Africa. You can download the information for permit applications from around the country from the following website: http://www.earthlife-ct.org.za/ct/article.php?story=20030706151628708 You can then send the objections to the address advertised in the application notice. Please e-mail or fax Earthlife Africa a copy of your submission for the record. You can also subscribe to ELA Action alerts to be updated immediately there is an important environmental justice issue that emerges and requires action. This service can be subscribed to by sending an e-mail to: [email protected] Should you wish to participate in this project all you have to do is scan your local media for GMO application notices and then fax them to 0866728081 for posting on the web page.

The Task Force on Corruption in Zambia last Thursday arrested former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health Kashiwa Bulaya for alleged corruption. A press release from task force spokesperson Betty Mumba said Bulaya was being investigated in connection with a contract worth over 3 billion kwacha (about 600,000 US dollars) awarded to a Bulgarian company for the supply of nutritional supplements to the ministry.

This report reviews the growing literature on HIV/Aids and food security, examines where emergency relief should be situated within the wider response to the HIV/Aids epidemic and considers how humanitarian aid agencies need to take HIV/Aids into account in the programming of emergency aid.

"I will never forget the fateful day I returned home sick from work. I got into bed and asked the people I was living with to help me and buy some Panado and Med-Lemon. I gave them R5 for the medicine, but they bought poison instead. When I took the tablets I immediately lost consciousness. That was when they threw the paraffin on me and set it alight. I woke up weeks later in the hospital's intensive care unit where I was kept alive with the support of oxygen, drips and blood. When I regained consciousness, the doctors told me both my legs had been amputated; it was the only way to save my life. I was shocked and sad, very sad. I wished to end my life. There was very little I could do. I tried to understand how this could have happened to me." Read the rest of Collin Emanuel's harrowing story by clicking on the link provided.

Limpopo Health and Welfare MEC Sello Moloto has announced the launch of an innovative new programme to raise funds for HIV/AIDS projects in the province. The initiative will operate under the auspices of the Limpopo HIV/AIDS Trust Fund, established three years ago.

Conflicts, civil unrest, emergence of drug-resistant strains of parasites and insecticide-resistant vectors, mass population movements worsened by the refugee situation, and disintegration of health services, is exacerbating the malaria situation in sub-Saharan Africa. A one week workshop held in Nairobi between July 30 and August 4, bringing together regional heads of malaria control in sub-Saharan Africa, concluded that malaria is still "an unfinished agenda in sub-Saharan African countries, and needs more attention than it has so far received".

Figures released by the government last week showing a drop in the number of Zimbabweans infected by HIV/AIDS were only a correction of flawed estimates from previous surveys and did not mean the prevalence of the disease was declining in the country, HIV/AIDS experts said.

South Africa is set to launch the Institute for African Traditional Medicines to research African herbs and evaluate their medicinal value as part of the government's campaign to fight HIV-Aids, tuberculosis and other debilitating diseases.

The plan by the Government to provide anti-retroviral drugs to Aids patients all over the country is almost complete, the Director of Medical Services, Dr Richard Muga says. Installation of devices to be used in these centres is at an advanced stage. The devices include machines for counting CD 4 cells for appropriate administration of the drugs to patients.

Zimbabwe's brain drain has hit the medical profession particularly hard. More than 80% of doctors, nurses and therapists who graduated from the University of Zimbabwe medical school since independence in 1980 have gone to work abroad, primarily in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, according to recent surveys.

Food shortages facing Southern Africa will worsen if actions are not taken urgently to stop the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, aid agencies warn. Margaret Nyirenda, head of the Food, Agriculture and Human Resources at the Southern African Development Community (SADC) secretariat, told journalists this week that the HIV/AIDS vulnerabilities at household levels impact on food production in the region.

A two-day summit of southern African leaders ended in the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam with heads of state pledging to fight AIDS in their poverty-stricken region. "In the past few days of our meeting we have made important decisions that impact on the lives of our people," Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa told some 1,500 delegates to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting.

In a July 11th article, the British weekly The Economist recounts the latest grim statistics on AIDS, noting emphatically that the 9,000 people who die each day from AIDS represents three times the number killed in the World Trade Centre attacks. "If all men are created equal, all avoidable deaths should be regarded as equally sad," says the editorial, adding that "common decency suggests that the rich world should do whatever it can to help." The editorial concludes ominously: "Cynics in the West might write Africa off. Are China, India, Indonesia and Russia to be written off as well?" Translation? Africans are poor and black. Thus we (the Economist) realize, dear reader, your greed for profits is not whetted by viewing them as consumers. Nor is your compassion stirred sufficiently by viewing them as fellow human beings. However, be mindful that the fire that has scorched that continent is spreading and is now threatening places populated by people who are prosperous enough - barely, but still above the threshold - to count as potential consumers and pale enough -barely, but still above the threshold - to awaken your caring. Read this commentary from www.zmag.org.

Privatisation is being pushed by international governance institutions, the governments that control them, and the corporations that lobby both groups, even though the dangers that privatisation entails can seriously-and permanently-harm the livelihoods of the world's poorest people. The position of "privatise first and ask questions later" and the naïve confidence in the processes and outcomes of market reform have imposed hardship on precisely the groups those organisations are entrusted to protect. It is time to shift the burden of proof from those who question risky solutions to those who propose them, says this article.

At last we hear that some money has been released from the Global Fund, says this editorial in The Chronicle newspaper. It has been over a year that the amount of US$196 million dollars in funds to fight TB, Malaria and HIV/Aids was approved. The excitement of the funds being received was evident. Almost every meeting on HIV/Aids that was held by officials after the announcement of the funds being approved referred to how important the funds would be in the fight against the epidemic.

This article documents research on the Southern African food crisis and assesses factors that contributed to the crisis. It contains highlights about the obstacles to the food aid effort, and the challenges to recovery from the crisis.

"He used to force me to have sex with him. He would beat me and slap me when I refused. I never used a condom with him. When I got pregnant I went for a medical check-up. When I gave birth, and the child had passed away, they told me I was HIV-positive. I cried. The doctor told me, “Wipe your tears, the whole world is sick.”" Harriet Abwoli is just one of many women from diverse regions, ethnic groups, religious backgrounds, and economic classes in Uganda, whose experiences tell one story: that domestic violence has played a critical role in rendering them vulnerable to HIV infection. A 77-page report from Human Rights Watch, entitled "Just Die Quietly: Domestic Violence and Women's Vulnerability to HIV in Uganda", reveals that Ugandan women are becoming infected with HIV, and will eventually die of AIDS, because the state is failing to protect them from domestic violence.

The fight against a growing malaria epidemic in Ethiopia is being hampered because of a resistance to available drugs, humanitarian agencies warned on Monday. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that the parasite’s resistance was “aggravating the epidemic and causing a high death toll".

The Zambian government has instituted criteria to determine which of the country's 200,000 HIV/AIDS patients will have access to free antiretroviral drug treatment, Xinhua News Agency reports. Under the new guidelines, HIV-positive people wishing to access the drugs must undergo voluntary HIV testing and counselling as well as a clinical test to determine their viral load.

Many Malawians living with HIV/AIDS are forced to rely on illegal drugs in a bid to treat opportunistic illnesses, ease suffering and prolong their lives. Some of the fake drugs have flooded the country's parallel market with a potentially disastrous health impact.