This report - from the Southern African Regional Poverty Network - highlights the ways in which different mobile populations are vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, and draws together some of the policies and programmes that governments, employers, unions and NGOs have put in place. Since different mobile populations are vulnerable to HIV infection at different stages of mobility, the report formulates recommendations for each stage of the mobility process.

Sun Microsystems SA and its partner AL Indigo - the new, black-owned enterprise solutions company - have provided technology to create a groundbreaking HIV/AIDS portal for SA's Medical Research Council (MRC). The HIV/AIDS portal, which can be visited at www.afroaidsinfo.org, was conceived and designed to be a comprehensive resource for information and research for researchers, health professionals, policy-makers, educators and the public.

Lack of awareness of the disease and supplies for detecting HIV infection may mask prevalence levels in some areas of the country, UNICEF resident representative Dr. Stella Goings has said. Speaking at the regional workshop for peer educators held at Mulungushi International Conference Centre, Dr. Goings noted that most countries represented at the workshop were among those heavily affected by the HIV/AIDS infections.

Two thousand nurses are to be hired for public hospitals this year. Director of Medical Services Richard Muga said this was expected to ease staff shortages and improve public service.

AIDS treatment in Southern Africa is about to explode with seven countries in the region accelerating access to antiretroviral drugs. "Very poor countries have shown they are capable of doing effective treatment in the public sector and that they would be ready to scale up rapidly," said the UN special envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa, Stephen Lewis. Speaking after last week's international Aids research conference in Paris, the executive director of the UN Global Fund for the Treatment of Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis, Richard Feachem, said that Africa was on the threshold of an explosion in treatment.

Mothers infected with HIV/AIDS will receive free medicine from the Kenyan Government. The Health ministry has developed a programme to provide the anti-retroviral drugs to minimize mother-to-child transmission. Health minister Charity Ngilu said children had been neglected in anti-AIDS campaigns despite their vulnerability.

Dr. Jong-Wook Lee has assumed the position of World Health Organisation director general, saying that he will boost the organisation's commitment to combating HIV/AIDS by providing antiretroviral drugs to three million HIV-positive people in developing countries by 2005, Agence France-Presse reports. Lee, a South Korean physician who has worked at WHO for 19 years, succeeds Gro Harlem Brundtland.

Nurses are still being 'poached' from Africa to work in Britain - even though there is a ban on recruitment from developing countries, unions have warned. The head of Kenya's nursing union told the BBC it was the most experienced nurses who were leaving.

The U.S$200 million Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria contribution proposed by President George W. Bush for one year amounts to little more than 32 hours of war expenses in Iraq. And at a recent meeting in Paris to consider additional funding for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, donors added a few additional promises and little new funding to meet an expected shortfall of $500 million to $800 million this year, with an additional $3 billion needed to cover grants in 2004. This posting from Africa Action contains a press release from the Global Fund putting as positive a spin as possible on new promises, a June 17 letter from the White House explicitly urging Congress not to provide more money than the President's request of only $200 million for the Global Fund and $2 billion total for 2004 funding, a brief note from Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS reports on the status on congressional action as of Friday, and excerpts from an opinion piece by Jeffrey Sachs commenting on the default by both Europe and the U.S.

Rolake Nwagwu, from the Treatment Action Movement (TAM) Nigeria, writes that if America says she is committed to fighting AIDS in Africa, then the right things should be done at the right time in the right way. "Don't claim to commit to PMTCT if you won't make ARVs available. Don't claim to support Africans using generic drugs if you go on to try enforcing the same laws that will make getting generic drugs almost impossible. Don't claim to be against stigma and discrimination of PLWHA (People Living with HIV/AIDS) if your staff members still screen their domestic workers for HIV and visa lottery winners are compelled to take HIV tests without their informed knowledge or consent, without voluntary and confidential counselling."

Two efforts by Democratic lawmakers to boost next year's U.S. contribution to the global fight against AIDS were narrowly defeated in a key Congressional committee Wednesday, spurring charges that President George W. Bush, who just returned from a five-day trip to Africa last weekend, had betrayed the expectations he created while there.

Mafikeng, The North West Provincial department of health is on track with its pursued to improve the provision of primary health care service to rural and farming communities. The MEC for Health Dr Molefi Sefularo has today handed out a fleet of 25 state of the art mobile clinics to the 4 regions in the province to be used in remote areas especially in farms and rural sites. “ Today marks our practical commitment to turn the tide further in our quest to broaden access to quality and decent primary health care for all,” said MEC Sefularo.

The purpose of this article is to explore the main ways in which HIV and Aids impact on older women and men in developing countries. It also reviews the research, programme and policy implications of including older people in current and future interventions to halt and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015 and links them to national and international development targets.

Two influential Islamic groups in Nigeria have urged Muslims to resist the government’s immunisation programme aimed at eradicating the polio virus. They alleged the immunisation is dangerous. The Supreme Council for Shari’ah in Nigeria (SCSN) and the Kaduna State Council of Imams and Ulama said in a communiqué issued at the end of a joint meeting in the northern city of Kaduna on Sunday they considered government motives for the programme suspicious.

The Government will employ 100 more doctors next month to ease the current shortage, Health Assistant Minister Gideon Konchella has said. At the same time, Konchella expressed disappointment that some health personnel have disobeyed a directive to prescribe treatment free of charge on certain ailments.

The World Health Organisation, in a report released at the International AIDS Society's 2nd Conference on HIV Pathogenesis and Treatment in Paris, called for free anti-tuberculosis drugs and improved health care for HIV-positive people, Reuters reports. About 33% of the 42 million HIV-positive people worldwide also have TB, and 90% of them will die within a few months without treatment, which typically costs about $10 per person.

Tuberculosis remains the single greatest public health challenge associated with HIV worldwide. Despite widespread recognition of this fact, and clinical trials showing that interventions can help few programmes exist to implement such measures, according to a view presented at the International Aids Society Conference in Paris this week.

The Aids virus is becoming increasingly resistant to the drugs used to treat it, researchers say. These findings, presented at the conference of the International Aids Society in Paris, show that the resistance appears to be attributable to HIV-positive patients who were taking the medication infecting others with a drug-resistant strain.

Doctors in Mozambique are hoping that a new malaria vaccine will provide a breakthrough in lowering the toll the disease is taking. Trials starting on Thursday are expected to test the efficacy and safety of the vaccine, known as RTS,S/AS02A, on 2,000 children.

The course is aimed at HIV/AIDS journalists and producers working for public and commercial radio stations. Case studies, assignments, role-plays and group exercises will characterise training methodologies and proceedings of the workshop. These will take participants through vigorous discussion and debate on creating and compiling a marketable and developmental programming on HIV/AIDS.