With 14.6 million people in need of assistance in Eritrea and Ethiopia by May 2003, and indications that conditions continued to deteriorate in several areas, Carolyn McAskie, the UN's Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator (DERC), undertook a mission to the region in June. The objectives of the mission were to review the overall humanitarian situation; raise awareness of the situation; and to seek better ways of addressing the underlying structural causes of food-insecurity in the two countries.

The increased AIDS awareness amongst Cameroonians is strong evidence that Cameroon's political commitment to combat the disease is yielding positive results, even though greater challenges still lie ahead to curb the epidemic, according to Dr Peter Piot, Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). "The strong political will and social mobilization are realities which should lead to the scaling up of HIV care and prevention programmes and avoid a worsening epidemic in the country," said Dr Piot. He was on a two-day visit to Cameroon.

A new UNAIDS study has found that even when used consistently, condoms fail to protect against HIV transmission approximately one in 10 times. In previous reports, condom effectiveness against HIV was widely estimated at between 46 and 100 percent.

A new study released by Third World Network-Africa (www.twnafrica.org) offers new evidence against claims of the miracle potential of genetically modified crops for dealing with famine and poverty in Africa. After examining the impact of three genetically modified crops, sweet potato, maize and Bt cotton, on poverty alleviation in Africa it concluded that biotechnology does not address the real causes of poverty and hunger in Africa. Indeed it shows that biotechnology is an inappropriate method of agricultural innovation for poverty alleviation.

The Federal Government has signed a grant agreement with the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for a grant of USD 150 million or 15 billion naira to fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis in the country. The country will have immediate access to funding for expansion of its anti-retroviral drug programme and prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV/AIDS.

Nine West African countries have agreed to pool information about the increasing resistance of malaria to existing drug treatments through the Muraz medical research centre at Bobo Dioulasso in Burkina Faso.

Several people were unable to get treatment at hospitals around the country Wednesday as a doctors' strike that began in Bulawayo on Monday spread to other parts of Zimbabwe.

People's participation in development has been promoted for over 20 years, yet it is still commonplace for projects to be pre-designed, without more than a token consultation with those farmers for whom they are intended. This book describes a project among small-scale farmers in the drought-prone and arid communal lands of Zimbabwe which, within the broad remit of promoting food security, helped the farmers identify their problems and choose their own solutions to them. The aim of the project was participatory technology development: to extend the range of soil-and-water conserving farming techniques available to men and women, and to help them evaluate and disseminate these and their own traditional techniques so as to improve the returns from their land.

Helen Wedgwood, Cathy Watson, Everjoice J. Win, Clare Tawney, Kuda Murwira

The Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) seeks a Program Officer to lead and oversee the foundation's HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Program. The Program Officer will work closely with senior staff at OSIWA to develop the HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Program.

The unregulated supply of AIDS drugs in the developing world could accelerate the development of drug-resistant HIV strains, according to an expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom. Better regulation of private-sector providers of drugs in poor nations is needed to ensure that patients use antiretroviral drugs correctly, thereby reducing the risk that a strain of drug-resistant HIV will develop.

As the transatlantic dispute over the future of genetically modified (GM) food heats up, African activists say it is time to publicly challenge the image that the Bush administration is presenting on the issue. Washington, they say, is not entitled to speak on behalf of African states on the matter. “How can one country decide for another country without taking into account the opinion of the other country's people?” Amadou C. Kanoute, regional director of the African office of Consumers International said.

While international media and other attention remains focused on Iraq and on terrorism, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are facing the most severe crisis in their history with the conjunction of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, famine, environmental degradation, endemic poverty, weak governance structures and bad policies threatening entire societies. In addition, political violence and armed conflicts continue to destroy the lives of millions and create conditions in which diseases flourish, poverty and hunger are widespread, democracy and the rule of law are repressed, and there are widespread violations of human rights. Unless there is a massive concerted effort by the international community together with African leaders to address both the immediate humanitarian needs and longer term causes of this crisis, the lives of millions more will be lost and prospects for long-term development in the most affected countries will evaporate, according to a report from a Canadian parliamentary committee.

The Sudanese government has guaranteed the World Food Programme (WFP) that all food deliveries will be permitted to enter the country for the next six months, while it conducts a review of its policy on genetically modified (GM) foods.

South Africa's health system will soon offer drugs blocking the Aids virus, the body that advises the government on HIV/Aids has said. The South African National Aids Council (Sanac) made the announcement following a meeting with the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) - a group that has been urging the government to supply the drugs.

A lack of adequate health care and an increase in migration and prostitution that has accompanied the construction of a $3.7 billion oil pipeline route in Cameroon and Chad have created ideal conditions for the spread of HIV, the Los Angeles Times reports in the second article in a two-part series on the pipeline.

Eighty-seven people have died of cholera in Mozambique since the beginning of the year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported on Tuesday.

The London-based rights group Amnesty International has called on delegates attending Somali peace talks in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, to choose leaders who will protect the human rights of all Somalis.

Somalia's first medical college in 12 years officially opened in the capital, Mogadishu, on 15 June. The Benadir University Medical College (BUMC) is to be funded by donations from Somali physicians and an annual fee of US $1,500 per student, its rector, Dr Usman Adan Abdulle, told IRIN.

"The ‘liberalisation’ of agricultural trade and deregulation, promoted by the WTO, the IMF, Free Trade Agreements and the like are substantial causes of damage all over the world. Hunger, unemployment, inequality, poverty, and degradation of natural resources are increasing in the rural world, particularly in the South. Farmers are forced into rural exodus and migration. Increasingly, large corporate agri-business is taking their place and taking up their lands," says a declaration made in Dakar, Senegal in May by representatives of farmers organisations and agricultural producers from Africa, Americas, Asia and Europe.

The Tanzania National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) through the project called Malaria Research Coordination and promotion through MIM (MALCOPROMIM) would like to announce and invite nationals from the Africa region to apply for the one week workshop on Research Methodology/Proposal writing to be held on 6-11 October, 2003 in Arusha, Tanzania.