French President Jacques Chirac has sacrificed the health of Aids victims on the altar of mending relations with United States President George Bush which were broken over the war in Iraq, health NGOs charge. The NGO Health Gap said the G8 action plan on health had been weakened after interventions by the US to water down references to increasing access to essential medicines and strengthening the financing of the Global Fund to fight Aids, malaria and tuberculosis.

Media coverage of HIV/AIDS related issues in Nigeria recorded a boost on May 27, with the launch of the first-ever Media Handbook on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. The publication is a product of a collaboration between three organisations: Journalists Against AIDS (JAAIDS) Nigeria, Development Communications Network, (DevComs) and the United Nations Information Centre, (UNIC), Nigeria.

According to The Star and Business Day, the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis is set to receive a huge financial boost. Billions of US$ have been committed by the EU, France and the United States. Activists from the Debt Aids Trade Africa campaign welcomed the pledges as "crucial for Africa".

The death of Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, the elder brother of Nigeria's Afrobeat king Fela, will likely have repercussions throughout the country's health care system, health professionals said on Tuesday. "He was quite a visionary, dedicated, a hardworking medical practitioner and public health worker whose achievements have remained unmatched," said a close associate, Martins Olusola Ogundeji. "But I am afraid that his efforts in the field of health, especially in primary health scheme, may die with him. Since he left office as minister, there has not been anyone like him to continue the policies formulated under him," he said.

Fund the Fund have produced an advocacy kit aimed at civil society organisations (including nongovernmental, community-based, people living with the diseases, faith-based, and trade unions) to promote their advocacy for increased investment in the Global Fund.

The US is pressing East African countries to accept imports of genetically modified (GM) foods and to move forward with the production of their own GM crops. President George W. Bush and the top US trade official, Robert Zoellick, both argued last week that African countries could enhance their food security if barriers to GM farm products were removed.

There is an urgent need for new vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments to address high mortality and morbidity associated with infectious disease. The current system of motivating research and development favours the needs of people in developed countries, while neglecting many diseases that primarily affect people in developing countries. This is according to a message from Medicines Sans Frontiers about access to medicines, made to the 56th World Health Assembly (WHA), held between May 19-28.

Pharmaceutical industry officials on Thursday said that talks over access to generic drugs, including antiretrovirals, are "deadlocked," despite optimism from officials at the World Trade Organisation, Reuters reports. U.S. negotiators in February refused to sign a deal under the Doha declaration to allow developing nations to override patent protections to produce generic versions of drugs to combat public health epidemics such as AIDS unless wording was included to specify which diseases constitute a public health epidemic.

United States President George Bush on Tuesday signed into law a $15-billion (about R120-billion) plan to help fund the fight against Aids in Africa and the Caribbean, and challenged Europe to match America's "generous" commitment without delay.

Thirty people have died in an outbreak of yellow fever in southern Sudan, which has affected at least 80 people, the United Nations confirmed on Tuesday.

Medical experts from eight central African countries have formed a network to fight malaria following a three-day meeting in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), officials from the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.

Botswana is the first country in Africa to implement widespread distribution of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs through its public health system under a programme aptly named 'Masa' ("new dawn"), a symbol of hope for those living with HIV/AIDS.

The Rockefeller Foundation is currently seeking an Associate Director for its office in Nairobi who will have overall responsibility for providing thematic leadership for grant activities in the AIDS area of work in the development of programs related to the Health Equity (HE) theme and the Africa Regional Program (ARP) in Eastern and Southern Africa.

Minister of Health Professor A.B.C Nwosu, Japanese Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Akira Matsui and United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) Representative, Dr. Ezio Gianni Murzi, were due this week to sign a N444.3 million Japanese grant for the provision of child health and Oral Polio vaccine to Nigeria.

Exchange ideas and debate issues about the emerging information society and the World Summit on the Information Society.

Tanzania's national food crop production is likely to decline by 10 percent this year compared to last year, the Famine Early Warning System has predicted in its May report. Despite the shortfall, which has been put down to "low and erratic rainfall", Famine Early Warning System said that the overall food supply situation would remain "adequate". Nonetheless, it noted that the price of staple foods began to rise in some markets in April, "contrary to the normal trend".

On June 1, the G8 leaders will gather in Evian, France, where access to medicines is again at the top of the their agenda. (The G8 countries are: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK, USA.) That same day, according to far too familiar disease statistics, 19,000 people will die from AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, African trypanosomiasis, and visceral leishmaniasis. These five diseases represent the failure of the pharmaceutical industry to deliver medicines for the developing world, and the non-response from governments to this market failure.

If education is good for the economy, why have so many countries not yet achieved Education for All? Most governments claim that their aim is to deliver economic growth, yet many have singularly failed to use the tool of education in its support. Is it the absence of the freedom and democracy that prevents the people from voicing their demand for education? Is it because maintaining educational and economic inequality actually suits the ruling elite? Political leaders have become adept at articulating the rhetoric about the importance of education, but are less inclined to acknowledge that importance at budget time. 'Education-Who Pays?' is the subject of the April-June 2003 edition of the Education Today newsletter.

There is no lock on the door, no phalanx of guards, no visible impediment to the drugs leaving the glass chamber that the laboratory technicians call a "stability room". The pills come in little white boxes with labels such as lamivudine, zidovudine and efavirenz, technical names disguising the fact that these tablets are the stuff of life. Take them together and if you have HIV you can stave off death for years. Millions in Africa have the virus but not the pills. A stone's throw from the laboratory Aids is wiping out communities, yet these pills cannot leave the stability room.

Nigeria is to get more funding and attention from international bodies in the area of polio eradication following the decision by the Global Polio Eradication initiative to revise immunisation campaigns in 93 countries where polio transmission has already been stopped.