Four associations fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS in Burundi have appealed to the government to improve access to anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) for children orphaned by AIDS.

In what its supporters hailed as a milestone in the U.S. commitment to fighting the global spread of HIV/AIDS, the Senate approved by voice vote a five-year, $15 billion anti-AIDS package in the pre-dawn hours of May 15th. But Africa and anti-AIDS activists complained after the vote that the bill retained serious flaws and warned that the $15 billion provided by the package still faces a number of legislative and executive obstacles before the money can actually be spent. "This bill is a check given to countries fighting AIDS, but it will come back marked 'insufficient funds'," noted Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance.

Food insecurity and rural stagnation continue to plague the African continent and the answer to this situation necessitates greater productivity and profitability in the agricultural sector. Constraints to crop production include insufficient pest and disease control, inadequate access to improved crop varieties, degraded soils, limited access to markets and market information and unreliable extension services. Where technical solutions exist to these constraints, development specialists must find means to deliver them in a form understandable and acceptable to farmers. When these solutions are lacking, agricultural scientists must focus their efforts upon assisting farmers to solve their problems through improved technologies.

The Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) announced last week that it is to coordinate the African activities of a new international effort to promote research and development into drugs for diseases that impact the poor. The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) — an initiative spearheaded by Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) — will facilitate collaboration between research institutes, non-governmental organisations and pharmaceutical companies in both rich and poor countries in a bid to develop drugs against diseases currently ignored by market-driven drug development.

Fewer than one in five people at risk of HIV infection today have access to prevention programs, and annual global spending on prevention falls $3.8 billion short of what will be needed by 2005, according to a new report released today by the Global HIV Prevention Working Group. The report, Access to HIV Prevention: Closing the Gap, is the first-ever analysis of the gap between HIV prevention needs and current efforts, and provides recommendations for expanding access to information and services that could help save lives and reverse the global epidemic.

Civil society actors have become more visible, active and influential within health and health systems. Understanding their role, the factors influencing them and the health outcomes they produce is important to anyone wishing to improve public health. This website presents an annotated bibliography of research on civil society and health prepared as a collaboration between the World Health Organisation's Civil Society Initiative and Training and Research Support Centre. The research focused on three theme areas: Civil society - state interactions in national health systems; Civil society contributions to pro-poor, health equity policies; Civil society influence on global health policy. The website and database were developed by Fahamu.

Many world health advocates are concerned that they are not sure how to ramp up existing small-scale HIV/AIDS treatment programs in Caribbean and sub-Saharan African nations now that the "new reality in the fight against the killer pandemic is that once seemingly insurmountable financial barriers have fallen".

While Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang made it clear in her R8,38-billion Budget speech earlier this month that the decision to provide anti-retroviral drugs in the public sector rested with Cabinet, her speech contained other good news. Government has finally decided to set aside R500-million to recruit and retain rural health professionals, for increases in allowances and salaries.

Mulu is the mother of two young children ages two and five, and is an active participant in the Community Based Health Care (CBHC) Project supported by Catholic Relief Services and its implementing partner, the Alemtena Catholic Church. Mulu feels that she is a better mother now with the knowledge that she gains during her monthly health education sessions in her village. During the sessions, she learns about managing various illnesses including diarrhoea, fever, coughs and colds that effect her children.

Imagine a tiny, beautiful, land-locked, densely populated and extremely poor African country that seven years ago was the site of a devastating civil war and genocide that left it in tatters. Now imagine a country that sets up an ICT Commission headed by its President; that adopts a national ICT Policy for the country and that sets up a top level national IT Agency to oversee a 400-page 5-year US$500 million plan and strategy for ICT. And finally imagine a country that commits to transforming itself from an essentially agrarian economy to a knowledge-based society within twenty years and that plans to become a services center in its region, despite being poorer than its neighbours and much less well-endowed with natural resources.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), has announced a major change of strategy in its campaign to eradicate polio in Nigeria and two other countries. The strategy adopted so far by WHO has been built on routine vaccinations in countries whose health systems can afford it, and mass immunisation campaigns in the developing world. But the spokesman for WHO, Brent Burkholder, said that it was now time for a shift of emphasis. "The shift is just basically that we're focusing now on the endemic countries and the high-risk countries that are remaining," he said.

Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has failed to endorse a general antiretroviral treatment plan for HIV/AIDS sufferers even though a task team of the national treasury and health department concluded recently that providing these drugs was the most cost-effective way of combating the pandemic.

Walking the corridors of Zambia's largest hospital gives the average visitor, let alone its patients, an overwhelming sense of despair. Lusaka's University Teaching hospital lacks drugs and equipment. Its doctors and support staff are poorly paid and morale is low, impacting on the quality of care provided to the long-suffering patients. Last week, the almost 300-strong Resident Doctors Association (RDA) went on a two-day strike, demanding better pay and conditions. They returned to work after the government agreed to a 120 percent to 300 percent salary hike, but remain cautious over whether the government will stick to the deal.

The Wits HIV/Aids Research Institute was formally launched 14 May at Hofmeyr House, Wits University. The institute will be headed by Geoffrey Setswe who comes from the Medunsa School of Public Health. He will take office in June. The Institute was established from a $500 000 donation from the Carnegie Foundation and is the brainchild of Prof James McIntyre of the HIV/Aids Perinatal Clinic.

Iraq received the $270 million in food pledges it needed within five days of a UN appeal. At least $1 billion is needed to feed around 40 million people in need of emergency food aid across East and Southern Africa and in Cote D'Ivoire until the end of the year, international aid agencies say. While international donors have belatedly pledged $800 million in emergency food assistance over the past month, there are increasing indications that sub Saharan Africa will get nowhere near what it needs to provide basic food rations for millions of people.

The U.S. decision to confront a European Union (EU) de facto ban on genetically modified (GM) food might knock down the world's main resistance to the controversial process and scare developing countries into opening their doors to GM crops, say analysts.

The Wellcome Trust, a research-funding charity that aims to improve human and animal health, hopes to use new research findings to help develop medicines for people living in and travelling to regions afflicted by malaria. The announcement came after British scientists said they had made a breakthrough in finding a permanent treatment for malaria. The trust funded the research.

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This report from Bread for the World argues that if developing countries are to build their economic potential in agriculture, industrialized countries like the United States and European Union nations should live up to their free-trade rhetoric and work together to eliminate trade-distorting subsidies and tariffs. New research released in the report indicates that the elimination of subsidies and protection in industrialized countries would allow developing countries to triple their annual net agricultural trade.

Antiretroviral drugs are "affordable" and launching a program to deliver the medicines to HIV-positive people throughout South Africa is "feasible," according to a cost study completed by the country's national health and finance ministries.