“It is the Government’s desire to see transformation in the agricultural sector to ensure food security which is a major contribution to poverty reduction in the rural areas where poverty is prevalent,” said the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Rakoro Phororo at Transformation in Agriculture and Partnership in Agricultural Entrepreneurship meeting. Speaking at the function, Phororo said food security is enter-twined with the economy as villages, districts and urban areas need food adequately produced to satisfy the needs of the population in terms of quantity and quality, writes Tepiso Mncina.

This posting from Africa Action contains a news update and excerpts from two recent reports documenting the wide gap between the consensus on the need for greater funding for fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the failure in practice to provide that funding. First, a report from the IMF/World Bank released for the spring meetings, summarized by the Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Reports and excerpted briefly below, documents that "if current budgetary trends continue, donor support in 2003 will still be much less than the bare minimum required for basic prevention and care programs". Secondly, an article from the Global Fund Observer newsletter notes the failure of the Global Fund itself to develop a fundraising strategy.

Although Uganda has been "hailed for several years as an AIDS success story," some HIV/AIDS advocates are concerned that the country's drop in HIV prevalence rate could lead to a "false sense of security," the Financial Times reports. The validity of the statistics, based on blood samples from prenatal clinics, "is open for debate," according to the Times.

Ethiopia is to become one of the first countries in Africa to produce its own drugs to tackle the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis, health officials told IRIN on Tuesday. The country, alongside South Africa, is to receive technological support so that it can manufacture anti-retroviral (ARVs) drugs to treat patients suffering from the virus.

The South African government and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on Friday failed to sign an agreement that would provide more than $40 million in grants to KwaZulu-Natal, one of the country's provinces hardest hit by the epidemic, Reuters reports.

A coalition of public health advocacy organisations in the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan have embarked on a “Fund the Fund” campaign to address the budget shortfall faced by the global fund. Sharonann Lynch, spokesperson for Health GAP, a US-based activist group, said that the aim of the campaign would be to pressure the governments of wealthy countries to contribute urgently needed resources to the global fund.

Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang this week launched an extraordinary racial attack against the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) at a formal gala event. Guests at the event, who heard the attack, included United Nations emissaries, diplomats, leading academics and corporate captains.

Cancer in Namibia and the rest of the world is set to increase at an alarming rate, according to the latest World Cancer Report released by the World Health Organisation. It said cancer rates could increase by 50 percent by the year 2020.

Like many all over the world, I have spent the last days and weeks and months in great agony, as the current assault and massacre of Law, Justice and Humanity by the most rapacious imperial power on earth has unfolded. Death, destruction, and human misery have turned into celluloid images analysed and dissected by retired majors and "embedded" journalists with utter cynicism and shameless glee while exhorting the virtues of precision bombing. Shame itself is ashamed as marines descend from their tanks to throw water bottles to traumatised thirsty Iraqis while tanks fire at Basra's water plants. In this state, I am finding it impossible to intellectualise on Re-making Law in Africa and muse over Law and Justice in the 21st century. Law, Justice and Liberation have all been murdered! How can we resurrect them?

A special body spearheaded by the president has been created to step up Madagascar's HIV/AIDS prevention drive. Malagasy President Marc Ravalomanana, who is leading the initiative, will oversee a technical committee to implement the country's HIV/AIDS campaign.

This site presents the results of a survey of business responses to HIV/Aids in South Africa. The results are presented along subject divisions such as prevention, treatment and care, surveillance and monitoring, legal and human rights and company strategy.

This report aims to provide insight into issues related to communication of HIV/Aids to children in the 3-12 year age group, with an emphasis on South Africa. The document focuses on identifying key issues related to children and HIV/Aids, including discrimination, grief, knowledge, attitudes and practices. It also attempts to determine what programmes have been implemented, both media and non-media, with regard to children and HIV/Aids.

This posting by the Africa Policy E-Journal of Africa Action contains the executive summary of a new white paper from Physicians for Human Rights, on the transmission of HIV in Africa through unsafe medical care, including unsafe injections and blood transfusions. The paper concludes that AIDS prevention efforts need to take into account significant evidence that transmission through unsafe medical care has been significantly underestimated, and urgently recommends increased investment in adequately protecting blood supplies, preventing re-use of needles for injections, and taking other health care precautions that are considered standard in developed countries.

The Kenya National Union of Teachers' (Knut) will launch a financial scheme to help members access drugs for HIV/AIDS. The scheme is part of Knut's efforts to fight the huge impact of the disease on its members, secretary-general Francis Ng'ang'a announced.

Hold parades and rallies, organise poster campaigns, educate government officials, talk to decision makers and lobby for government funding: these are some of the things that you can do to raise awareness about the problem of malaria on Africa Malaria Day on April 25.

Dramatic population growth will lead to a rapidly changing socio-economic environment in many African countries. By 2020, the global population is predicted to increase by 31% to reach 7.6 Billion and 98% of the increase will take place in developing countries. Urban populations will double in size, reaching 3.4 billion. Health hazards are also threatening the quality of life. Food systems in sub-Saharan Africa will have to respond to this changing environment. New challenges are arising that food research and development scientists will have to tackle to ensure food security, economic growth and 'quality of life' of the population. The FoodAfrica initiative will address these critical issues through an Internet-based Forum and an International Working Meeting.

As the world prepared to mark World Health Day last Monday UNICEF said that tens of millions of children suffer long-term damage to their health every year from exploitation, abuse, and violence - hazards that are often overlooked in public health planning. "A well-nourished child who is beaten at home is not a healthy child," said Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF.

The Malawi National HIV/Aids Strategic Framework 2000-2004 calls for an expanded, multi-sectoral national response to the epidemic. However, this article states that the capacity to respond to these calls lags behind. In many sectors, policy making still proceeds as if HIV/Aids never happened. Despite growing efforts, organisations involved in agricultural research and development generally have limited understanding of how AIDS affects agricultural systems.

A Swazi chief shrugged off the stigma associated with AIDS in this conservative country and admitted at the weekend he was HIV-positive, surprising and pleasing activists battling the silence that often surrounds the disease.

An increase of safe water provision in the Guinea worm endemic districts has reduced the number of indigenous cases from 126,369 in 1992 to five by December, 2002. There were also 17 imported cases from the Sudan. Dr. J.B Rwakimari, programme manager of the Uganda Guinea Worm Eradication Programme, said water coverage of 74 percent in Guinea Worm endemic districts had contributed to the decrease.