Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA) is working with the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the South African based campaign group, to demand that GlaxoSmithKline puts public health before patients and profits. Visit their web page and sign a petition in support of the campaign.

We are angry. According to Government's sources over 600 people will die of AIDS everyday on average this year. We stand here today to say to you that you have wilfully and negligently failed to implement the necessary interventions, including antiretroviral treatment, that would prevent many of these deaths. Also available by clicking on the link below are excerpts from an indictment by the TAC against two government ministers for culpable homicide, for their repeated refusal to act to provide such treatment.

Abraham Feleke is the only surgeon at his 150-bed hospital south of Addis Ababa, a facility that caters for two million people. Situated some 300 km south of the capital Addis Ababa, Yirga Alem is seen as a flagship medical centre. But even there the facilities are appallingly inadequate. “I feel we are totally undervalued as a profession," says Abraham.

Tuberculosis (TB) infects 1.6 million people and kills 600,000 others in Africa every year, making the disease one of the most common preventable causes of death from a single infectious agent in the Region, according to a report issued on World TB Day by the World Health Organisation Regional Office for Africa.

About 141,000 children, aged between five months and five years, and 71,000 pregnant women in 22 Mozambican districts seriously affected by drought, are being supplied with soya as a food supplement, aiming to reduce levels of malnutrition.

South Africa is facing one of the worst Tuberculosis (TB) epidemics in the world, with disease rates up to 60 times higher than currently experienced by the United States or Western Europe, the South African Red Cross Society (SARCS) has warned.

Members of the HIV/AIDS treatment advocacy group Treatment Action Campaign in Sharpeville, South Africa, have filed charges of manslaughter against the country's Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and Trade Minister Alec Erwin over not providing "adequate treatment for people with HIV," the AP/San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The eradication of the polio virus in Nigeria in 2003 is still possible with adequate political commitment to overcome resistance to immunisation, says UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) Director for West and Central Africa, Rima Salah.

The death toll in the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the Cuvette-Ouest Region of northern Congo has continued to rise. Of the 123 people known to have been infected with the haemorrhagic fever, 111 had died, Joseph M'boussa, who is heading the fight against the virus, told IRIN.

Trade barriers and subsidies in developed countries are depressing prices of agricultural goods, resulting in a "tax" of $7,1bn a year on African countries. These were the findings of a report into advancing African agriculture through trade reform, which was compiled by the Economic Analytical Unit of the Australian foreign affairs and trade department.

Children in Africa and Asia are being badly let down by their respective teaching systems warns ActionAid in a hard-hitting new report. The charity's comprehensive study found that in schools, stigma, fear and embarrassment prevent open discussion about HIV and in particular the virus's links with unsafe sex. This is leaving young people at risk.

Universities in sub-Saharan Africa have been widely criticized for being too academic and remote from the practical needs of the societies that they are supposed to serve. Yet these universities often include among their faculty a great proportion of their country’s most highly trained researchers, and some of the best research facilities. How can these resources best be mobilized to contribute to national development objectives.

Malaria and diarrhoea related diseases are likely to worsen the plight of Zimbabweans already battling to survive. This follows a year marked by floods, drought, and serious food shortages. According to the latest Zimbabwe Humanitarian Situation Report by the UN Relief and Recovery Unit (RRU), there has been a sudden increase in malaria in Binga, Hurungwe and Kariba in the north west of the country and outbreaks have been reported in Bindura and Shamva districts in the north east.

A recently launched UN Children's Fund project in Zambia is providing vulnerable population groups in drought-affected areas with HIV/Aids messages of hope. This is part of a collaborative effort to address the explosive combination of acute food shortages and the HIV/Aids epidemic in the country, says UNICEF Zambia Representative, Dr Stella Goings.

This paper compares public opinion survey data from the Afrobarometer with epidemiological data about the HIV/Aids pandemic in seven Southern African countries. The authors use this data to examine the degree to which people are aware of the pandemic, and are willing to speak about it.

Despite pleas last October to prepare for a serious outbreak of bacterial meningitis, public health officials are scrambling to halt a mounting epidemic in Burkina Faso. Public health officials will be forced to ration the limited supply in a way that saves as many lives as possible, and WHO officials are now trying to figure out how best to distribute the available doses of vaccine.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa has far-reaching implications for governance and development. In addition to killing millions of individuals and causing serious economic contractions, the pandemic threatens structural transformations in African economies, institutions and governance. Decreased adult life expectancy has important adverse impacts upon savings, capital accumulation, skills acquisition, and institutional functioning. This article examines how the impacts of the pandemic can be envisaged as running processes of demographic transition, economic development and the growth of a bureaucratic state, in reverse.

Possibilities of adoption for a child infected with HIV depend on nothing more than compassion, as opposed to a primary need to have a child or give a home to a child who deserves to grow in a stable family unit. More and more social services organisations have come to realise that placing HIV positive children in adoptive homes can be a futile attempt.

This International Institute for Educational  Planning (IIEP) report is divided into two parts, the first looking at the impact of HIV/AIDS on the education sector in sub-Saharan Africa, and the second at ways of bringing effective HIV/AIDS education into schools. It is based on a synthesis of a number of research findings from a variety of studies.

Uganda Access to Essential Medicines Coalition has voiced concern over comments made in the media regarding antiretroviral use in Uganda. The media recently reported that 10,000 Ugandans now have access to antiretroviral therapy. In a statement on behalf of the coalition, Rosette Mutambi said the 10,000 Ugandans accessing AIDS drugs is just a drop in the ocean.