No words can best describe the debilitating effects of food shortages and the hopelessness that have hit rural Zimbabwe than those of Josephat Madzamba, a leader of a Pentecostal church, in rural Headlands. Church halls are either empty or congregations have shrunk, reports AANA Correspondent, Tim Chigodo. Fifty-two-year old Madzamba says that food shortages in villages have become so acute that it is difficult to try to spread the Word of God.

Agricultural trade is of vital importance for developing countries, accounting for a large share of GDP and being a primary source of employment, livelihoods and basic food for the majority of the population. For this reason the rules governing the trade in agriculture deserve distinctive treatment within the WTO. This paper concludes that the negotiations on agriculture should pay more attention on food security and equal opportunities for developing and developed countries.

Swaziland's health ministry has begun enlisting traditional healers in efforts to contain HIV and assist patients with Aids-related illnesses. The cooperation between modern and traditional medicine reverses decades of separation, and highlights the extent of the Aids emergency in Swaziland.

The toll from the ebola outbreak in Congo has risen to 75 deaths among 93 cases, but is believed to be under control, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday. The figures, which exceed the number of victims in Congo and Gabon a year ago, came from an investigating team of WHO and government experts deployed in the remote northwest area.

The thousand fold gap in spending on healthcare between the richest and poorest countries must be reduced, and this will require fairer trading conditions. “Perhaps it will feel uncomfortable at first for us rich 10%. But we'll get used to it, and indeed relish living in a world that's becoming more just, more uniformly wealthy and more secure,” writes John Sulston, founding director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

The prevalence of parasitic infections is high among low-income communities in such tropical countries as Kenya, Joyce Onsongo, the country's Deputy Director of Medical Services, told workshop participants in Nairobi recently. Speaking at the closing of an international workshop on control of parasitic diseases in eastern and southern Africa at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri), Onsongo said that the infections not only have a serious impact on human health, but are also a hindrance to economic growth and development.

CAFOD's Emergency Support Section (ESS) provides specialist support, technical and humanitarian assistance to CAFOD International Division programme staff and partners across the globe during humanitarian crises. ESS is looking for a key specialist to join its team. To help with the humanitarian crisis reaching across southern Africa, CAFOD's ESS needs a new specialist member to provide support to CAFOD's Africa section in coordinating the overall response to the crisis.

Proven track record in administering, monitoring and evaluating public health projects in developing countries and knowledge of vaccine-preventable diseases epidemiology and immunization required.

Increasing attention around the world is being paid to scaling up responses to HIV/AIDS. As part of such efforts, systems and programmes are being established and expanded to provide funding and technical support to local NGOs and CBOs for HIV/AIDS work, and to promote co-ordination and partnership between NGOs and governments. The HIV/AIDS NGO/CBO Support Toolkit is an electronic library of resources about NGO/CBO support that have been collated by the Alliance from a wide range of organisations, based on the understanding that there are many viable approaches to NGO/CBO support programming. These resources are available on CD-ROM as well as at the web site Copies of the CD-ROM can be ordered from the web site or by emailing [email][email protected]

A United Nations special HIV/Aids envoy, who was the subject of a bizarre attack by three South African ministers this week, says he is "bewildered" at being branded a "fascist" and "arrogant" but does not want a "brawl" with the government. Steven Lewis, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy to Southern Africa, told the Sunday Times that he would not report the attack to the UN even though he feels he was "inappropriately criticised". Lewis said last month that governments were liable for "mass murder by complacency" for neglecting the Aids crisis in Southern Africa".

The government has made a late appeal to the World Food Programme to continue food aid support for another year as there is no end in sight to the country's severe shortages and famine, say diplomatic sources. World Food Programme food assistance is set to close at the end of March, raising fears that malnutrition will increase; especially in the hardest hit provinces, Masvingo and Matabeleland North and South.

Uncompromising words and body language from US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, and other participants spell trouble for the ongoing World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations on agriculture. The draft negotiating document prepared by WTO farm negotiations chairman Stuart Harbinson zoomed to the top of the agenda at a recent Tokyo meeting when, even before the meeting began, Japanese Minister of Agriculture Tadamori Oshima rejected the paper's proposals for minimum cuts of between 25 and 45 per cent and average reductions of 40 to 60 per cent on all farm tariffs over five years. The European Union (EU) also attacked the Harbinson proposal as "unbalanced" for proposing that "trade-distorting" subsidies be cut by 60 per cent over five years and that export subsidies be phased out entirely over nine years. Both Japan and the EU denounced the paper as ensuring that the US would be the only victor in the negotiations. In the fight between the agro-export giants, the concerns of developing countries were conveniently lost, writes WTO-watcher Walden Bello.

Meningitis has killed 401 people out of 2433 cases in Burkina Faso since the beginning of the 2002-2003 meningitis season in late October, Souleymane Sanou, head of meningitis control in the health ministry said last week.

World Vision Liberia has commenced distribution of World Food Program (WFP) food to internally displaced persons (IDPs) in three camps in Montserrado County, World Vision reported last Thursday.

The international medical aid NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has dispatched medical teams and medicines to fight several epidemics in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), including a cholera outbreak that first erupted about 18 months ago, MSF reported last Friday.

A new study has established the link between Aids and Swaziland's current food crisis, demonstrating that the epidemic is as damaging to agricultural production as drought and outmoded land policies.

Cholera has claimed 33 lives in Mozambique since the first case of the present outbreak was diagnosed in the northern province of Niassa in September 2002, reports Monday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias".

In a move considered a breakthrough for a country with high levels of stigma and discrimination, Batswana using antiretroviral drugs have come forward to tell their stories in a series of educational videos released this week.

As African countries grapple with dwindling crop yields and famine, some farmers in east Africa have discovered a new way to replenish soil fertility and increase farm yields. Eunice Gichiku Kinyua, a 40 year old Kenya farmer, is among hundreds of farmers in rural Kenya who have discovered that the wild sunflower (Tithonia diversifolia) replenishes soil fertility and helps increase crop yields.

In a major new report Christian Aid examines the underlying causes of the current food shortage crisis in Ethiopia. 'Nothing to fall back on' says that Ethiopia will remain on the brink of catastrophe unless the root causes of poverty are attacked.