The minister for Health, Mrs Charity Ngilu, has led a high-powered delegation of doctors on a tour of various health facilities in Kitui District, where a malaria outbreak has killed 68 people since last month.

The United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO) is leading a joint team of health experts and clinicians rushing to control an outbreak of the Ebola virus, which has reportedly killed more than 60 people in the northwestern part of the Republic of the Congo.

This conference, initiated by PWAs, is convened every other year since 1993, in different countries, with different themes depending on PWA priority concerns. The theme of the Dakar 2003 Conference "More Care for Better Living" aims to highlight the priority needs of PLWAs in a situation where antiretrovirals become increasingly available in developing countries, too.

Thousands marched in Cape Town last Friday in a massive show of support for the demand that the South African government sign and implement a national HIV treatment programme. Estimates on the amount of marchers attending the march organised by AIDS-lobby group the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and taking place on the occasion of the opening of South Africa's Parliament for 2003 ranged from between 10 000 and 30 000. The material available through the link below includes a report on the march, a letter from TAC activist Zackie Achmat about the march, the memorandum presented to government and a memorandum to President Bush and Members of US Congress dealing with the Doha agreement.

The outbreak of cholera in Mbuji-Mayi in the province of Kasai-Oriental in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) "remains alarming", and the disease continues to spread, according to the International Federation of the Red Cross. An update issued on Wednesday said 202 deaths had been reported since the disease broke out in September 2002.

Genetically modified food crops have been held up as a solution to hunger in the developing world. Are the claims of the seed companies a practical reality? Is this 'second green revolution' taking place in the interest of farmers or the multinational corporations that produce and sell seeds, pesticides and herbicides around the world?

The primary responsibility of this position is to provide technical assistance to the region and to country programmes to expand CRS' outreach in response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic while ensuring that the CRS HIV/AIDS programming is accomplished in accordance with CRS/USCCB AIDS policies, & the Standards Approach for CRS HIV/AIDS Programming in Africa. Incumbent will provide leadership with HIV/AIDS Strategy Development, Information Management Project Development, Capacity Building, Monitoring & Evaluation and Networking. Masters in Public Health or related field required.

African Trade Ministers participating in the on-going World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations have a duty to denounce any agreement which could threaten public health or undermine access to generic versions of essential drugs on the continent. Making the call in a statement released to the press, the Treatment Action Movement (TAM), a coalition of Nigerian civil society actors on access to treatment and care, said the discussions at the WTO meeting hold great significance for access to healthcare in many developing countries.

Without reliable, relevant health information, health care managers and providers cannot make informed decisions to allocate resources effectively, improve the quality of health services, or address epidemics such as HIV/AIDS. As health systems around the world decentralize, the demand for sound information and the skills to use information effectively is increasing dramatically. In response, the Routine Health Information Network (RHINO) announces a technical workshop on Enhancing the Quality and Use of Health Information at the District Level.

The Africa America Institute in partnership with the Association of African Universities would like to invite you to participate in an online discussion forum from 10 February - 9 March
2003. We will be exploring the theme: "How are African Universities responding to the HIV/AIDS Pandemic?"

Many households were reported to be using 'coping' strategies to deal with food shortages, says a December/January report from The National NGO Food Security Network (FOSENET). These strategies included asset sales, school dropout, leaving home areas, and consumption of potentially toxic 'famine foods' that may have long term negative effects on households already impoverished by economic decline, unemployment, land hunger and HIV/AIDS. In the district of Mutare Rural people were reported to be moving away from their homes because of hunger. "This would need to be followed up as it is the first time an outflow of this nature has been reported and could signal a transition from food insecurity to more extreme famine type responses," said the report.

Youth Issues Papers are in-depth reviews of critical topics regarding youth reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention. They include an analysis of the issue, a literature review, case studies, lessons learned, and ideas about criteria for best practices.

Southern Africa is struggling through its second major food shortage in a decade. The latest SADC Regional Food Security Emergency Assessment forecasts that the cereal harvest this year will be well below normal in areas that are already affected by food shortages. This implies that some 15,2 million people, concentrated in Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Swaziland, Malawi and Mozambique, will require food aid for a lengthy period.

HIV/AIDS prevention programmes have had a dramatic effect on changing risky sexual behaviour, authors of a five-year study in Ethiopia said last Friday. The study, which was carried out among 1,500 factory workers in Ethiopia and started in 1997, showed a marked drop in casual sex and an increase in condom use. Prevalence rates of the virus also plummeted.

South African President Thabo Mbeki in his State of the Nation address to Parliament last Friday "was silent on the key challenge of AIDS," Reuters reports. Mbeki "shrugged off" renewed demands from hundreds of AIDS advocates who marched on Parliament, calling for the government to reconsider its "go-slow" approach to the epidemic.

Government is under increasing pressure to provide anti-retroviral drugs to people with HIV. In developed countries, the drugs have resulted in babies born with HIV now reaching university. But what about South African children with HIV?

Three children have died in an outbreak of measles in the Middle Juba region of southern Somalia, according to an international aid agency operating in the area.

The Southern African food crisis didn't appear overnight, nor is it the result of a single problem or issue. Natural, economic, health, political disasters and decisions all played their part. The Big Issue series looks at some of the major underlying reasons for the crisis, their impacts on the lives of ordinary people, and what can be done.

A total of 10,000 people, or one third of the 30,000 anti-retro viral (ARV) users in sub-Saharan Africa, are in Uganda, the ministry of health announced this week. "Uganda has been able to achieve this because it has made a marathon roll out of Voluntary Counselling and Testing or VCT's, which is necessary if drug misuse, and eventual resistance is to be avoided," the Minister of State for Health, Mike Mukula, told IRIN on Wednesday.

In November 2001, WTO members at a ministerial conference in Doha signed up to a 'Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health' which explicitly endorses the right of poorer countries to issue compulsory licences for the manufacture of patent-protected drugs in the face of a threat to public health. Also at the Doha conference, the TRIPS Council was told to find out, by the end of 2002, how a country can get access to generic drugs if it cannot manufacture them itself. At the end of November, talks on this question broke down, primarily because of the unbridgeable gap between the positions of the United States and the developing countries. The Doha 'Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health' calls for the Agreement to be interpreted in a way that promotes progress towards the goal of 'medicines for all'. It remains to be hoped that the industrialised nations will take this call to heart and heed it more fully in future negotiations within the TRIPS Council.