A special issue of Ageways, HelpAge International's regular publication, highlights the devastating impact that HIV/AIDS is having on older people and suggests practical ways to support those who are caring for relatives with AIDS and orphaned grandchildren.

The South African Communist Party (SACP) has accused the private sector in South Africa of “manifestly failing” to contribute effectively to combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The SACP charged that financial institutions had evicted HIV/AIDS orphans from houses bonded to their late parents. “In many cases, these evictions are compounded by policies of insurance companies which exclude HIV/AIDS cover. These policies are cruel, inhumane and reflect the poverty of private commercial banks and the insurance industry in our country,” said the SACP.

Muslim and Christian religious leaders will foster support and compassion for those living with HIV/AIDS under a new program launched in Ghana, where approximately a half-million people are living with the virus that causes AIDS. Reach Out, Show Compassion for people living with HIV/AIDS is the second phase of the successful Stop AIDS, Love Life national communication program, which began in February 2000.

Workshop aims to give to participants basic knowledge on HIV/AIDS and human rights. It will present examples of cases of discrimination and human rights violations associated with HIV/AIDS.

Eighteen-year-old Mathias Walubita has just returned from writing his Grade 11 exams, but is already preparing for a weekend of hard work. He has to change out of his school uniform into casual wear, before walking eight kilometres to the centre of Katima Mulilo, on an empty stomach. The centre is where he has a weekend job of loading trucks. Tall and shy, Mathias is one of the estimated 82 000 Aids orphans in Namibia.

At the end of September, Colin Powell requested an altogether earthly intercession from Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican foreign minister. The Secretary of State wanted the Vatican to persuade the Zambian government to accept U.S.-supplied genetically modified (GM) food aid. With a population under 10 million and with the vast majority of people earning under $1,000 a year, Zambia is a mouse that has roared. In refusing to accept U.S. GM corn, and by dealing with its famine by sourcing grain from within the region, the Zambian government has sent a clear signal that it understands both why famines happen and that U.S. aid is part of the problem, not the solution.

The Malawi Minister of Agriculture, Aleke Banda, has declared total war on hunger because he hates to see his government begging food from donors. He says the country has water and fertile land in abundance.

Two people have died of cholera in an outbreak in Tongwe, near Zimbabwe's Beit Bridge, forcing authorities to close the local school to contain the spread of the disease.

Some 500 of the 4,000 people with acute respiratory illness reported since October in Bosobolo, in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have died, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported last Friday.

Rich nations have done little to help fight HIV/AIDS, says the United Nations's top adviser on Aids in Africa. He says that the rich nations were "not serious" when it came to contributions towards the Global Fund to fight Aids, TB and malaria.

The latest report from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network says that distribution of private and government relief food in Zambia has been very slow. As the first drops of the rainy season fall, only half the expected fertiliser and maize seed deliveries have been completed.

Amid strides made countrywide to address the ever-escalating rate of HIV/Aids prevalence, the private sector, through the Private Sector Coalition Against HIV/Aids, has felt the need to fight the disease in the workplace.

The rapid spread of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria is a result of stigmatisation and discrimination against people who have tested positive, say experts. ‘'Discriminating against people who are infected is forcing the epidemic under the carpet, where it does no one any good. It continues to spread. But if we are able to control stigma, discrimination and rejection, more people will have the courage to come out and test, and it will be easy to control the disease a little better,'' says Pat Matemola, co-ordinator of the Network of People Living With HIV/AIDS.

If the global community does not "dramatically increase" its efforts in the fight against HIV/AIDS, it will be "sowing the seeds of future humanitarian disasters -- not only in southern Africa. And the more we delay making a proper investment in the AIDS fight, the more the eventual costs will escalate," UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot writes in a Washington Post opinion piece.

SC UK has been working in Sudan since the 1950s. The focus of SC UK work in Sudan is around issues of food security, health care, water and sanitation, education, protection of vulnerable children. SC UK is currently involved in the health sector in assisting the conflict affected and displaced population of Khartoum, Bahr el Ghazal and South Darfur.

Talks to reach an international agreement to ensure developing countries can access essential medicines to treat people with the HIV/Aids virus and other serious conditions have broken down. The talks, aimed at relaxing the rules on pharmaceutical patents, ended without agreement at the World Trade Organisation in Geneva last Friday.

A staggering 15 patients die on average each day - 450 people a month - at King Edward Hospital in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province. The 231-bed St Mary's Hospital in Mariannhill reports that 50% of its medical admissions are dying, while at the 409-bed Stanger Hospital, 20% of adult medical admissions and a quarter of children don't make it home.

West Africa, the poorest region in the world, is preparing to treat 400 000 HIV positive people with anti-retrovirals within the next three years. This translates into anti-retroviral access for at least one-third of the people in the region in need of treatment. Currently, some 10 000 people in West Africa have access to anti-retroviral treatment.

Catholic Relief Services urged the Catholic community ahead of World Aids Day on December 1 to remember the more than 40 million people around the world affected by HIV/Aids. The agency warned that Africa in particular was in the midst of a devastating crisis. Many Africans infected and affected with HIV/Aids were also confronted with severe food shortages. Sub-Saharan Africa had only 10 percent of the world's population, but was home to 70 percent of the world's HIV-positive people.

The electronic conference for the 'African Networks for Health Research & Development' (AFRO-NETS) was established in 1997 to facilitate exchange of information among different networks active in health research for development in Anglophone Africa, and to facilitate collaboration in the fields of capacity building, planning, and research. Since then, the AFRO-NETS discussion group has grown to 1300 subscribers in 74 countries and now includes a web site. Topics for discussion include: advocacy for health research and development; priority setting; capacity building; resource mobilisation; evaluation; dissemination of results; utilisation of research findings; networking; use of information technology for the health sector; announcement of meetings, training courses and other events of interest to subscribers; and HIV-AIDS issues.