The government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has issued an alert regarding an outbreak of haemorrhagic fever. The fever has so far killed eight people in Orientale Province. This is a region plagued by fighting among various rebel groups and ethnic factions.

A virulent flu epidemic in the Nord Ubangui zone of Equateur Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has claimed 566 lives so far, the government announced on Tuesday.

HIV/Aids is an analytically useful policy domain because of the uncertain, complex and highly contested nature of the public health interventions that are needed.

The government of Chad recognises health and nutrition as major influences on children’s educational success. But before planning school health services, they need to know the extent of health problems among Chad’s schoolchildren. Assisted by researchers from the Partnership for Child Development at Imperial College London, they conducted the first nationwide health survey of school-age children.

A meeting to revise final drafts of an Intellectual Property (IP) bill for Nigeria ended in Abuja last Friday, with health advocates winning vital clauses that would protect the right of Nigerians to access to cheap and affordable treatment.

For many African countries the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is still to come, according to a new UN report released on Tuesday. "In the absence of massively expanded prevention, treatment and care efforts, the AIDS death toll on the continent is expected to continue rising before peaking around the end of this decade," the UNAIDS/World Health Organisation AIDS Epidemic Update 2002 said.

I spent two days in Binga - no sign of any food distribution from Save the Children Fund (UK) although Joel Gabbuza tells me that it was due to get underway today (21st November). I saw about 20 villages - all adults severely stressed, nearly all children suffering to some extent from malnutrition, some quite severe. All villages reported deaths - most not directly linked to food, but related. I witnessed people eating leaves from trees as well as roots and tubers from the bush and seeds off local trees. I only saw maize meal prepared in one village. We saw one adult man - about 45 years old, retrenched from his job in 1999 and now dying of HIV/Aids. He was a skeleton and I do not think he will live more than another few days. There were no protein foods at all in his village.

To provide technical oversight of food aid programming in the region by coordinating with the Vice-President's office the management of food aid country programs. This position will also be responsible for insuring that food aid staff are recruited according to the skills, abilities and qualities required of a food aid program.

One thousand people are likely to die of diarrhea and cholera this rainy season due to 6000 broken down water points, which have not been rehabilitated. Health analysts are saying this is despite efforts by UNICEF-Malawi and the Malawi government.

The Aids Law Unit of the Legal Assistance Centre has welcomed plans by government to expand its anti-retroviral treatment programme for HIV-positive people early next year.

Blood from umbilical cords could be given to children who are acutely ill with malaria, according to new research. Children with malaria develop anaemia because the malaria parasite destroys the red blood cells that shunt oxygen around the body. But in sub-Saharan Africa, where malaria is rife, spare blood is often in short supply.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has delayed a $12 million grant to Tanzania for malaria prevention efforts after Tanzania's Ministry of Finance said it would control the grant instead of the country's health ministry, the Boston Globe reports.

Ending hunger in Southern Africa and building food security lies in the development of smallholder farmers. If they were given enough support these farmers could be as efficient as commercial farmers, says a Washington-based research institute.

Every year 15 million people die from infectious diseases and currently 40 million people live with HIV/Aids. Some of this misery could be prevented if poor people had access to affordable medicines.

A senior ruling party politician has claimed that nurses and teachers in the Oshana region, Namibia, have received maize meal and other food rations meant for thousands of drought-affected Namibians.

The delayed distribution of food aid to thousands of drought affected villagers in the hardest hit region, the Caprivi, will finally get underway. The delays have mainly been attributed to unnecessary bureaucracy and the inability to deliver the food timeously.

HIV-positive nursing mothers and their infants who are placed on anti-retroviral drugs for a short time can produce levels of mother-to-child HIV transmission as low as six per cent, but about 20 per cent of such infants are eventually infected if breastfed over a prolonged length of time. This was the outcome of a randomized trial conducted among 1,797 pregnant women living with HIV in Tanzania, South Africa, and Uganda.

HIV/AIDS has claimed 94,755 Ugandan children aged below 15 years since its outbreak in the early 1980s, the HIV/AIDS surveillance report recently released by the Ministry of Health indicates. According to estimates of the HIV/AIDS epidemic as of December 2001, children make up about one tenth of the people who have died of AIDS.

The State of the World's Vaccines and Immunization report, released Wednesday, warns that if urgent and strategic action is not taken to close the gaps in funding, research and global immunization coverage, the world will see the re-introduction of old diseases and the emergence of new infections. The report was launched in Dakar, Senegal, at the 2nd Partners' Meeting of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).
Jointly produced by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the World Bank, the report highlights remarkable achievements in immunization over the last decade and outlines the challenges for the future.

In the next three years, the Agricultural Input Markets Development project aims to address constraints to sustainable agricultural development and improve smallholder farmers access to seed variants, fertiliser and crop protection products in the country. This ambitious project hopes to transform drought-hit Malawi into a possible food exporter.