The 'communication' element of ICTs is often forgotten as practitioners and policy makers tend to focus more on technology and infrastructural aspects. Communication should be the central concern when introducing ICTS, as it has become evident for its relevant contribution to the development processes. The overall idea is that ICT projects for health communication must be locally relevant and successful first in terms of communications, rather than new technologies.

The director will be responsible for ensuring the centre fulfils its three main designed functions: 1. Operational research in reproductive health care, 2. training in reproductive health, 3. knowledge base and network hub. Chichewa and English fluency preferred.

Medecins Sans Frontieres plans to launch a five-year pilot programme in collaboration with the Mozambican government. The programme will be responsible for providing free antiretrovirals to a selected group of HIV-positive people, in the northern province of Tete and in the capital, Maputo.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said in Entebbe, Uganda, at a meeting of the Commonwealth Regional Health Community for East, Central and Southern Africa that HIV/AIDS and malaria are stressing Uganda's health ministry and costing the country more than $1 billion in lost wealth each year, the Associated Press reports.

A study of children in Kenya and Tanzania has identified a gene mutation that can significantly cut the risk of becoming seriously ill with malaria. Researchers led by Brice Weinberg of the Veterans Affairs and Duke University Medical Centers in Durham, North Carolina, United States, found that children with the mutation were nearly 90 per cent less likely to develop severe forms of the disease.

Africa needs to set realistic priorities in health research, and also to develop its own capacities and alternative ways for solving its health problems, according to Ali Mohamed Shein, Vice-President of Tanzania. Addressing a meeting of 700 health experts, policy-makers and donor agencies from about 85 countries, Shein said that African countries needed to remind themselves that it was their "own duty and responsibility” to lead the fight against diseases which were weighing them down.

A new organisation to promote health research in Africa and strengthen the continent's voice in setting and implementing the global research agenda has been launched. The initiative — known as the African Health Research Forum — seeks to develop leadership in health researchers and health institutions in Africa. It also aims to improve the communication of health research findings to the public, by creating websites and scientific journals, and by training science communicators.

HIV/Aids is changing the environment in which we operate. It will have effects as serious as the plague in medieval Europe and we do not know how to deal with it. In effect there is a complete poverty in planning which will result in considerable impoverishment and misery in much of Southern Africa. One new way to assess the situation would be through developing scenarios.

One of the country's leading trade unions has threatened to take The Namibian to court if the newspaper refuses to divulge the names of its sources after a report that said union president Dawid Namalenga was under pressure to resign.

HIV/AIDS is an enormous development crisis and debt repayment represents a remarkable obstacle to the fight against it, says a 2002 paper by Oxfam. HIV/AIDS claims more than one million lives each year in heavily indebted countries, says Oxfam, but half of the countries receiving debt relief under the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Countries Initiative are still spending 15 percent or more of government revenue on debt repayment.

Aids activists have criticised a Zambian official for his proposal to round up everyone infected with HIV and force them into isolation camps. Alex Chama, deputy minister for Luapula province, made his comments during a parliamentary debate Wednesday. Aids activists said it was sad to see a government minister express such attitudes in a country where an estimated 20 percent of people are HIV positive.

A health services rehabilitation project in the war-ravaged Uige Province of Angola has received financing. Uige is one of the parts of Angola that has suffered most during the war with most of its infrastructure destroyed.

A bitter row over genetically modified food is casting a shadow over efforts to rush aid to millions of Africans facing starvation. Even as millions of people suffer from malnutrition, thousands of tons of food stockpiles are lying unused - or are even being shipped away. Five of the six southern African countries are imposing tough restrictions on the maize, fearing it either is unsafe to eat or could contaminate their environment.

The drought distribution machinery, like a rusty, old engine, finally sprang to life delivering some food relief, though the majority of Namibians in need are still waiting, largely due to bureaucratic delays.

This briefing paper by Human Rights Watch begins by giving an outline of the WTO's Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPS) and of the Doha declaration by WTO members, which states that countries can bypass patents in medical emergencies. The paper argues that countries in the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) should resist pressure from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to adopt a TRIPS-plus patent regime that increases patent rights of pharmaceutical companies. They state that this undermines the Doha Declaration and constrains developing countries' efforts to promote the health and human rights of their citizens.

At least 12 people have died and 337 are infected in a cholera epidemic in Bunia, Ituri District, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where rival ethnic militias have been fighting for control. "These figures should drop following the intervention of health teams," Doudou Luemba of the UN Children's Fund's (UNICEF) emergency department, told IRIN last Thursday.

An UN inter-agency effort in the Republic of Congo (ROC) has so far trained 1,939 teachers on HIV/AIDS- prevention education methods involving the active participation of students, Brenda Bowman, the project administrator, has told IRIN.

At least 60 million children under five years of age in 16 West African countries are to be vaccinated this week against polio, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Tuesday. The world's largest vaccine manufacturer, Aventis Pasteur, has donated 30 million doses of oral polio vaccines to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to facilitate the vaccination.

The Southern African Development Community's second Malaria Day and National Malaria Awareness Week have been launched in Windhoek, Namibia.

More than two years after African leaders and western donors pledged to halve the number of deaths from malaria, the disease remains one of Africa's top killers, UN special adviser Jeffrey Sachs said last week.