Oxfam has warned that the food crisis in southern Africa has worsened. The first signs of a famine have started, said Oxfam America president Raymond C. Offenheiser. "Children and the elderly are dying of diseases because they are weakened by malnutrition. We have no time to waste - the world must act now to avert a catastrophic famine in southern Africa."

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos opened a two-day summit of southern African leaders with a call to bolster regional peace efforts. "We have made regional efforts to end armed conflicts, but we still have much to do to achieve stability," Dos Santos said.

Officials in Ghana announced on Monday that the country will start producing three "off-patent" antiretroviral medications in March 2003. Dr. Kwaku Yeboah, manager of the National AIDS Control Program, said that no price has been set, but he expects the drugs will be "affordable."

The European Commission (EC) has pledged to provide US $22 million to help fight HIV/AIDS in Zambia reports Irinnews. The funding is aimed at improving care and treatment for people living with the HI virus.

The majority of adolescent girls and boys do not have access to the information and services that they need, and many lack the skills required to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS. Poverty, which makes young people vulnerable to HIV/AIDS infection, and sexual violence are contributing to the spread of the disease. Younger girls remain particularly vulnerable to infection, says Unicef.

An international media watchdog, Reporters sans frontieres (RSF), has said it would hold the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila "personally responsible" for the continuing deterioration of the health of a journalist imprisoned in early September. Delly Bonsange, editor of the daily newspaper Alerte Plus, was admitted to Mama Yemo Hospital in the DRC capital, Kinshasa, on 26 September for emergency care following the continued decline of his health due to lack of treatment for diabetes.

Burundi's Ministry of Health has appealed for more meningitis vaccine because of an increase in cases of the disease in Gitega Province in central Burundi and Karuzi in the northeast.

A local content study prepared by the Fantsuam Foundation, an APC member in Nigeria, is examining how communities in Nigeria are using information and communications technologies (ICTs) to document traditional healthcare knowledge.

Strolling around supermarkets in Dar es Salaam, it is easier to find boxes of orange juice from Dubai, lines of canned beef from the UK and butter and cheese from as far away as New Zealand, than it is to find local produce. This, critics of the developed world's US $380 billion agricultural subsidies say, is real proof of the impact that the policy has on the development of local markets and industries.

South African scientists at the University of Cape Town Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine have announced plans to begin manufacturing and testing three new AIDS vaccines, the AP/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

The Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM), an independent corruption monitoring unit, has declared as a "whitewash" an investigation that cleared a top level health official of improper conduct following revelations of his business interests in the health sector.

Thirty-four health facilities in Zimbabwe are administering the antiretroviral drug nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women to reduce their risk of transmitting HIV to their infants, the Zimbabwe Herald/AllAfrica.com reports.

UNAIDS Senior Policy Adviser Dr. Julia Cleves, speaking in London at the Commonwealth Business Forum, urged business leaders to "take a leadership role" in fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa, BBC News reports. Most large businesses "do not regard AIDS as their problem.", she said.

About 30 to 35 percent of pregnant mothers in Zimbabwe are HIV-positive and 25 to 35 percent of their infants will be born infected. To curb the ever-increasing infant mortality rate the Government has introduced nevirapine.

With only two cases of polio paralysis to date this year in Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan, the Horn of Africa is extremely close to being polio-free, the World Health Organisation (WHO said on Wednesday.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced September 23 that it is providing $1 million to the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) to support its regional management and logistics coordination unit in South Africa.

The International Rescue Committee is responsible for overseeing the implementation, monitoring and supervision of the IRC's health/child survival program, which operates in the Kibungo region.

The Cabinet's April 17 statement on HIV/Aids policy -- widely hailed as a crucial change of heart -- is looking increasingly threadbare. Was it, as some maintain, merely a tactical manoeuvre to deflect international condemnation in advance of the G8 meeting in Canada due to consider the New Partnership for Africa's Development?

Adolescence Reproductive Health Organizations have asked the government to include Adolescence Sexual Reproductive Health (ASRH) programmes in the current schools curriculum to enable the HIV/AIDS message reach all students.

Researchers measured the impact of maternal syphilis on pregnancy outcome in the Mwanza Region of Tanzania. Women with high-titer active syphilis were at the greatest risk of having low-birth-weight or preterm live births, compared with women with other serological stages of syphilis. Among unscreened women, 51 percent of stillbirths, 24 percent of preterm live births, and 17 percent of all adverse pregnancy outcomes were attributable to maternal syphilis.