In most of the mud-brick houses perched above the starkly beautiful gorges of the Tugela River, someone is dying. In one house, a truck driver stretches his bony legs on a mattress; he has come home from Johannesburg to die. Just down the dirt road, a thin young man lives with his mother and sister in a single room. They own nothing, not even a chicken. The young man has not yet told his sister that he has AIDS. This is the province of KwaZulu-Natal, epicenter of South Africa's epidemic, where HIV positive rates are estimated at more than 30 percent.

Anti-rape volunteers in Mpumalanga gave health MEC Sibongile Manana a pat on the back this week for the first time in two tense years. The MEC announced on Thursday that the department was finally preparing to dispense antiretroviral drugs to all of the province's 27 hospitals, and that care rooms would be set aside for emergency help for rape survivors.

Southern Africa's disastrous food crisis may spread to Namibia, as it has emerged that 70,000 people in the Caprivi region urgently needed food aid. The World Food Programme (WFP) has already said that almost 13 million people will face food shortages in Southern Africa and so far Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia have declared a disaster.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon, in a statement issued on Wednesday, said: "There is a real danger that the 'World Food Summit: Five Years Later' taking place in Rome will not deliver results. Instead of generating money to feed the poor, it could just feed more summits. That must not be allowed to happen."

An HIV/AIDS and education conference in Southern Africa will be held on July 18 in London. The objectives are not only to raise awareness on the issue of HIV/AIDS and its impact on Education in Southern Africa but also to encourage partnerships that facilitate the exchange of skills and resources between NGOs, trades unions, the private and public sectors in the UK and partners in Southern Africa.

The Namibian government has donated food worth one million Namibian dollars (US $100,000) to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for distribution in the eastern city of Goma, where many thousands of residents were displaced by lava flows from Mt Nyiragongo volcano in January, the Namibian news agency Nampa reported.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has expressed concern over the continued humanitarian access denial to the oil-rich region of western Upper Nile in southern Sudan, where constant insecurity, resulting from ongoing fighting between the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), and the Sudan government, has caused the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians.

HIV/AIDS and hunger were a "dual tragedy" threatening sub-Saharan Africa, and endangering the lives of millions. They were also hindering development, UNAIDS told the World Food Summit in Rome on Wednesday. "Where the lack of food is greatest, HIV prevalence is alarmingly high," Marika Fahlen, head of social mobilisation at UNAIDS, said.

The Secretariat of the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM), realizing the need to train and develop current and future leaders of African research institutions involved in malaria research, is supporting and organizing a two-week workshop on leadership and management from 6-18 October in Arusha, Tanzania.

Following the deaths of five people in the village of Oloba in Mbomo district, Cuvette-ouest region of the Republic of Congo (ROC), an investigation is under way into a possible outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported on Tuesday.

Southern Africa is the region with the highest rates of HIV infection in the world. An estimated 9.4 million of the total population of 97 million were HIV-positive in 1999. What impact will the HIV/AIDS epidemic have on the provision of health services in the region? Is there any scope for improving access to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in low income countries?

Grandparents often have to care for AIDS orphans in developing countries. But what other problems do they face due to the epidemic? Researchers from the MRC Programme on AIDS in Uganda talked to elderly people in a rural village in south west Uganda, where half of all deaths among adults aged 13 to 44 are HIV-related.

HIV continues to increase the burden on already over-stretched health services in developing countries. DFID-funded research involving the UK's Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine assessed the economic burden of HIV/AIDS on medical services at Kenyatta National Hospital, Nairobi, Kenya.

Rwandan Minister of Health Ezechias Rwabuhihi has said one million Rwandans suffer from malaria every year, the Rwanda News Agency reported on Monday.

More than 300 hundred Ethiopian doctors are reported to have left their country during the last 10 years, seeking better job opportunities in developed countries.

South Africa's long-awaited first Aids vaccine trial has been delayed again. Regulatory agencies in both the United States and South Africa, which must approve the trial before it can begin, have yet to okay the vaccine. The latest delay is likely to push the start date back by months, scientists said.

The number of contraceptive users in developing countries is expected to surge by more than a third within the next 13 years, reaching 764 million by 2015. Without more funding for contraceptives, many couples will be unable to plan how many children to have and when, or to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), according to a new report "Family Planning Logistics: Strengthening the Supply Chain", published by the Johns Hopkins Population Information Program.

Situated among the rolling hills and valleys of South Africa's picturesque KwaZulu-Natal province, Somkhele clinic is one of 14 outlying clinics serving the 5,000 km square area of Hlabisa district - a region among those worst hit by HIV/AIDS. Clinics in the area are generally well utilised with about 95 percent of pregnant women attending antenatal clinics at least once during their pregnancies.

Thousands of people in Cape Verde have been hit by food shortages due in part to poor harvests, according to UN agencies which have begun channelling aid to the affected populations.

Journalists Against AIDS (JAAIDS) Nigeria commenced a project to monitor coverage of HIV/AIDS in the print media in Nigeria over a period of 12 months. Under the project, JAAIDS will conduct analysis of media coverage of HIV/AIDS in selected national newspapers and magazines for frequency, accuracy and quality.