Genital mutilation increases infections, researchers say. Women who have undergone female genital mutilation in Gambia have a higher prevalence of bacterial and viral infections.

Central and Eastern African countries, whose education systems are already threatened by HIV/AIDS, need to take concrete steps to minimise the impact of the pandemic, a regional forum in Yaounde, Cameroon, has concluded.

SOME South African employees are taking the lead in the fight against HIV/Aids - donating their time, salaries and services to help victims of the disease. Staff at some of the country's biggest companies and government departments have already raised over R1-million and provided food to orphans in some of the country's poorest areas in what is believed to be the start of a new trend among employees.

The South African Medical Research Council (MRC), in collaboration with several partners, are establishing an Internet information portal on HIV/AIDS for southern Africa. The proposed portal will provide a knowledge resource to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing among institutions involved in the prevention of HIV/AIDS in this region. The initial target audience includes health researchers and profes-
sional health care workers, people living with HIV/AIDS, NGOs and community-based organisations in the field and policy makers. This is an invitation to stakeholders, involved in generating quality HIV/AIDS information, to make their information resources available via the AfroAidsInfo portal. Submissions covering the following areas are encouraged:

Lesotho has one of the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates in the world, yet prevention and treatment programmes are only just getting off the ground. UNAIDS associate country programme advisor Ludo Bok told PlusNews the impoverished mountain kingdom was still in the early stages of responding to the pandemic, but had a prevalence rate of between 31 and 34 percent.

"Thousands of parents throughout South Africa have lost and are losing their infants to HIV/AIDS. Most of them are desperately poor and marginalised by a society in which the rights of women and children are frequently trampled upon. However, today's court case and recent events, including the commitment by Government to extend mother-to-child HIV transmission prevention irrespective of today's ruling, give hope to many women and children who will use public antenatal clinics in the future."

A Kenyan law that allows the importation and manufacture of generic antiretroviral drugs took effect on May 1, BBC News reports. Last June, the Kenyan Parliament passed the Industrial Properties Bill 2001, a measure that allows Kenya to suspend drug patents during a national health emergency. The law stipulates that Kenya must give drug manufacturers six months' notice before licensing other companies to import or produce generic versions of patented drugs.

South Africa's HIV/AIDS programme has received a boost with the announcement of a US $165.2 million grant from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria.

Southern African journalists now have access to a single authoritative database on HIV/AIDS with the launch of the SAfAIDS's media information pack in both English and Portuguese.

Despite improved cereal harvests in 2001/02 in most parts of the region, the effects of recent drought and past or continuing conflicts continue to undermine the food security of an estimated 11 million people in eastern Africa, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported on Tuesday.

The food and nutritional situation of over two million internally displaced people (IDPs), particularly in northeastern parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and of over 330,000 refugees from neighbouring countries, "is cause for serious concern", according to the latest report from the Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture (GIEWS).

I am appalled by the editorial in your current newsletter by one Ian Taylor. It makes for depressing reading and is reminiscent of the Western media which is always out to bash and discredit Africa.

For one Mr Taylor seems to have a very strong opinion regarding Zimbabwe elections and concomitant reaction around which African issues in his eyes orbit. Quoting one ‘respected professor’, he starts by prophesying ‘fallout’ as a result of the ‘election debacle’. He goes ahead to discredit respected African elected leaders as ‘elites’. This amounts to rubbishing the African electorate. The low esteem Taylor holds Africans in is further depicted in his shabby treatment of Africa observer teams. What makes him believe what the other observer teams said, or was he an observer himself; in which case he should tell us about his experiences for comparison purposes? And anyway, what morality does the West have of observing elections in Africa? Do Africans interfere in the elections of the West, say of the US or France?

Zim elections were in no way a test case for NEPAD. The latter is already a winner in that it is already a recognition by Africans that their destiny lies in their hands, not in the hands of the increasingly repugnant and retrogressive Washington-based World Bank and IMF. Yes, let Africa Renaissance (for the record this is a vision of former South African President Nelson Mandela, not of President Thabo Mbeki as the author claims) and NEPAD be declarations and talking shops; these are but the first steps to a long and treacherous liberation of Africa by Africans, led by their elites. Yes, elites, not only because they are the ones at the forefront – exposed and entrusted with the running of African countries – but the ‘person on the street’ mostly does not have the insights or capabilities to envision the big picture. In fact it would be a blessing in disguise for the North to ignore NEPAD ‘as an irrelevancy’ because we have had enough of their unworkable meddling. British and Canadian Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Jean Chretien may be interested in Africa, but only towards their selfish ends. How else would one explain Blair’s whirlwind visit to strategic African countries just before the Commonwealth meeting, and concomitant ‘pushing and shoving and cajoling and pleading’? The overdrive by Jean Chretien for a successful G8 agenda is not missed by many, as the earlier one of John Howard for the Commonwealth hosting.

If the Zim elections drove a wedge and led to a sobering up of relations between the elites of the North vis-à-vis of Africa, then that in itself is a success of the elections. It is high time Africa stopped being deluded by the sweet blah blah of the North, and saw the wolves in the sheep-skins for what they are. We do not need to ‘save positions’ on anyone’s agenda but our own. To Africa, the recent meeting of the Africa heads of state in Senegal is more important than the G8 meeting if only because there is commitment, and the issues at hand are not viewed or tossed about according to other parties’ whims.

Suffice it to say Mbeki’s and President Olusegun Obasanjo’s treatment of the ‘tripartite’ final announcement inspires Africans’ confidence in them as leaders with the times. Their contempt captures our feeling to being muscled about by others because of their being wealthy. No more should we agree to strings being pulled to make us puppets to the ‘globalisers’.

Democracy, human rights, good governance et al are all very good. Unfortunately, these cannot be viewed in isolation. Zimbabwe’s land issue and US after September 11 have something in common, and that is there are more basic and pertinent issues to democracy and human rights. For Africa, President Daniel arap Moi correctly refers to the issues surrounding implementation of these ideals as ‘African democracy’. If NEPAD is to go slow for total emancipation of Zimbabwe so be it. Indeed if NEPAD is to go slow rather than receive conditional aid (‘we’ll behave’ – the cheek) the better, as the latter amounts to neo-colonialism.

For now Africa Renaissance and NEPAD may be media buzzwords, but they are slowly getting into us Africans’ subconscious. It may take twenty, fifty or even a hundred years, but Africa will finally live these dreams, maybe as an African civilisation akin the Egyptian civilisation. It is gratifying that our friend Taylor notes that ‘Africa is indeed willing and able to police itself’; he should only appreciate that our leaders are a mirror of that willingness and ability.

Coordinates 2002, a joint publication from WHO, UNAIDA and UNICEF is the first evidence-based, consolidated review of the three different but often interacting diseases spreading through the world. This report on the AIDS, TB and malaria epidemics summarizes the burdens of these diseases, assesses the tools used to fight them, and discusses the barriers to progress. These diseases share several features. They all disproportionately affect the poor. They all further impoverish their victims and they will all require significant resources and political will to reverse their impacts.

Changing the South African army's contentious ban on recruiting HIV positive combat soldiers could be seriously costly and compromise the army's effectiveness as a force, warned deputy director of the centre for military studies Lindy Heinecken on Wednesday.

The World Health Organization has issued guidelines for the treatment of HIV in developing nations and included 12 antiretroviral drugs for that indication on its Essential Medicines List, a move that suggests "the debate over whether the world's poorest AIDS patients are ready for triple [drug] therapy has moved from rhetoric to practical planning".

Former South African President Nelson Mandela has said that he was "relieved" that the South African government may implement a national nevirapine program to prevent vertical HIV transmission by year's end, Agence France-Presse reports. "These are responsible people who could not allow babies to continue to die," Mandela said. But Mandela "dismissed" reports that the government changed its stance on antiretroviral drugs because "he entered the fray".

South African President Thabo Mbeki has acknowledged that the government has not communicated its message on HIV/AIDS successfully and urged all South Africans to "take responsibility for [their] health," the South African Press Association reports.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Irish rock star Bono will tour four African nations next month to assess a "variety of development projects," including some aimed at HIV/AIDS, Reuters reports (Reuters, 4/23). According to a Treasury Department statement, the trip, which begins on May 20, will "highlight efforts to enhance the effectiveness of development assistance, the importance of increasing productivity through investment in human capital and the role of the private sector as an engine for economic growth."

The spread of the polio virus has declined sharply in Nigeria, the UN Children's Fund reported this week. It said 57 cases of poliomyelitis were recorded in 2001 as against 2,000 in the previous year. Nine cases have been recorded this year from a surveillance of 12 of
Nigeria's 36 states, UNICEF added in a statement made available to IRIN on Thursday.

A resolution on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (E/CN.4/2002/L.47), sponsored by the Brazilian Delegation, was adopted by consensus on 22 April 2002 at the Fifty-Eighth Session of the Commission on Human Rights. The Resolution urges States to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, to achieve progressively the full realization of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; calls upon the international community to assist, without discrimination, the developing countries to this end; and appoints, for a period of three years, a Special Rapporteur on the right to health.