South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province, in a "dramatic turnaround," has broken rank with the central government, withdrawing from its appeal of a December High Court ruling that requires the government to provide the antiretroviral drug nevirapine to all HIV-positive pregnant women to prevent vertical HIV transmission. The province is now publicly siding with the Treatment Action Campaign, the AIDS advocacy group that brought the lawsuit, Health-e News reports.

Reuben Granich's book, "HIV Health and Your Community: A Guide for Action" is available from the Hesperian Foundation. A supplement to our book, "Where There Is No Dentist" called "HIV/AIDS and Care of the Teeth and Gums," has also just been produced. Ordering details can be found on the website.

As President Bush meets today with Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Mozambique President Joaquim Alberto Chissano and Botswana President Fetus Gontebanye Mogae, AIDS activists in the Health GAP Coalition accused the U.S. president of talking about the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, but failing to take meaningful action.

Zimbabweans are facing yet another drought and dwindling maize stocks. They throng the depots hoping that they can buy just a bag or two of maize or maize-meal. Although it was clear by early last year that the country would face a severe shortage of the staple maize, the government waited until stocks ran out before making frantic efforts to import maize.

The Biomedical Research and Training Institute (BRTI) was founded in 1995, as a non-profit public organization dedicated to build health research capacity in Zimbabwe and the SADC region. The BRTI is inviting applications for pre-doctoral and masters level fellowships sponsored by the Fogarty International Centre in conjunction with Johns Hopkins University to assist in building research capacity in malaria in the SADC region. These fellowships are intended to encourage young scientists and professionals working at national institutions to be trained in the field of malaria research. Application deadline is 10th March 2002.

World Food Programme has started distributing food for famine stricken Zimbabweans. The UN agency distributed a one-month ration of maize meal to 40 000 people.

The devastating impact of HIV/AIDS in Africa is all too evident. Millions have died, their children orphaned and entire communities destroyed. But it is the crippling effect of AIDS on African economies that is now starting to ring alarm bells.

Millions of people in Ethiopia are still at risk from a meningitis epidemic which broke out last September, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warned this week.

Former US President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, are scheduled to attend an international conference on the eradication of Guinea worm disease in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, in early March, to push anew for a combined effort to make the disease the second to be eradicated worldwide, after smallpox.

The acting World Health Organisation (WHO) representative in Burundi, Dr Lamine Diarra, is under house arrest, the United Nations Development Programme Resident Representative, Georg Charpentier, confirmed to IRIN on Friday.

Bread for the World's Africa: Hunger to Harvest campaign aims to win U.S. leadership for an international effort to reduce hunger and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, including an increase of $1 billion in annual U.S. funding for effective, poverty-focused development assistance.

The Centre for Health and Population Research publishes a peer-reviewed quarterly journal titled Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition (JHPN). The Journal incorporates the Journal of Diarrhoeal Diseases Research (JDDR). The Journal is freely available on the Internet to increase access of readers in developing countries.

The trade union federation, Cosatu, has come out in full support of Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa in the escalating war of words with Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang over the provision of antiretroviral drugs to prevent mother-to child transmission of HIV.

Researchers have found a new class of drugs that in laboratory animals can cure malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that kills more than 2 million people annually. The drug, called G25 by the French team that developed it, disables the spread of the malaria parasite by blocking its ability to make copies of itself inside the red blood cells of victims.

Kenyan Public Health Minister, Prof Sam Ongeri, has said that according to the national health statistics related to reproductive health, 10 women die every day from pregnancy-related complications, and that the infant mortality rate has risen to 74 per every 1,000 live births.. Ongeri noted that his ministry is addressing reproductive health seriously to improve these worrying statistics.

The Treatment Action Campaign says it's time for national government to clarify its HIV/AIDS policy. The call comes after Gauteng became the third province in South Africa to announce that it’s to roll out the anti-AIDS drug Nevirapine at all provincial hospitals.

This study assessed whether reuse of the female condom was acceptable among two groups of women in central Johannesburg, South Africa, who were taking part in two separate studies of female condom reuse. The first group consisted of women (aged 17 to 43 years) attending a family planning/sexually transmitted infections (STIs) clinic who were participating in a cross-sectional survey of the acceptability of female condoms reuse. The second group included women (aged 18-40 years) at high risk for STI (80% self-declared sex workers) who were taking part in an ongoing cohort study to investigate the safety of reuse of the female condom through a structural integrity and microbial retention study. Among women participating in the acceptability study, 83% said that they would be willing to reuse the female condom, and 91% thought the idea of reuse of the female condom was acceptable.

In most of sub-Saharan Africa, Christian churches have stood quietly by as AIDS has decimated whole communities. "The disease has been so long associated with illicit sexual activity that there's been an overpowering silence on the issue," admits the Rev. Ted Karpf, HIV/AIDS missioner for the Anglican Communion in southern Africa. But now a growing number of Western NGOs and development agencies hope to persuade other African churches to follow Uganda's example. There, religious leaders like Mugagura have helped the government cut HIV infection rates from 14 percent in the early '90s to 8.3 percent in 2000 (and they're still falling.)

The Mauritius Institute of Health is pleased to announce its Training of Trainers courses for Reproductive Health with emphasis on Family Planning.