The Botswana government says HIV/Aids patients occupy 60% of wards in the country's hospitals, and that the numbers are rising, despite public awareness of the disease.

International NGOs working in Zimbabwe are preparing food distribution and food for work programmes despite the government's reluctance to admit to a food crisis.

WHO has produced Guidelines for the surveillance and control of anthrax in humans and animals.

After a decade of calls for environmentally sustainable agriculture, for an approach to science that acknowledges farmers' research, and for the defence of public goods from corporate reach, Susanne Gura looks at the challenges faced by the world's largest group of public agricultural research centres as it struggles to find direction.

When your horizon is the next harvest, and your choice of food for eating or selling is between too little and not enough, the long-term and the long words take second place. Spore magazine looks at the simmering clash between those who plea for production, and those who chant protection.

A Kenyan non-governmental organisation is set to lower prices of antiretroviral drugs to help prolong the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS, the 'Nation' reported on Friday. Mission for Essential Drugs Supplies(MEDS), would supply the drugs to hospitals to enable wider access to HIV/AIDS treatment.

User fees are an increasingly common component of public health financing. The intention is to provide patients with a cheaper but high quality alternative to private healthcare. But does it work? What is the impact on the poorest households? Do poor people still use public health services when they have to pay fees?

Poverty and ill health are intimately linked, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where public health services are severely strained. A report by the UK Institute of Development Studies suggests that public healthcare services often provide limited benefits to the poor.

What do Russia, Zaire, Los Angeles, and - most likely - your community have in common? Each is woefully unprepared to deal with a major epidemic, whether it's caused by bioterrorism or by new or reemerging diseases resistant to antibiotics. Hyperion 2001; ISBN: 0786884401.

The African Development Bank (ADB) has approved a loan of approximately US $21 million to finance a health care project (Health Project II) in Niger, a news release from the bank said on Thursday.

A suspicious letter, sent to the United Nations Environment Programme Headquarters in Nairobi, has failed to test positive for anthrax, the UN agency announced today.

The NOMA Children Hospital located in the Rungin Sambo area of Sokoto, Northern Nigeria is bringing succour to many impoverished children from Sokoto, Kebbi, Taraba and such far flung states like Bauchi, Jigawa and Borno States, suffering from the devastating disease known as NOMA or Cancrum Oris.

About 1,000 of the 2,200 teachers trained annually in Zambia are dying of AIDS related complications each year, according to a report issued Wednesday, Agence France-Presse reports.

Ghana's President Kufuor has launched a new campaign, 'Life Choices', as a result of increasing population growth. Commenting on Ghana's greatest challenge, he said the current practice where families are not planned undermines the efforts to provide adequate health, housing, and employment for citizens.

The Government in Kenya says it has confirmed a case of anthrax exposure from a contaminated letter - the first such case outside the United States in the 11 September terror attacks.

The Centre for Population Studies at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine offers a four-week short course in Sexual and Reproductive Health Research. The course introduces participants to the principles and methods of effective social and demographic research in this field. The sessions draw on students' own ideas and experience to focus on the design of policy-oriented research and on the use of qualitative and quantitative methods used to evaluate the impact of programmes. The course is suitable for researchers, health care providers and programme managers and others who wish to commission or use research results.

AF-AIDS brings together a cross-section of people living and working in Africa and internationally on the front-lines of the epidemic - to discuss, debate and share information on AIDS in Africa. There are also links to relevant conferences and meetings. Add your voice to the discussion among thousands of people working all over Africa in the AIDS field! AF-AIDS has over 2500 members and a transitional regional steering committee with Health & Development Networks, SaFAIDS and Health Systems Trust.

A new regional company called Manobi has been launched to deliver internet and wireless added-value e-services to farmers, fishermen, exporters, and all players involved in the value chain for tropical fresh food products. It claims its expertise covers all aspects of the agribusiness sector as well as internet and mobile hardware and software technology sectors.

Imagine a tiny, beautiful, land-locked, densely populated and extremely poor African country that seven years ago was the site of a devastating civil war and genocide that left it in tatters. Now imagine a country that sets up an ICT Commission headed by its President; that adopts a national ICT Policy for the country and that sets up a top level national IT Agency to oversee a 400-page 5-year US$500 million plan and strategy for ICT. And finally imagine a country that commits to transforming itself from an essentially agrarian economy to a knowledge-based society within twenty years and that plans to become a services center in its region, despite being poorer than its neighbours and much less well-endowed with natural resources. Hard to reconcile these images, but they are indeed all of Rwanda. Jonathan Miller and Philip Esselaar look at the progress Rwanda is making and what it needs to tackle in the near future.

More than 300 million children in the world suffer from chronic hunger and about half of them don't go to school. Some 170 million of them go to school on empty stomachs and don't receive any food during the day, while 130 million don't attend school at all. The United Nations World Food Programme says the twin problems of malnutrition and education can be solved if they're addressed simultaneously.