The Nigerian National HIV Vaccine Plan is the national strategy for developing a vaccine that addresses HIV strains peculiar to Nigeria and the West African sub-region. A product of a consultative process including a consensus workshop held in Abuja in February, the national vaccine plan will guide the vaccine development process in Nigeria. A draft copy of this strategic document is now available on the Nigeria-AIDS website.

The South African government is still fighting for ownership of the domain name southafrica.com. The latest news on this case, and the impact on dns registration in developing countries, is reported in this article.

Reshaping the Nursing Landscape
Hosted by: Department of Nursing Education, University of the Witwatersrand,
South Africa
Dates: 19/20 June 2002
Venue: Crowne Plaza, Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa

Location : Hargeisa, Somalia
Closing Date : 22 Jun 2001
Job posted on : 31 May 2001

Salary : £ 22,617 GBP pa
Location : FREETOWN, Sierra Leone
Closing Date : 20 Jun 2001
Job posted on : 1 Jun 2001

Senior executives of Pfizer, a company producing anti-fungal drugs like Diflucan, today announced the opening of a large-scale HIV/Aids clinic in Africa later this year or early 2002, in Uganda.

International Family Planning Perspectives on CD-ROM provides easy access to 10 years of peer-reviewed research on sexual and reproductive health from your computer desktop. The CD-ROM holds an archive of articles, digests and updates published in International Family Planning Perspectives between 1990 and 1999--more than 700 searchable files.

At SAfAIDS monthly discussion forum (May, 2001), Dr Patrick Osewe of USAID presented and discussed the New Start HIV Counselling and Testing Initiative. In 1998, Population Services International, NACP and USAID launched an initiative to provide voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) in Zimbabwe. To date, the New Start clinics have provided HIV counselling and testing to 18,973 individuals.

Giving the back of his hand to the suffering of millions, a key Bush administration official is opposing any extensive use of the life-extending anti-AIDS drugs in Africa, insisting that the health care infrastructure is too primitive and that Africans, in most cases, are incapable of following the regimen.

The Ministry of Health and Social Services yesterday launched this year's National Immunisation Days of June 19 and 20 and July 24 and 25 countrywide, under the theme 'Let's Kick Polio Out Of Namibia'. The project, which is part of the global effort to eradicate polio was initiated in Namibia for the sixth consecutive year.

The Kenyan parliament on Tuesday unanimously passed a bill which looks set to reduce the cost of essential AIDS treatment significantly. The Industrial Property Bill will allow the government to import or manufacture cheaper copies of brand-name drugs, including the anti-retrovirals (ARVs) used in the drug cocktail used to fight AIDS, according to campaigners for the affordable availability of drugs.

Zambia's largest hospital began shutting down wards on Thursday, as a strike by thousands of civil servants continued to cripple government services. About 90 percent of Zambia's 90,000 civil servants embarked on the strike on 28 May, demanding that their salaries be doubled and their working conditions be improved. The government has offered 35 percent increases, the Associated Press reported.

Health authorities in Guinea-Bissau seized on Wednesday 140 kg of expired medicine from several pharmacies and street vendors in the capital, Bissau, as part of an effort to combat the sales of illegal medicine, the Panafrican News Agency (PANA) reported on Thursday.

The WFP said on Friday it had no knowledge of a reported threat by refugees in Dadaab refugee camps, northeastern Kenya, to stage a hunger strike in protest at a reduction in regular food rations. A general food distribution had this week been completed in the camp, and the Nairobi office of WFP would have heard of any such action if it existed, an official told IRIN on Friday.

The deteriorating economic situation coupled with a decline in cereal production is jeopardizing food security in Zimbabwe. Hardest hit will be the urban poor and households in the southern and eastern parts of the country, where a January dry spell was followed by incessant rains in February and March, which resulted in localized flooding. A Special Report issued jointly by FAO and WFP, following a crop and food supply assessment mission to the country, forecasts a drop in cereal production for the current marketing year (April 2001-March 2002) to about 1.82 million tonnes -- down 24 percent from last year. This decline reflects reduced plantings and lower yields.

Botswana, the country counting the largest rate HIV/AIDS in the world, hopes to have in place by the end of the year a programme of free supply of anti-retroviral drugs to patients, indicated president Festus Mogae.

In March 2001, EHP provided input to USAID/Mozambique in the development of an expanded program of technical assistance for Mozambique's National Malaria Control Program (NMCP). EHP's input builds on lessons learned over the past two years, during which EHP helped national and local authorities improve malaria surveillance in Maputo and develop detailed maps of the distribution of malaria cases and risk ("stratification") in the capital city. For information on the activity, please contact: Gene Brantly.

United States pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced on Wednesday that it would provide unlimited supplies of the drug Diflucan free of charge to treat HIV/AIDS sufferers in 50 of the world's poorest countries. "This is a lifetime of work not just a one-day press release," Dr Henry McKinnell, Chairman and CEO of Pfizer, said at UN headquarters. "We will continue to work with the UN, the WHO and other international organisations on how public/private partnerships like the Diflucan programme can be most effective."

HIV/Aids has reached "catastrophic" proportions and is unravelling decades of gains in child survival and development, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, warns in a new report. The social profile of the Aids pandemic has been gradually shifting, the report warns, with the disease increasingly affecting the young, poor and illiterate. Above all, its victims are adolescent girls.

At SAfAIDS monthly discussion forum (May, 2001), Dr Patrick Osewe of USAID presented and discussed the New Start HIV Counselling and Testing Initiative. In 1998, Population Services International, NACP and USAID launched an initiative to provide voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) in Zimbabwe. To date, the New Start clinics have provided HIV counselling and testing to 18,973 individuals.