The website, a project of Journalists Against AIDS (JAAIDS) Nigeria, is designed to be the one-stop online resource centre to access up-to-date information on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria and all 16 countries of West Africa. On the website, visitors will find the latest statistics on HIV/AIDS in West African countries; over 200 HIV-related abstracts, research reports and presentations on HIV in the Nigerian/West African contexts; the entire versions of the recently-launched HIV/AIDS Emergency Action Plan for Nigeria; publications, reports and studies on media and HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Africa Action, the Religious Action Network and the Health GAP Coalition issued a statement to US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, protesting the racist remarks of Andrew Natsios, Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) reported in the Boston Globe.

Action Research geared towards Reproductive Health of Young People - A Basic Course (Aug 1 - 22 2001). Aims to equip participants with expertise that will allow them to design approaches suitable for young people, and thus help this vulnerable group avoid infections, unwanted pregnancies and sexual violence. Application deadline June 15, 2001. To register for the course and for further information, please contact Dr. Flavien Ndonko, Youth & Adolescents Reproductive Health Project.

The writer, an immunologist, was the first person to identify AIDS as a new disease and reported it to the Centers for Disease Control.

Intervention Mapping is a new process for the creation of health education programmes.

HIV/AIDS and TB present an enormous challenge to the public health of sub-Saharan Africa. This workshop aims to highlight the research issues
around these diseases.

Niger's government hopes to be able to provide its most vulnerable populations with enough low-cost cereals to tide them over until the first cereal harvests in August, state officials said on Tuesday. Nafoga Adamou, coordinator of the Early Warning Unit at Niger's Systeme d'Alerte Precoce/Gestion des Crises (Early Warning/Crisis Management System), told IRIN that food donations and purchases by the state amounted to some 24,000 mt.

Twelve-year-old Aids activist Nkosi Johnson, who challenged the government's Aids policies and united millions of South Africans in the fight against the disease, has died. Nkosi, who was born HIV-positive, died early this morning after collapsing at the end of December last year. Nkosi was taken home on January 4 after doctors said they could do nothing more for him.

Garlic heals HIV infections in children; 20 years of AIDS: June 5, 1981-June 5, 2001; Measles cases increase by nearly 700 percent in Kano; UNICEF, northern states fight diseases.

Sub-Saharan Africa's persistent food insecurity and vulnerability to famine reflects failures of understanding as much as failures of interventions. Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa aims to contribute towards an improved understanding for more effective food security policy.

The European Union this week urged the pharmaceutical industry to adopt a pricing mechanism that would ensure poor countries could buy essential medicines at the lowest possible price. The move follows the UN Conference held in Brussels two weeks ago to adopt strategies for helping the world's poorest countries and an EU Action Programme targeted on major communicable diseases (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria) adopted by the Council of Ministers on 14 May.

A series of initiatives aimed at improving food safety and quality, following recent food safety incidents which have caused serious turmoil in the world food markets and raised concern among consumers, was announced today by the Assistant Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Hartwig de Haen. At the Committee on World Food Security currently meeting in Rome (28 May - 1 June 2001), Mr. de Haen said: "Food safety and quality have become subjects of increased concern for consumers, producers and policy makers all over the world."

COSATU expresses its sincere and heart-felt condolences to the family and relatives of the fallen young Aids hero, Nkosi Johnson. The federation notes with regret that Nkosi’s premature death coincides with the International Children’s Day. It would like to regard his departure as a celebration to the bravery, dedication and unwavering commitment he exhibited in the struggle against the HIV/Aids pandemic.

Wednesday, May 30 2001 is the D-day for the formal opening of Nigeria's first resource centre and a new website dedicated to providing
information on HIV/AIDS and reproductive health issues for the media and the general public. The Media Resource Centre on HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Health/Rights, the first of its kind in the country, is a project of Journalists
Against AIDS (JAAIDS) Nigeria, a media-based HIV/AIDS advocacy organisation founded by a group of journalists in 1997. Located at 1st Floor, 42 Ijaye Road, Ogba, Lagos, the resource centre
will provide electronic and non-electronic information resources on HIV/AIDS, reproductive health and other health issues to journalists and other members of the public. Facilities at the centre include a documentation library stocking HIV-related literature, research reports, CD-ROMs, disks, and audio-visual materials.

In this issue: global warming changes forecast for agriculture; an interview with Asbjorn Eide, senior fellow and former director of the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights, explores the concept of food as a human right; read about the 2020 Vision conference on "Sustainable Food Security for All by 2020" in Bonn, September 4-6, 2001.

Dr. Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), today called on world leaders "to give full-fledged priority to food security in national policies." Addressing a Summit meeting of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Dr. Diouf said, "Freeing the planet from hunger is a formidable historical challenge, particularly for Africa's Heads of State. But, I am convinced that this objective is within our reach."

There are signs that Nigeria's northern region is becoming increasingly vulnerable to annual epidemics of measles and meningitis amid widespread resistance to immunisation by suspicious locals. Taking advantage of strong anti-Western sentiments sweeping across the predominantly Muslim region since a number of states started implementing strict Islamic law over the past year and a half, some radical Muslims have launched a strong campaign against Western medicine.

Should all HIV/AIDS research become centralised in Western competence centres? You may cast your vote (anonymously).

Zimbabwe has passed a new law which imposes jail sentences of up to 20 years on anyone who knowingly passes on the HIV virus to another person. Under the Sexual Offences Act, women raped and infected with HIV as a result will be given health assistance by the state and the children born as a result of the assault will also be supported.

Oxfam campaigners notched up another notable success at the annual general meeting of GlaxoSmithKline. Shareholders arriving at the meeting at the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre in London yesterday, 21 May, were greeted by protesters under a banner proclaiming "Take Leadership". Dressed in white lab coats, the campaigners from Oxfam campaigners handed out prescription bags with a medicine packet containing a leaflet calling for GSK to take the lead within the pharmaceutical industry to make essential medicines cheaper for poor countries.