A new Ugandan pharmaceutical factory has begun producing antiretroviral medication drugs locally, something the government says will significantly increase the number of HIV-positive people accessing the life-prolonging drugs across the country and the East African region. The US$38 million factory is the first in Africa to produce full triple-therapy generic antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), and is based in a suburb in the south of the capital, Kampala.

The Kenyan government's free antiretroviral (ARV) programme has reached more than 160,000 people in need of the life-prolonging therapy, but experts say unless this momentum is accompanied by an equally aggressive treatment literacy campaign, widespread drug resistance could result. "The ARV programme has not been well-matched with [a] crucial treatment literacy campaign," said Ken Odumbe, ActionAid Kenya's HIV coordinator for Western and Nyanza provinces, which have been hit hard by the pandemic.

An expanded World Bank malaria program has shown major progress in fighting the mosquito-borne disease, but more funding is needed if a target of reducing the disease by 75 percent by 2010 is to be reached, the bank's head for Africa said on Thursday.

Auxillia Chimusoro HIV and AIDS awards 200: Call for nominations Individuals and organizations who have excelled in their contributions to mitigate HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe have a chance to win awards at the annual Auxillia Chimusoro HIV and AIDS Awards ceremony to be held in Harare on November 29th 2007.

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) has announced a major new initiative to address the most critical obstacles to the delivery of effective and essential health services in sub-Saharan Africa: fragile and fragmented health systems and a dire shortage of health care workers. The foundation’s African Health Initiative (AHI) will provide $100 million over five to seven years to African-led partnerships working on innovative strategies to overcome barriers to integrated primary health care delivery.

A new focus on healthcare in South Africa's most densely populated inner-city suburb, is to help regenerate a community hard hit by HIV/AIDS, poverty and crime. Hillbrow used to be the most trendy and cosmopolitan area in Johannesburg; today it is thought to be one of the most tightly packed places on the continent.

Dire shortages of such essentials as electricity and water are forcing Zimbabweans living with HIV/AIDS to combat the country's hardships with new and novel approaches. According to the Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey, 18.1 percent of the population of about 11.5 million are infected with HIV - the sixth highest prevalence in the world.

Researchers are calling for enhanced healthcare for HIV-infected mothers after they give birth, following a study showing that in the two-year period after birth, mothers with HIV have a high incidence of infectious diseases. The study findings were published this week (1 October) in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

In Niger, a combination of recurrent drought and widespread poverty leaves the most vulnerable people unable to cope when environmental shocks occur. Now, a new type of bank provides poor farmers with access to cereal grains when there are seasonal or unexpected food shortages. The banks, managed exclusively by women, are improving nutrition, keeping families together and gathering interest in the form of grain in the warehouses.

HIV-positive Angolans suffer a whole spectrum of human rights violations, including discrimination at work, lack of medical treatment and prejudice. The country has a national HIV prevalence of about 2.5 per cent in a population of approximately 16,000,000, although infection rates vary widely by region, with some as low as 1.8 per cent and others as high as 10 per cent.

Mozambique's Roman Catholic archbishop has accused European condom manufacturers of deliberately infecting their products with HIV 'in order to finish quickly the African people'. The archbishop of Maputo, Francisco Chimoio, told the BBC that he had specific information about a plot to kill off Africans. 'I know that there are two countries in Europe...making condoms with the virus, on purpose', he alleged. But he refused to name the countries.

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) – the use of antiretroviral drugs to prevent infection with HIV – could prevent up to 3,000,000 new HIV infections over ten years in southern Africa if used consistently, according to mathematical modelling published this month in the online journal PLoS One. Animal studies are testing the use of combinations of antiretroviral drugs, taken for indefinite periods, in order to prevent HIV infection.

When the first cases of extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) were reported in South Africa in 2006, the World Health Organisation (WHO) urged other countries in the region to improve their laboratory capacity and implement infection control measures. But Malawi still cannot test for the virtually untreatable TB strain. Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) strains cannot be treated by at least two of the main first-line TB drugs, while XDR-TB is resistant to most first and second-line drugs, severely limiting treatment options.

Nigeria is lagging behind in the provision of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment for people living with HIV/Aids, and only one out of five people who need the drugs have access to them, according to a new study. Nigeria has a five-year plan to scale up ARV therapy, aimed at providing one million people with the life-prolonging treatment by 2009, but there are indications that it may not meet that target unless the government provides substantially more resources.

A success story, at last: Botswana has lowered the rate of mother-to-child transmission of HIV to less than four per cent, coming close to developed countries that have almost eliminated paediatric Aids. In Europe and the USA, fewer than two per cent of babies with HIV-positive mothers are born with the virus; without intervention, the risk of an HIV-positive pregnant woman passing on the virus to her baby is between 30 and 35 per cent, according to health specialists.

African farmer organizations will meet in Selingué, Mali on November 27-28, 2007 to discuss ecological alternatives to the Bill & Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations' proposal for a new Green Revolution in Africa. The Gates/Rockefeller Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) will use a combined $150 million over five years to promote higher yields through hybrid seeds, fertilizers, and western-style crop management.

Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have identified a fever outbreak that has claimed at least 167 lives in the southern province of Kasai Occidental as Ebola. "The results from the referral laboratory in Franceville in Gabon and the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] in Atlanta in the United States confirmed the diagnosis of the haemorrhagic viral Ebola fever," health minister Victor Makwenge Kaput said on national television on 10 September.

It is mandatory that Zambia's hotels, lodges and guest houses stock at least two Bibles in each of their rooms, but it is rare to come across condoms or even condom-vending machines, despite many of these establishments being used by commercial sex workers and their clients. About one in five sexually active people, or 1.6 million of Zambia's population of 10 million, are infected with HIV/AIDS.

Paediatric HIV care is high on the agenda of most HIV programmes today, but less talked about are the social aspects of life as a child born with the virus, and later on, as an adolescent facing the challenges of relationships and sexuality. "The focus has been on the medical aspects of sexuality, but it goes beyond the physical," said Dr Harriet Birungi, an associate with FRONTIERS, a reproductive health programme of the US-based Population Council.

A high attrition has been recorded in Ethiopia's health sector, as 80% of the country's medical graduates, including one of medical doctors left the country to chase greener pastures abroad annually, a study by a local non-governmental organisation, Unity for Development, disclosed. Ethiopia is described as the African country worst affected by brain drain. In fact, the study revealed that currently there are more working Ethiopian doctors in the United States than in Ethiopia. Many Ethiopian doctors also left for Botswana, South Africa and the Middle East in search of good pay.