A high-speed condom, designed in South Africa, is poised to take safer sex to new heights in a nation grappling with soaring HIV infection rates. Roelf Mulder, co-designer the product, said he hoped its aesthetic appeal would help change the latex prophylactic usually thought of as a passion killer into a passion filler, while also preventing the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

Many smaller home-grown initiatives, many of them started by local people in response to an urgent need in their communities, are battling for a share of the millions of donor dollars earmarked for HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment poured into Africa every year, according to a report by Plusnews.

A study by DFID asserts that governments must radically rethink education delivery to out-of-school youth. The ‘Business as usual’ approach will not meet the education challenges of the HIV epidemic in Mozambique and South Africa. The research looks at how open, distance and flexible learning (ODFL) can reduce the effects of HIV on young people.

This course is designed to support those who would like to teach about the right to food. The teaching that is contemplated may be formal or informal, with people living in poor communities, elementary school students, university courses, government officials, nongovernmental policy advocates, or other kinds of groups. Participants are asked to design their own specific teaching plans. These plans may be based on on-site face-to-face teaching, on-line teaching using the Internet, or a mixture of the two.

The introduction of tele-medicine facilities in two of Uganda's rural hospitals will close the distance between patients and doctors.

Hundreds of people in Rwanda's northwestern region displaced by floods are suffering from food insecurity, a local government official has said. "The term 'disaster' cannot really capture the suffering of the people here," Pénélope Kantarama, the governor of Western Province, said on Wednesday.

Health authorities in Togo are carrying out a vaccination campaign in the north after the first outbreak of yellow fever in that region in more than 20 years. The World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed four cases of the disease in the regions of Savanes and Kara in December and January.

Foreign donors gave $70 million on Thursday to help Zimbabwe cope with growing numbers of AIDS orphans in what officials said was a rare show of unity among the government, donors and non-governmental organisations.

The head of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), Olive Shisana, has called on government to prioritize treatment for HIV-positive teachers and nurses, saying the country cannot afford to let these key service providers die.

South Africa is overhauling its AIDS strategy in a bid to counter the rise of extreme drug resistant tuberculosis which is proving a serious threat to those suffering HIV/AIDS, a senior official has said.

The lush hills in the Tzaneen Municipality of South Africa's Limpopo Province may seem a better place to spend a childhood than the dusty, overcrowded townships of Johannesburg, but living in the countryside can add to the hardships of children who are HIV positive or have lost parents to AIDS.

Mobile phones are being harnessed to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa under a new $10-million scheme announced on Tuesday with the backing of leading companies and the U.S. government. The "Phones-for-Health" project will use software loaded on to a standard Motorola handset to allow care workers in the field to enter critical health information into a central database in real time.

Carbon offsetting refers to the process reducing the net greenhouse gas ("carbon") emissions of a party, by reducing the greenhouse gas emissions—or increasing the carbon dioxide absorption—of another party. The intended goal of carbon offsets is to combat global warming. Increasing concern about global warming and the inability of certain countries to significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions has made the option of offsetting very attractive. As a result there is a burgeoning market in carbon offsets. Africa is particularly attractive for carbon offsets. Not only are the levels of greenhouse gas emissions relatively low, ecological and economic factors also favor the establishment of offset projects.

Planting of trees to absorb carbon has been the most common form of carbon offsetting, but by no means the only one. There are already several such projects funded either by countries or corporations to offset emissions.

Carbon offsetting has rapidly become the means by which a polluting world assuages its guilt and attempts to solve the problem of global warming. Proponents of carbon offsetting advance the argument that in a modern world where pollution is a given, it is easier to find ways to mitigate the damage than it is to reduce it. In other words, it is easier to do something to pay for the damage, rather than not to damage. Hence the proliferation of "carbon-neutral" products and companies that give consumers of their products a guilt-free buy, by promising, for example, to fund a stove-making project in Eritrea or the reforestation of the slopes of Uganda's Mount Elgon.

The question that begs is whether these projects promote sustainable development. In Africa, for instance, how does monoculture of trees funded through offsetting projects need balancing against the dire need for arable land for food production? It may be argued that with advancing desertification, any such initiative should be welcomed. Harsher critics of offsetting like Austin Williams, director of the Future Cities Project, have referred to the practice as 'Carbon colonialism', whereby wealthy nations continue to rapidly develop using technology and industry that pollutes while they consign the poorer ones to the position of mopping up the world's pollution through eco-friendly projects that hamper their ability to develop and the same rate.

Williams takes a dim view of carbon offsets, arguing that agencies involved in carbon offset schemes engage in low- or alternative-technology projects in the developing world, hence slowing the pace of development to benefit the same environment that the developed world is destroying. He states that the current system sanctifies the environment and 'keeps half the world in penury while the other half ponders their next purchasing decisions'. In his view, 'consumer choices and carbon offsets are designed to maintain the iniquitous status quo, and make you feel good about it'. (Read Austin Williams' article on 'Spike Online' – link below)

Carbon offsetting is being touted as an opportunity to generate much-needed revenue for poor countries. But is it a good thing? Aid to poor countries was touted as a good thing, and it probably saved millions of lives. However, today, it is debatable whether the people of Africa are better of for having received it, and if it did not in fact hamstring efforts at autonomous development.

Further Reading:
The New Internationalist

http://www.newint.org/features/2006/07/01/carbon-offsets-facts/
David Suzuki Foundation http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16908275/
Climate Change Action
http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com/2007/01/carbon-offsets-development.html
Spiked Online
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/1724/
IndyMedia Climate
http://www.dhf.uu.se/

Somali women are taking the initiative in the fight against AIDS with a programme to educate their peers in this conservative Muslim nation. An extensive consultative process, conducted by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), led to the development of a women's training manual in the local Somali language, which trained women to reach other women in their home towns.

This research report by Panos looks at how social movements have brought energy, vitality and self-defined change to local, national and international responses to HIV and AIDS. By bringing people together and advocating effectively, social movements have amplified voices of people most affected by HIV and AIDS and created opportunities for their voices to influence governments and other decision makers.

In Eastern Uganda, for generations being a farmer meant growing and eating your own food. But buying and selling food is becoming more common, and it is bringing new worries. As Joe Nam reports for Panos, one of the biggest changes has come in the form of cash: farmers who once practised subsistence agriculture – consuming most of the little they produced – are now heading for the market to sell their crops.

In Swaziland, farming know-how is passed on from parent to child. But for many children whose parents die of AIDS the expertise dies with them, leaving hunger and destitution, according to a report by Nathi Gule for Panos. Many parents don’t pass on their farming techniques to children at such an early stage. Most children learn farming later on through observation and working with elder family members.

Journalists interested in reporting on health issues in the developing world have the chance to apply for a fellowship programme at Harvard University in Boston, Massachussetts, United States. The fellowships are organised by the Nieman Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Heath and are funded by a US$1.19 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Sex work is often cited in research as a key factor in HIV transmission. Past research has focused on men’s mobility, in particular their use of sex workers while working away from home. However, it is also important to consider the mobility of sex workers themselves as contributing to the AIDS pandemic in Ethiopia.

South Africa’s Medical Research Council (MRC) is investigating whether more than 20 women who have become HIV positive during a scientific trial, had been infected as a result of use of the microbicide that was being tested to prevent infection in the first place. MRC president Professor Anthony Mbewu confirmed that on January 31 the US-based agency CONRAD had informed the MRC that its international clinical trial of a vaginal microbicide cellulose sulphate (Ushercell) would have to be terminated early due to concerns by the Independent Safety Monitoring Committee that the microbicide might actually be increasing HIV transmission rather than preventing it.