The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) was established in 1973 as an initiative of African scholars for the promotion of multidisciplinary research that extends the frontiers of knowledge production in and about Africa, and also responds to the challenges of African development. Within the broad framework of the mandate defined for the Council in its Charter, various research and training programmes have been developed over the years for the purpose both of mobilising the African research community and responding to its needs. The Council also has a robust publications programme which has earned it a reputation as one of the leading scholarly publishers in Africa.

The critical shortage of health care workers and weak health systems is the key bottleneck to scaling up access to AIDS treatment. While the needs of individual countries must be determined locally, experts estimate that sub-Saharan Africa needs at least 1 million new health workers to meet essential health needs. Sustained commitment and creative action are necessary to develop and support the health workforce needed to secure the right to health and achieve universal access to AIDS treatment by 2010, as well as other international health goals.

At least 12 people, two of them children, have died from an outbreak of acute watery diarrhoea in the southern Sudanese town of Yei, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has said. The outbreak, UNICEF said in a statement on Monday, was first reported on 4 February when three deaths occurred and 48 patients were admitted to local health facilities.

Uganda must make greater strides toward stemming the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country, AIDS Commission Director General David Kihumuro Apuuli said Monday when releasing Uganda's 2005 HIV/AIDS status survey, Uganda's New Vision reports. Apuuli, speaking at the fourth Annual Partnership Forum outside the capital city of Kampala, said the report shows that transmission rates are shifting from the youth to Ugandan adults ages 30 to 40, with current prevalence rates in that age group at 6.4%.

In Uganda a palliative care service has been successfully implemented in three districts with outreach to other parts of the country. The key to its success is that service is centered on the patient and focused on the quality of care rather than quantity. Hospice Africa Uganda's (HAU) palliative care service started in Kampala in 1993 with funds for a team of three over three months. The Government also allowed the importation of low cost powdered oral morphine.

A South African policy that was in effect from 1999 to 2005 that used race as a donor-selection factor for donated blood significantly reduced levels of HIV-tainted blood in the national supply, according to a study published Feb. 1 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the AP/Washington Post reports.

Uganda's ministry of Health will in the first quarter of this year launch Coartem, a new drug for the treatment of malaria. The ministry realised that the efficacy of the current drugs in use was below the standards set by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The government has obtained financial assistance of $64 million for the next two years from the Global Fund for HIV/Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis to purchase the drug following failure in the current treatment regimes.

This project is designed to support the growth of an organisation that uses communication and advocacy approaches to act as a liaison between international agricultural research organisations, such as the Global Forum for Agricultural Research, and African national and sub-regional organisations. FARA, that is, plays a role as a catalyst in bringing together the various stakeholders (research institutions, research systems, non-governmental organisations, donors, farmers, and private firms) and encouraging them to negotiate and cooperate on agricultural research issues of mutual interest.

This fact sheet looks at the relationship between access to sexual and reproductive health services and five of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The authors argue that poor reproductive health is hindering countries' efforts to achieve the MDGs and that access to reproductive health services influences global security by helping to hasten the demographic transition.

The tools in this kit are specifically geared towards the needs of researchers and practitioners in civil society organisations (CSOs), including development NGOs, research institutes, think tanks, universities and networks. The toolkit addresses the questions of how researchers and CSOs can best communicate evidence in order to inform or influence policy, to achieve their own stated development objectives, or simply to make their own knowledge accessible and understandable to a wider audience.

At least 12 people, two of them children, have died from an outbreak of acute watery diarrhoea in the southern Sudanese town of Yei, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has said. The outbreak, UNICEF said in a statement, was first reported on 4 February when three deaths occurred and 48 patients were admitted to local health facilities. The disease has left hundreds of people needing medical attention - about half of them children.

An estimated 11 million people in East and the Horn of Africa continue to face critical food shortages brought on by drought and non-natural factors, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has said. "African agriculture appears to be in crisis, and the compounding effect of years of wars, uprising or coups, and civil strife are responsible for causing more hunger than the range of natural problems alone," according to the agency's latest bulletin.
Related Link:
* Africa's food crisis - a systemic crisis
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/develop/africa/2006/0131sistcrisis…

Archives conjure up images of rows of shelves with documents gathering dust. And this is precisely the problem a Sudan archiving project had when it wanted to digitalise the archives. In Lokichoggio in northern Kenya, just over the border from southern Sudan, Daniel Large remembers that dust was the main problem, reports Balancing Act News Update. Large is the project manager of the Sudan Open Archive Pilot Project – a scheme that aims to digitally preserve the documents left by various humanitarian organisations in Sudan and to make them accessible to the public via a website.

A New Zealander's offer of dog food to starving Kenyans is an insult, a Cabinet minister said yesterday. "It is an insult for somebody to think Kenya can accept food meant for animals," said Mr John Munyes, minister in charge of relief operations in the President's Office. "Such people should desist because we will be very careful in vetting the donations." Members of a local women's organization, Maendeleo ya Wanawake, said they were shocked by the report, describing it as the height of abuse to the Kenyan women and children.

As illnesses go, Buruli ulcer does not receive the attention given to conditions such as AIDS or bird flu: the World Health Organisation (WHO) has even termed it a "neglected tropical disease". In the conflict-torn nation of Ivory Coast, however, matters are somewhat different. A survey issued by the National Programme for the Fight against Mycobacterial Ulcers (Programme national de lutte contre les ulcères à mycobactéries, PNUM) has shown that there were 22,000 cases of the disease in the country last year -- a marked increase against the number recorded in 1997.

At least 770 new cases of cholera were recorded in January in villages in and around Kinkondja, northern Katanga, raising fears that the epidemic - which has already killed 34 people - could spread throughout the province, Medécins Sans Frontières (MSF) has said. "We are seeing a similar pattern to the epidemic that infected 10,000 people in Katanga in 2002 and reached all the way south to Lubumbashi," said Roman Gitenet, MSF coordinator in Katanga province, southern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Campaigns to fight HIV/AIDS often focus on the "ABC" strategy - or Abstinence, Be faithful and use Condoms. However, on the ultra-conservative, predominantly Muslim island of Zanzibar, the condom remains taboo and is rarely incorporated into public awareness messages.

In the Human Rights Watch report, 'Preventing the Further Spread of HIV/AIDS: The Essential Role of Human Rights', Joseph Amon, director of HIV/AIDS research at HRW, looks at the role of human rights abuses in the spread of HIV/AIDS and "whether (the pandemic is) due to denial of the existence or extent of the epidemic, misappropriation of resources, or hostility to those individuals infected or those populations most at-risk of infection".

Several advertising organizations are conducting social marketing campaigns in Kenya that address the country's health and social issues - including HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and domestic abuse - Kenya's Nation reports. Kenya's advertising industry has developed many successful social marketing campaigns - including condom-promotion campaigns aimed at reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS - that are used throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

Malaria remains a challenging prospect for researchers and health workers, but there is encouraging news to report. Malaria research, after many years on the back burner, has risen dramatically up the priority list of donors and policy makers. Much of the credit for this turnaround must go to the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM). MIM's achievements in the malaria world may indeed be a model for raising the profile of other neglected health issues.