New and growing demands for sustainable use of natural resources are having a serious impact on agriculture, as the sector struggles to feed a growing world population, according to Louise Fresco, Assistant Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Speaking at the opening session of a major pan-African conference on water for food and ecosystems, Ms Fresco said: "The history of agriculture is characterized by a progressive and increasing control of the biological processes for the sake of increased food production."

An estimated 15% of infants in Lesotho are born HIV-positive or contract the virus soon after birth, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Lesotho government and UNICEF, the SAPA/Business Day reports. The report, which is a mid-term review of the government and UNICEF's 2002-2007 joint program, also said that an infant born to an HIV-positive woman in Lesotho has a 25% to 35% chance of contracting HIV during delivery or through breastfeeding.

Kenyan HIV/AIDS advocates have urged the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to continue funding HIV/AIDS programs in 2005, the IPPMedia/Tanzanian Guardian reports. Fund Executive Director Richard Feachem in October said that the fund faces a "critical year" in 2005 because of funding shortfalls and that it might not be able to award new grants. In order to carry out its work for 2005, the Global Fund needs at least $2.5 billion in funding, but it so far has secured only $1.6 billion from donors.

Many developing countries are failing to decrease the number of deaths in line with the Millennium Development Goals, says a new World Bank report. The report 'Rising to the Challenges: The Millennium Development Goals For Health' released last Thursday says more than 11 million children died in 2002 before reaching their fifth birthday from preventable illness, while some 500,000 women died during pregnancy or childbirth.

As its poorer West African neighbours, Guinea and Sierra Leone, grapple with endemic cholera, Senegal is facing a rare but telling explosion of the disease in low-income neighbourhoods of its busy capital, Dakar. The first cholera epidemic to surface in Senegal in eight years broke out on 11 October in a crowded, low-income suburb of the capital, highlighting the link between disease and the poverty across the continent that is associated with urban decay and rural exodus.

An anthrax outbreak has killed at least 180 hippos in a national park in south-western Uganda, reports say. The first hippo deaths in the Queen Elizabeth National Park occurred in July, but it has taken months to determine the cause. Scientists say they are struggling to develop a way to diagnose the disease quickly and contain it.

Local HIV/AIDS NGOs in Burkina Faso are planning to raise funds in the country rather than seek external sources of funding for antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, activists told PlusNews. About 43,000 HIV-positive people in the country need treatment, but in June this year only 2,000 people were receiving it. An estimated 300,000 people in Burkina Faso are living with HIV/AIDS.

In a move that could affect HIV-positive people on treatment in developing countries, an Indian generic drug manufacturer voluntarily withdrew its drugs from the World Health Organisation's (WHO) list of approved HIV medicines. The seven antiretroviral (ARV) drugs made by Ranbaxy Laboratories were removed after the company "found discrepancies" in documents proving their biological equivalence to the patented versions, a WHO statement said. In August this year, WHO withdrew three other drugs made by the company for the same reason.

Health systems research has the potential to produce dramatic improvements in health worldwide and to meet some of the major development challenges in the new millennium. Effective research could prevent half of the world's deaths with simple and cost-effective interventions, the World Health Organization (WHO) says in a new World Report on global health research. The WHO World Report on Knowledge for Better Health: Strengthening Health Systems highlights aspects of health research that, if managed more effectively, could produce even more benefits for public health in future. It sets out the strategies that are needed to reduce global disparities in health by strengthening health systems.

One of Africa’s leading HIV doctors says that efforts to scale up antiretroviral treatment in sub-Saharan Africa risk being undermined by inadequate preparation throughout the health care system for drug side-effects. Dr Elly Katabira of Makarere University, Uganda, told the Sixth International Workshop on Lipodystrophy and Adverse Drug Reactions in HIV in Washington DC, USA, that doctors risk undermining patient confidence in antiretroviral drugs if they are not prepared properly for drug side-effects in the first months of treatment. Global pressure to scale up treatment, said Dr Katabira, was in danger of ignoring the higher risk of drug side-effects in patients eligible for treatment.

For many HIV-positive mothers in resource-poor settings, breastfeeding is often the only option, despite the risk of HIV transmission. The challenge now is for healthcare workers to accept this reality and make breastfeeding safer, a recent report has said. A study by LINKAGES, a programme providing technical information on infant feeding, found that breastfeeding remained one of the most effective child survival interventions available. While breastfeeding increases the risk of HIV-transmission to the child by up to 15 percent, replacing breast milk increases the risk of infectious diseases like diarrhoea and respiratory infections up to sixfold during the child's first 2 months.

The results of a HIV project focusing on children in East Africa indicates that the project has contributed to lessening the impact of HIV/AIDS on children, their families and their communities. For example, school authorities have reported that the formation of peer counselling clubs had succeeded in breaking down the culture of silence surrounding HIV/AIDS. Children are now seen discussing HIV/AIDS issues freely in the schools.

Along with millions of others, health workers celebrated South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994 as the first step in rolling back the devastating inequity of an apartheid era health system. At last the health needs of the whole population would be addressed with the advent of representative government and the anticipated “peoples” health system.

An impressive array of health policies and plans were designed to reduce inequities and improve the health of all South Africans. Health activists and struggle veterans were in consensus that a single, unified National Health Service based on a comprehensive Primary Health Care approach would be the key to this transformation.

Despite one of the most progressive constitutions on the planet and a strong rhetorical commitment to addressing the health needs of the poor, implementation has been slow. The huge effort put into reshaping the “architecture” of the health system has not translated into real health gain for all South Africans. Many of the poorest still find themselves marginalized and neglected, just as they were in pre-democratic South Africa.

Estimates of food aid needs in Zimbabwe should be revised as maize prices have climbed well above anticipated levels, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) has warned. "Due to much higher than expected maize prices, and no evidence of commensurate increases in rural incomes, the rural population in need of food aid is almost certainly higher than that originally estimated by the ZimVAC [Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee] in May 2004," FEWS NET said in its latest food security report.

Africa is facing a public health disaster in the form of multi-drug resistant malaria. People infected with malaria in eastern, central and southern Africa are rapidly becoming resistant to one of the most affordable and commonly used anti-malaria drugs, sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP). Previously, a number of safe and cheap drugs including SP have kept down the number of deaths and people suffering from severe ill health caused by malaria. But there are ominous predictions that disaster looms - unless governments are willing to reconsider their treatment regime.

The World Health Organization's 3 by 5 Initiative goal of treating three million HIV-positive people with antiretroviral drugs by 2005 "probably will not" be met, WHO Director-General Jong-Wook Lee said in an interview last week, the CP/Canada.com reports. "[W]e might not be able to meet the three million target by the end of next year," Lee said. As of July, when the first progress report for the initiative was released, there were approximately 440,000 people receiving treatment under the program. WHO had hoped to have 500,000 HIV-positive people receiving treatment by then.

Archivists from 11 countries will meet this month in Cuba to discuss new perspectives for the consolidation and extension of UNESCO's Slave Trade Archives Project, an initiative to safeguard the documents related to slave trade and slavery within the framework UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme.

The NEPAD Secretariat is seeking a suitably skilled and experienced African expert to work on aspects of HIV and AIDS Health Policy and Strategy in Africa. The position will initially be for a contract period until March 2005 in either a full-time or major-time capacity.

The latest edition of the AfricaFocus Bulletin states: "Despite continued US refusal to allow the use of cost-effective generic drugs in its international AIDS programs, there is momentum on other fronts in the international campaign to give priority to health and development needs over narrow interpretations of patent rights. The European Commission on October 29 proposed a new regulation to allow generic drug manufacturers to produce patented medicines for exports. Earlier in October, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) adopted a proposal by developing countries to fully integrate development priorities into its consideration of intellectual property issues." This edition of AfricaFocus Bulletin contains further details on this issue.

There is a widespread belief that African teachers are a high-risk group for HIV infection. It is thought they are more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviour due to their relatively high social status, income, mobility and separation from spouses. But does the evidence support these ideas? Research by independent consultant Paul Bennell suggests that teachers are actually a relatively low-risk group in most sub-Saharan African countries.