Efforts to tackle poverty in Mozambique have made progress with the authorities this week reporting a "visible" improvement in social services delivery. At a meeting with donors on Monday to review the country's anti-poverty programme, officials noted a drop in household poverty from 69 percent in 2000 to 54 percent in 2003. "Progress was especially visible in improvements in health care, education, and access to potable water," Prime Minister Luísa Diogo reportedly told journalists in the capital, Maputo, after the meeting. However, despite the gains, the country still faced formidable challenges, Diogo added.

Mozambican Tourism Minister Fernando Sumbana said in Maputo on Monday that most of the country's conservation areas have never been properly researched, and need deep and continual studies on their bio-diversity. About 15 per cent of Mozambique's total surface area has been classified as national parks or other conservation areas.

The cholera death toll in Mozambique has risen to 90 since December, a senior health official told IRIN on Wednesday. The country had recorded 15,833 cases from 20 December up to Wednesday, in the provinces of Maputo, Gaza, Sofala, Zambezia, Nampula, Inhambane and Tete, said Gofe Chavele of the Ministry of Health. At 9,841 cases, the capital, Maputo, had the highest concentration of infections.

A Mozambican trade unionist has raised concerns that his country is lagging behind in coming up with a roll out plan on access to Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) and the lack of involvement of his country’s civil society in the Pan African Treatment Access Movement (PATAM). Pedro Jose Mondlane, who represented the Mozambican Labour Organisation at the recently ended PATAM conference, said that while Mozambican government and civil society are focusing on the issues of stigma and discrimination, it is also important that they engage with the central issues of treatment access and literacy.

The Mozambican cholera epidemic has now spread to the western province of Tete, reports Friday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias". The Tete Cholera Treatement Centre (CTC) has diagnosed the first four cases if the diseases, but no deaths have been reported. The local health authorities believe that this onset of the disease is linked to the persistent rainfall in the region.

The Dondo Community Radio was launched in the central Province of Sofala in Mozambique in late February. Inaugurated by UNESCO Maputo, the Dondo radio will bring education and information to over 100,000 rural people, covering a radius of 100 km. As other community radios, the Dondo radio will work for the development of communities covering such issues as education, health, agriculture, economy, children, youth, woman, sports, culture, democracy, and good governance.

The Mozambican health authorities are concerned over the rise in cholera cases in several of the country's provinces, which is blamed on continuing heavy rains. Maputo city chief doctor Nidia Remane, cited in Wednesday's issue of the daily paper "Noticias", said that the average number of admissions to the Cholera Treatment Centre, at the Mavalane General Hospital, stood at about 150 a day, but the figure rose to 167 on Tuesday.

Twenty-six-year-old Lucia stands confidently in front of a class of about 30 children aged between 12 and 18, asking them a series of direct questions about sexual practices, sexual transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS. Lucia (not her real name) belongs to Kindlimuka (meaning "wake up" in Ronga, a local language), a non-profit association of people living with, or supporting those with HIV/AIDS. Lucia is HIV-positive. She has participated in training to give lessons to pupils aged 13 to 18 in a UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) supported project, which began five years ago.

Community Media for Development and GOAL Mozambique collaborated to develop a radio programme with a group of Street Youth in Maputo, Mozambique. The group recorded songs, skits, and messages about HIV/AIDS, sexual abuse, and children's rights in Portuguese and Shangana. The recordings were then produced into a series suitable for broadcast or educational use, and are being distributed freely to community radio stations across Mozambique. An accompanying Portuguese language activity book was also developed to be used in educational/literacy programmes. The audio may be downloaded from the Internet. For information, contact info@cmfd.

The Burnet Institute is the only Australia NGO that focuses exclusively on health. The Institute's Centre for International Health (CIH) has been supporting HIV prevention activities with a local organisation in Manica province since 2000. However, in 2004, this work will be significantly expanded through the design and implementation of a 5-year capacity building program that will seek to build the technical and institutional capacity of Mozambican organisations involved in the response to HIV in Manica.

The job purpose is to lead Oxfam GB's work in Mozambique by working with the Regional Management Centre (RMC) and other organisations to bring about change through Oxfam's programme and influence.

Aggressive attempts to control a recent outbreak of cholera in Mozambique have paid off, and aid officials are reporting a significant drop in the number of cases. The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday confirmed the decrease in the number of admissions to the Mavalane Cholera Treatment Centre (MCTC), the main cholera facility in the capital, Maputo.

For the first time, Mozambique has a woman prime minister. Luisa Diogo was appointed by President Joaquim Chissano on Tuesday to replace Pascoal Mocumbi, who is leaving the government to take up a post at a new international health organisation.

HIV/AIDS has spread rapidly in Mozambique despite heightened awareness campaigns by both local and international agencies to battle the epidemic, a senior government health official said Friday. "HIV/AIDS has affected more and more people despite the campaigns and this means that something could be wrong with the way in which messages are put out," Diogo Milagre, deputy executive secretary of the National Campaign for the Struggle against Aids (CNCS), told AFP.

About 17 percent of Mozambique's teachers are HIV positive, considerably higher than the national average of 13 percent HIV prevalence among people aged between 15 and 49, declared Mozambican Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi in Maputo on Monday. Speaking at the opening of a seminar on education and AIDS in Maputo, Mocumbi said that this will lead to the death of 1.6 percent per year of the country's teachers.

Julia, 24, has three children and is one month pregnant with her fourth baby, but is adamant that she does not want to continue with the pregnancy. Julia participated in a pilot project to prevent transmission of the HI virus from mother to child (PMTCT) at the Primiero do Maio health centre, in Malhagalene, a suburb of Maputo, the capital. It began in June 2002 and is supported by the international medical NGO, Medecins Sans Frontier (MSF). One of the ongoing challenges is the stigma associated with the virus. Nurse dos Santos points to a box of consultation cards belonging to 28 of the women benefiting from the project. "The women ask me to keep their cards, so that their husbands or other family members do not see their status," she said.

AIDS drug treatment programmes can be scaled up effectively in poor areas, and do not lead to the high levels of drug resistance that many had feared, according to preliminary results from Mozambique. The DREAM (Drug Resource Enhancement against AIDS in Mozambique) programme - part of a national strategy to provide antiretroviral drug treatment (ART) to people living with HIV/AIDS - has also confirmed that state-of-the-art laboratory facilities are an important part of monitoring treatment.

Existing tools to control cholera may soon be supplemented with something new - mass vaccination with an oral cholera vaccine. The idea is being put to the test in a demonstration project in Mozambique by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), Epicentre and the International Vaccine Institute. The vaccine itself has been available for ten years, but this is the first time it has been used so broadly to minimize the devastation of a cholera outbreak.

Lawyers defending the 18 people accused of defrauding Mozambique's largest bank, the BCM, of 144 billion meticais (14 million US dollars at the exchange rates of the time) in 1996, on Monday launched a bitter, and highly personal attack against the BCM's lawyer, Albano Silva, who is handling the bank's private prosecution. Speaking on behalf of all the defence lawyers, Fernanda Lopes accused Silva of "a vile attempt to influence the judges".

A cholera outbreak in Maputo, capital city of Mozambique, has killed six people since Christmas, and there is concern that the number could increase dramatically. The government is set to have a meeting with international aid agencies and donors to put forward its concerns and possibly appeal for assistance.