Talking compounds is a project aimed at mobilising communities, especially school going children, to identify development issues and concerns in their communities. This year's project to be held in Uganda will involve six International and six Ugandan artists. It will be held between the months of March-April 2008. The artists will attend a monthly market day, visit homes, conduct activities with schools, health centers, administrative units and group excursions. Interested artists please send your application to [email][email protected] not later than 31 January 2008.

A Ugandan study has shown that community volunteers can effectively distribute antiretrovirals in rural areas with around 90% of patients adhering to treatment. This week’s Centers for Disease Control newsletter on HIV, Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention also reports on the link between Christopher Columbus and the spread of syphilis.

Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS) has so far supported over 3, 778 Kenyan families in Malaba and Busia towns with basic non food items like blankets, soap, jerry cans, mosquito nets and cooking utensils. As of January 9, the population of Kenyans at the boarder was put at 3, 115 people. URCS has pre-positioned stocks to cater for 1, 000 households at the border.

Uganda's government is to buy a $48,2-million Gulfstream jet for President Yoweri Museveni, media reported on Wednesday, and critics questioned whether the poor East African country could afford it. A committee of lawmakers endorsed the proposal, moving it closer to parliamentary approval, the state-owned New Vision newspaper said.

When a pregnant woman arrives alone at a clinic in eastern Uganda, she returns home with a "love letter" to her husband or boyfriend inviting him to join her. It's designed to enlist more men in the African battle on AIDS and maternal mortality.

The Regional Network for Equity in Health in East and Southern Africa (EQUINET) together with the Training and Research Support Centre (TARSC) and the Law of Faculty, Makerere University are carrying out a commissioned review of the Public Health Laws in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in relation to policy areas relevant to equity in health.

This study will introduce an analytic framework used across the three countries and the major global, international, regional and public health principles being reviewed. It will provide for each country and under each of the headings above, an accessible, easily understood outline of the coverage of and gaps in national law within that area, citing the relevant law or source.

This study will also provide for each country a summary of coverage, inconsistencies, contradictions, redundancies and gaps to be addressed in law and where relevant, in the enforcement mechanisms. It will give an overall summary for the three countries of coverage, inconsistencies, contradictions, redundancies and gaps to be addressed in law and where relevant, in the enforcement mechanisms; and identify areas for follow up stakeholder consultation, listing key stakeholders, for advocacy and for follow up research.

The study will be a detailed review and analysis of the public health laws of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. It will thus involve collating information on Public Health Laws of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania which will be used to prepare the final paper.

The researchers are therefore requesting any organisation or individual with information that will help them in this study to contact Mulumba Moses. The contact email address is [email][email protected]

Mulumba, Moses,
Faculty of Law,
Makerere University,
Kampala - Uganda

Interested in access to medicines? Interested in governance, transparency and accountability processes? If the answer to either of those questions is yes, and you are working in a civil society organisation in Ghana, Uganda or Tanzania, an upcoming workshop in Entebbe, Uganda from 17-23 February, 2008 may be of interest.

Under the heat of the mid-day sun, the hills that surround Banda, a Kampala suburb, ring with the distinct chink-chink-chink of metal hitting rock. Following the sound along winding paths that descend into a massive rock quarry, reveals groups of women and girls, each wielding an engine gear fixed to a wooden stick, methodically crushing rocks. Many, like 11-year old Irene Abalo who is a three-year veteran of life in the quarry, came here to escape violence in the north. Now, with tentative peace between the government and the Lords Resistance Army (LRA), a massive effort has begun to help the millions who fled to IDP camps in the north during the 20-year conflict.

Women own only a small percentage of the world’s land, yet produce two-thirds of the food in developing countries. A a recent FAO-sponsored Technical Consultation on Gender, Property Rights and Livelihoods in the Era of AIDS (28-30 Nov 2007), in Rome, it was stated that women still account for 60% of all HIV infected adults living in sub-Saharan Africa.

FAO is working with affected women’s groups as well as with governments and local-level groups to increase awareness about the issues of land grabbing and land reform as they affect women in developing countries, in particular in areas of HIV/AIDS prevalence. Women continue to be discriminated and stigmatized despite the efforts that many governments have taken to sensitise communities in recent years.

Unlike many widows or separated women, Flavia Kyomukama, HIV positive and member of Women's group in Uganda, survived land property grabbing from her husband.

Grandmother Laurencia Nyirabanzi has been a tower of strength to her family since they fled to Uganda after her three sons were killed just across the border in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by fighters loyal to a renegade military commander. The, her three widowed daughters-in-law and her eight grandchildren are all victims of the latest outbreak of conflict in DRC's volatile North Kivu province, which pits government troops against forces loyal to renegade commander, General Laurent Nkunda.

Kampala City Council has put in place several measures, including the spraying of buses from western Uganda, in a bid to curb the spread of the Ebola virus. At the same time, the death toll of the Ebola fever has risen to 30 whereas the cumulative number of people suspected to be suffering from the fever has also risen to 116.

Uganda now has more than 100 suspected cases of the lethal Ebola virus and 350 more people are being closely monitored because they were in contact with those infected, the Health Ministry said on Friday. There were no new deaths from the virulent haemorrhagic fever, which usually causes victims to die of bleeding through various orifices, Health Ministry spokesperson Paul Kabwa said.

Pan Africa ILGA, which is the International Lesbian and Gay Association’s (ILGA) African branch, reprimanded police for brutality during Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Uganda. According to a letter written to Commonwealth secretariat by Pan Africa ILGA representatives, Danilo da Silva and Linda Bauman, the Ugandan and Kenyan lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) speakers were curbed from talking on behalf of the LGBTI people last month.

Violent conflict between the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) and the Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA) has plagued northern Uganda for the past 20 years. At its peak, the conflict displaced at least two million people, many of whom fled to or were forced into notoriously unsafe and inhumane camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) known as “protected villages”.

Amnesty International has accused Uganda's justice system of "tacitly condoning and protecting suspected perpetrators” of rape and other sexual abuses against women and girls in the north of the country. "The horrific violence committed during the many years of conflict in northern Uganda continues to aggravate discrimination against women and girls in the area today," Godfrey Odongo, a Kampala-based researcher for the human rights organisation said on 30 November during the launch of its latest report, Uganda: Justice System Fails Victims of Sexual Abuse.

The World Health Organisation expressed concern on Friday about the emergence of a new strain of the Ebola virus that has infected 51 people and killed 16 in western Uganda. The outbreak, announced by U.S. and Ugandan health officials on Thursday, is in Bundibugyo, near the border with Democratic Republic of Congo.

A group of deserters from Uganda's notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) said on Friday the rebels' leader Joseph Kony had executed his deputy Vincent Otti, who has been instrumental in peace talks. "What you should know is that Kony ordered for Otti's execution on the 2nd of October," former LRA commander Sunday Otto told reporters, speaking on behalf of seven rebels flown to Kampala after handing themselves in to U.N. peacekeepers.

Scores of anti-gay activists protested in Kampala Friday minutes after Britain's Queen Elizabeth II opened the summit of Commonwealth heads of state. Demonstrators accused western countries of helping to spread the practice on the African continent. The biennial conference, which is being attended by 48 heads of state and government representatives from the 53-nation club of countries formerly under British rule, will examine the issues of governance, human rights, environment and development.

The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) has been present in Northern Uganda since 1999 with the aim of promoting protection and providing life-saving and livelihood assistance to victims of conflict in the region. The operation in Gulu, Northern Uganda was started in July 2007 and has a main focus on supporting IDPs in the area.

Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army says it will push ahead with talks to end two decades of conflict with the government despite expulsion of some fighters from the group. Godfrey Ayoo, an LRA spokesman, said several fighters had been dismissed after being found guilty of working with unnamed "external hostile forces" to destabilise the movement.