Throughout much of Africa, the shortage of trained medical personnel is hurting the effort to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, not to mention other diseases, including malaria and tuberculosis, that are endemic in parts of the continent. Nongovernmental organizations, including Cambridge-based Physicians for Human Rights, had hoped that leaders of the Group of Eight nations would agree to commit major new resources to this problem at their recent meeting in Russia, but they failed to do so, reports the Boston Globe.